Customer Reviews

Certain People (Coffee-To-Go Short-Short Story Series)

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Roberta Allen, a visual artist, turns to prose here for the second time (after her initial collection, A Traveling Woman) with mixed results. While occasionally there is recognition of the power and uniqueness of the flash fiction form, at other times, her writing is too literal to be truly effective in this form.

There are some truly interesting images and psychological insights, from time to time, but the flash fiction form demands a sensitivity to language that Allen does not always convey. It is a hybrid form, bordering on poetry, and so must be able to communicate some quality of this kinship. Once in a while, Allen understands this and it does come across. But all too often, there is too much forcing of the language, as though trying to prove the author can do flash fiction. This forced quality does not allow the essence of flash fiction to emerge.

There must be some degree of metaphor in flash fiction--at least some, anyway--and Allen does not really bring this across consistently. Hence in many cases these pieces read like incomplete short pieces, not really flash fiction pieces, which are wholes rather than pieces per se.

A much better bet in the Coffee House Coffee-to-Go short-short story series (flash fictions) is Jessica Treat's A Robber in the House, which is real flash fiction and superb.