By Grace Black
What a well-suited title for such a collection of flash quakes. Some of the stories in RIFT leave a trail of tremors and others a complete aftershock that feel weightier than the cohesive whole of the book. Fish and Vaughan’s use of wit and candy-floss imagery hold steady throughout this storm, and their talent is evident.
They combine vignettes and threesomes and episodic flash with poetic prose that hits like a microburst in the middle of a camping trip. Mid-sentence, “‘…Everything’s gruesome. Even the word gruesome.’” (Fish, 92), you are uprooted from thought and plunked back down directly in the center of the next cataclysm. “I felt my wallet become ethereal, so light…” (Vaughan, 157) sort of like head space in the midst of California’s Santa Anas.
The natural direction this collection takes, rips through you like a tornado choosing its victims indiscriminately. One can learn a lot from a collection like this, and I am thrilled to add it to my personal shelf of reads to re-read. RIFT is packed with meaning and life and just enough nonsense to make perfect sense. A flash fiction feast, or storm chaser’s delight.
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