A review by donfoolery
Meet Me in the Moon Room: Stories by Ray Vukcevich
5.0
I returned my library copy when I ordered my own from the publisher; I just had to have it. I only give it five stars, because I can't give it six.
Folks might get scared off by the collection's description of being "surreal," but it's still very accessible--the cover illustration is definitely appropos. There were two stories that might have been a little on the too-surreal side, but the "The Finger" more than made up for them both. The best story of them all, "White Guys in Space" is absolutely brilliant as a multi-layered cultural commentary that's thinly disguised as a piece of mysogynistic 50s sci-fi pulp shlock.
I was drawn to it because of the brevity of the stories, but I noticed that these were different from the tightly-written-to-the-point-of-breaking microfiction/flash fiction stories I've been reading lately. These were short, short stories that really were precisely as long as they needed to be.
Folks might get scared off by the collection's description of being "surreal," but it's still very accessible--the cover illustration is definitely appropos. There were two stories that might have been a little on the too-surreal side, but the "The Finger" more than made up for them both. The best story of them all, "White Guys in Space" is absolutely brilliant as a multi-layered cultural commentary that's thinly disguised as a piece of mysogynistic 50s sci-fi pulp shlock.
I was drawn to it because of the brevity of the stories, but I noticed that these were different from the tightly-written-to-the-point-of-breaking microfiction/flash fiction stories I've been reading lately. These were short, short stories that really were precisely as long as they needed to be.