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Collaborations are strange, and not always in the good sense. The writing styles and voices of talented authors are usually unique animals best left alone in their own realm. However, when two great authors can come together and make their individual wor(l)ds dance together, the result is pure literary magic. Kathy Fish and Robert Vaughan's Rift belongs to the small group of magical collaborations that seem to enhance each author's contribution. It's also a surprisingly bizarre and unexpectedly touching collection of short/flash stories that deliver healthy doses of heartbreak, memories, weirdness, and violence.
Fish and Vaughan are both masters of flash fiction and each has a few publications and teaching on their resumes, but reading Rift is like watching two dance partners that have been practicing together since their first day. Both authors have a deep understanding and a lot of curiosity about the human condition and the way we can expose and explore with very short stories. Both of them understand that economy of language is a crucial element of what they do but not an impediment when it comes to telling complete stories. Last but not least, both seem to be out on a mission to take their literary morsels and make them powerful enough to leave a lasting impression on readers; an impression that holds no relation to their word count.
Rift is constructed so that each writer has an equal amount of space and they trade stories so that, instead of half and half, readers get four sections in which they alternate narratives. This works really well because it allows for the stories to flow nicely and for each voice to feel fresh every time it comes around. Fish is up first, and her work throughout the book is outstanding. Her knack for surprising the reader and writing about relationship as it were a new theme is enough to make this book one that all fans of short fiction should check out. There are many standouts from Fish, including Vocabulary, which puts an entire new relationship and its possibilities inside a paragraph, Grip, which pushes the boundaries of how much sadness and reminiscing can be crammed into a very short tale, and The Blue of Milk, which is at once gritty and incredibly haunting but also poetic and beautiful in the way only unexpected encounters can be. That being said, this is a review and one piece needs to be held above all other and given the space/spotlight of a quote, and that story is There is No Albuquerque, a narrative that packs the heart-wrenching biography of a pale-eyed woman born with a hole on her neck and three horns. This one is what happens when literary fiction, bizarro, and magic realism collide:
When I was little, my mother used to stand me before the mirror every
morning and make me say: I am beautiful. After she died, I keep doing it
for a while until Buddy told me to stop. After he married the Tattooed Lady, they soon lost interest in me, and I was sent to a foster home. My
foster parents thought I was retarded. They told everyone who would
listen that they saved me from a dumpster. I ran away when I was sixteen.
Probably the only author who could hold his own with Fish is short story/flash/poetry giant Robert Vaughan, whose Addicts and Basements, released in 2014 by Civil Coping Mechanisms, turned me into a fan of his work for life. Vaughan's stories here are about being on the move, memories that, while unpleasant, are too strong and meaningful to forget, and heartbreak, among other things. Few authors understand the correlation between space/place, movement, and memory the way Vaughan does, and his talents are in full display here. A few standouts include The Farms of Ohio Were Replaced by Shopping Malls, which is a class in both how much tension can be packed into a flash piece and how an ending can be many things at once, Help, I'm Alive, which is equal parts unassumingly brutal and tender, The Literary Savant, which is sad, sharp, and hilarious, and Four Stone Cups, in which a lot of lies seem to lead to the start of something true. The quote honors? Those go to Too Much Oxygen. Anyone looking for a taste of how devastating Vaughan can be in a few lines should read this. If they do, they'll never forget it:
I play tuba by default. None of the other brass players would
switch. Something about the aperture. The tuba it was huge, a lot to
carry on/off the bus, and forget about placing it overhead. We didn't
have overheads anyhow, this was the 70s. The Waltons. Gas lines.
Leisure Suits. This was the summer I was raped."
Rift gives readers two contemporary flash fictions masters at work, and that's one extra reason to pick up a copy.