On "What You Know" by Jennifer Pashley (1161 words) ****

Here's a hard one about growing up too soon. Pashley's narrator talks about adult things while the things the others around her talk about are "cool" kid things. The effect is one of harsh contradistinction. I'd have been one of the kids showing off how to make stick figures with Popsicle sticks. I'm not unhappy to have missed out on a harsh upbringing, though there are times I feel like I've been stuck in that more innocent world with no nice way to stay in unless I remain alone. The next step is scary, but isn't that the point? Read Pashley's piece here at Memorious.

On "Rock and Bone" by Holly M. Wendt (5553 words) *****

This tale reminds me a bit of one of my favorite stories--John Steinbeck's "Flight." It isn't for any of the plot that I'm reminded. Rather, it's the way that Wendt chooses to tell this tale--as well as the tale's setting. This is a silent and lonely film. There's almost no dialogue. It's a piece told in a woman's head and in the concrete details of the landscape and the her move through it.

Kim is on a road trip, on her way to visit a friend named Jill. There's a motorbike gathering going on, and she passes a few of these riders as she drives, coming into contact with them when she pulls off to eat or to guy gas or to take a leak. She makes a momentary connection with one rider in particular, such that when they're driving along in a freak rainstorm, she notices his bike go down miles in front of her on a Nebraska highway. One shouldn't be so absorbed by a tale that essentially recounts a woman's grizzly discoveries in somber and gruesome detail, but it's a testimony to Wendt's writing that one is. Read the story here at Memorious.

On "Suspension" by B. J. Hollars (3921 words) ***

Hollars can tell some whoppers, but sometimes he tells quiet stories also. This is the second story I've read of his that features a father-son relationship at its center. This one is particularly charming in that the difficulties, the problems, are so subtle. We watch parents having marriage problems through the eyes of an admiring kid. We don't see lots of battles, lots of big fights. What we see instead are two parents who still, in some way, love each other but whose priorities are different. And we see a kid get along with them both, love them both, remember them both fondly. We also learn a lot of about monster trucks (rallies for which I've never actually been to). Read the story here at Memorious. Then go buy some monster truck tickets for your loved ones.

On "The Accident" by Allan Reeder (4371 words) *****

Perhaps because of its name, I've always thought of Memorious as a literary journal devoted to memory, and since so many stories revolve around memory, that leaves quite a bit of room in which to negotiate. Allan Reeder's story within that journal, however, seems one of the pieces most tied in thematically to the journal's name. What I like about the story, in particular, is the narrative voice. I'm not exactly clear who the "you" is or what "stories" he refers to when referencing previous events that of course "you" would know, but this easy familiarity lends a certain personal connection that would otherwise be missing. The story also makes reference to various newspaper articles, as if this were some kind of research project. And it makes reference to various character's thoughts. Rarely has the omniscient point of view been so well done. Read the story here at Memorious.

On "At the Core" by Evan Lavender-Smith (2056 words) ***

Despite my love of John Steinbeck in my younger years, I am not a fan of allegory. Still, it's a valid form of structuring a story and giving it depth, and when I see it done well, I have to respect that. Lavender-Smith's piece is such an allegory. What's interesting about the piece, however, isn't just the obvious set of metaphors that go along with the stories events but the way in which the narrator focuses on one subject--what he buries in the backyard over the course of his childhood. Read the story here at Memorious.