On "SMTWTFS" by Gary Lutz (1318 words) ***

Like the days of the week, this tale rehearses for us the tedious and unsustained life of a man who bounces from one relationship to another, or more often one encounter to another, none of them making much of an impact on him other than the general meaninglessness of it all. Read the story here are Web del Sol.

On "Contractions" by Gary Lutz (3139 words) ****

"Contractions" starts promising enough, with an account of a kid who decides to reveal all of her parents' secrets from before marriage. In a sense, the story then revolves around marriage and relationships, the various ones this girl grows up to have, all of them full of their own secrets and sadnesses and smells. Read the story here at Web del Sol.

On "Street Map of the Continent" by Gary Lutz (753 words) ****

This story about a man's loss of his wife is one whose very deadness of language seems to hint at the deadness within the man's own life. Slowly, he empties the house of the woman's possessions, just going through motions. Read the story here at Web del Sol.

On "Devotions" by Gary Lutz (1182 words) ****

What is it that makes for a good marriage? The narrator in this story moves from wife to wife, one a boozer, one young, and so on. In one telling passage, the narrator recounts having an apartment where he realizes the person above him has figured out the arrangement of his furniture and is mimicking his each move. Creepy, I suppose, but I can't help but think the narrator is making some kind of comment about marriage, about being known so intimately that there is no escaping surveillance. Read the story here at Web del Sol.

On "Sororally by Gary Lutz (1334 words) ****

Essentially the story of a work relationship--or date--that ends up going nowhere, the real charm in this piece is the language. "Eyes chance ambitiously" onto another's. Tasks are inherited from one day to the next. It's the beauty of the verbs and the occasional surprising descriptor. You can read the story here at Web del Sol (scroll down to the second piece).

On "Oops" by Kate Hill Cantrill (502 words) ****

Some stories are meant to be read aloud, because they're so beautifully written. Cantrill does just that in this short short called "Oops," a story that works its magic by repeating phrases and words in a slightly different order, slowly raising the tension as we come to see how obsessed the narrator is with a particular unpleasant incident of which she is the cause. Read the story here at Del Sol Review.