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Title: Coffee House Lies: 100 Cups of Flash Fiction
Author: Carly Berg
Narrator: Jayne Chianelli
Format: Unabridged
Length: 6 hrs and 19 mins
Language: English
Release date: 05-07-15
Publisher: Carly Berg
Ratings: 4 of 5 out of 1 votes
Genres: Fiction, Short Stories & Anthologies
Publisher's Summary:
These fun-sized stories are just right for a coffee break, public commute, waiting room, bedtime story, or any other time you want a quick trip without leaving the farm.
The 100 stories in this quirky collection are generally a few minutes in length. Nearly all of them have been published before individually, in numerous print and online magazines and anthologies. Stories in this collection have received nominations for the 2013 Pushcart Prize, Micro Award, and Wigleaf Long List.
Tales vary from realistic to humorous to surreal, and family-friendly to adult. Repeating themes include: people-as-animals, people losing themselves and finding themselves (and sometimes wishing they hadn't), childhood in the psychedelic seventies, reality TV, marriage, twisted religion, and of course the gotta have 'em "he-done-me wrongs". Enjoy!
Members Reviews:
Short snacks that satisfy
Flash fiction â short, concise stories as little as one page, and rarely more than four or five â is a form that has become newly popular with digital publishing. Carly Berg must be one its best exponents. Sheâs written a guidebook called Writing Flash Fiction that contains some excellent advice on writing in general. After reading it, I wanted to see whether she was any good herself. Having now read Coffee House Lies, I can report that she is, very.
These stories all, in some way, reflect the human condition. They can be bizarrely funny, as in Rock, Paper, Scissors â betrayal comes to light in a hair salon, and is punished, with scissors. Or Saint Jude, about a woman with poor judgement: âThey gave an ounce of charity with a pound of moralizing, which made her so mad that one day she came home with the churchâs most sacred holy relic in her brassiere.â Other stories are rather thoughtful; for example, in Laid to Rest, a woman carefully tends the graves she has made of people who are still alive â the graves are for her relationships with them. My favourites: Everyone Wants to Steal My Man, a masterpiece of revelation; Paris Blue, in which a maid in the Deep South takes elegant revenge on an awful mistress; and Loss of Habitat, a curious story that may make you think about people and animals and how their fates can be oddly similar.
Part of Bergâs secret is craftsmanship. Her chapter on writing skills in Writing Flash Fiction reveals how aware she is of what makes a good story: avoid exposition, sloppy dialogue, etc. (she gives examples). All that is put into practice here, to good effect. Not one of these stories has an ounce of spare fat. She also has a real feel for language. The last part of Coffee House Lies has a number of very short pieces, sometimes just a few lines; this is from Breathing Underwater:
The family danced beneath the Mississippi
Father and Mother slapped in pretty water rhythm,
Watershadow sister mimed the Mother.
... Mother-daughter swimslap dancers hardened to steamships,
windmill arms to waterwheels.
Hooted twin foghorns,
steamed off down the river.
Bergâs writing is very American. This didnât bother me (I live in the US at the moment, anyway), but thereâs the odd turn of phrase and cultural reference that might puzzle some people.
