Short Story Reviews

The calendar reads "busy busy busy" and so I'll post reviews of short stories here. I have several Christmas stories lined up for my reading in the weeks ahead, and I'll ask your indulgence now in anticipating many holiday reviews  here. For today, I have one short story by Andrew Kaufman, and then a book of two Christmas stories by L.K. Campbell.

Desolation Road   Andrew Kaufman

This short story by Andrew Kaufman moves as swiftly as the errant vehicle approaching the other on the deteriorating, twisting road. In just a moment the driver's life is changed; spared injury himself, he is horrified to see the other car spin out of control and over an embankment, landing far below.  Can he help the occupants? Is it too late? Or will he leave the scene, untouched, but scarred in memory?  

Kaufman does not disappoint: his on-the-edge story telling has an echo of Hitchcock's style in Desolation Road.

Christmas Wishes (Lead Me Home and In the Nick of Time)   L.K. Campbell

Lead Me Home:

A young wife whose husband was killed in Iraq returned to her home to help her parents run their publishing house. But when she encounters her high school sweetheart, she is surprised by the flood of emotion she experiences after their decade apart. The first love begun as teenagers quickly rekindles, but is at risk of being snuffed out by a guilt carried in secrecy and wrongly attributed.  This short story introduces four major characters who come alive through the dialogue written by L.K. Campbell, and has the potential of becoming a full-fledged novel.

In the Nick of Time:

L.K. Campbell’s second short story involves a pair of consenting adults who have a comfortable relationship until doubts begin to surface. She loves him, but is not sure that he loves her. The broken engagement in his past hovers like a cloud over their relationship, and when his former fiancé reappears, it seems that the relationship might end. But no, not before Christmas! This is a sweet romance that invites an audience's reading just before bedtime. I found it had just the right touch of sentiment and holiday. 

And just a note here: LK Campbell authors her own books, but also helps other self-publishing authors find their way through the Smashwords grinder and turns  digital books into the multiple formats available on Smashwords. You will find her name on the page called "Mark's List" of writers amenable to this task, available by email through Smashwords' help page. Campbell has helped me with both of my books now listed there for Kindle, Nook, Sony and more. I highly recommend her skills, and appreciate her assistance.

 

Related articles

• Open thread: recommend your favourite short stories and poetry collections (guardian.co.uk)
• Happy endings: How the short story genre is taking over the Costa Awards (metro.co.uk)

Taking a break and reviewing two more books!

:

Survival of the Fittest: The Last Hope for the Human Race  by Michael Taylor

Recommended for: all readers aged 13 and up

Read from March 28 to April 12, 2012, read count: 2

Survival of the Fittest blends the elements of science fiction with a story line that looks at parent/child relationships, and world powers collaborating in the face of alien attack, and teen issues and roles complicated by the unsettling rules of engagement.

Anyone who has watched young teenagers become totally involved in video games and then instantly disengaged to take a phone call or a family conversation will appreciate their ability to detach and adjust to the unexpected. Teachers see this flexibility every day, as their students move from history content to chemistry to physical education and then to art or music ... the adult world expects that this generation will adapt to the new technologies ... never stopping to think that innovations today happen exponentially faster, and are a world apart from the changes we witnessed in the twentieth century.

Michael Taylor writes with the sensitivity of adults who spend their working lives guiding adolescents through the myriad changes life presents to them. His depiction of adults, those manipulating and those manipulated, is blunt, painfully so.

The story ends with the unknown ... it has a bit of a coming of age feel to it, and the characters themselves are faced with the choice of what will happen in their foreseeable future. This is a fascinating story, raising ethical questions and moral dilemmas for all who will read it.

I would recommend this book to all who are invested in the healthy development of adolescents, and perhaps to those media pundits who delight in running headline stories of negative events in teens' lives. Someone once said, "Love ... is not always what it seems."

Medical Error, by Richard Mabry M.D.

 

This was a mystery that, due to life's complexity, I read in many interrupted sessions. But the story held together so well that I never lost track of who was who, what happened when, or how many clues had been presented.

Characters were very well developed, very consistent in the points of view, and easily recognizable in dialogue. Doctors, police officers, federal agents, health workers, ambulance attendants, and bad guys were all easily recognizable and true to the reader's perception of their roles.

I won't summarize the plot here, as many others have already done that, but I will say that even though I'd missed the first story in this trilogy this is a stand-alone success. I look forward to reading the other two.

Related articles

• Psychiatric Medication For Children? Important New Book Gives Pause (boston.com)

Day 13 Health Awareness Blog: 10 Things I Couldn't Live Without

Today's writing prompt is  asking me to write about the ten things I couldn't live without. Things. People are not things, so I'll start this list by saying that the people in my life are much more important than the things. I could do without everything as long as I could keep my husband, children and grandchildren in my life. There are many other people in my life who bring me pleasure - friends, colleagues, relatives and acquaintances, but they are not an essential life source for me as my family is. Love is a powerful resource, reciprocal at its best, and devastating if lost.

Love is not a thing ... it's an idea, an emotion, a state of being, a quest, and a gift. I could not live without the love of my family.

Health is not a thing: it is a state of being, but perceived differently by individuals. I have a strong label on my medical folders: multiple sclerosis. It carries with it a prognosis unknown, with the bleakest projections far away on the spectrum from the mildest, benign end. End, you say? There is no end to a spectrum. And if you believe that, then both ends are equally infinite, and the darkest belief is balanced by the brightest.

If this is to be a bucket list of sorts ... the ten things I could not live without ... I really have to play with the word things, because what I could not live without are intangible ideas or states of being. there is nothing tangible on my list:

1. love: to be loved, and to love in return,
2. self worth: a belief that I can love and be loved
3. competence: being able to provide what I can do to better the states of others
4. compassion: to receive compassion and to feel compassion for others
5. understanding: a set of knowledge and an awareness of what that knowledge might provide
6. appreciation: for those I love, for the world of nature in which we live, for air, food, water and shelter
7.  courage: to face whatever obstacles stand in the way of those I love
8. will: to overcome those obstacles despite whatever personal challenges I feel at the time
9. success: as defined for myself, and as recognized by those I love, and in those I love
10. self-confidence: to allow myself to speak up for those I love, and for myself.

Are these 'things' that I expect to be given? No. They are emotions, beliefs, values and goals that I have accepted and sought in my life. They are what I have lived, and have tried to model for those I love, that they, too, can live such a life ... where material things have less value, less importance, and are less essential than the way we can live, with whatever we have, wherever we are, and whoever we will be, with and for each other.

Does this list negate the existence or importance of a spiritual belief? Does it neglect homage to a superior being? Does it remove the obligation of duty to a religious belief? Does it place us above a God?

If in reading this list, one is discomforted by the absence of a deity in name, then one is missing all that lies between the lines. Hindus, Taoists and Buddhists recognize the existence of the greatest spirit within ourselves and each other. Their greeting, Namaste, expresses this belief, this recognition, and this humility. Isn't it hubris, you might ask, to assume that the greatest deity resides within us? Humble may be the word ... no one of us is any better, nor any less, than any other of us. "The divine within me recognizes and bows to the divine within you."  What a powerful message to share with everyone in your life ... those you love ... those you dislike ... those you fear ... those you feel responsible toward ...  Namaste is the great equalizer. It is a word that challenges each of us to be worthy, to be better, to be as loving and compassionate a provider as we may have been taught to believe that God is.

Namaste, my friend. I trust that you understand my writings. They are written from within, with love.