Everything's Changing by Chelsea Stickle
I would like to thank Lori from The Next Book Club publicity for an advance copy of this chapbook in exchange for a fair and honest review
Publisher - Thirty West Publishing
Published - 13/1
Price - $11.99
Everything is changing in towns across the United States. What we think we know is wrong. Animals have gone wild. Myths and fairytales are upended. Women’s bodies are growing weapon appendages. Nothing is certain anymore. The stories we tell ourselves are shifting. EVERYTHING’S CHANGING is a chapbook full of everyday magic, transformations, chaos, and coming to terms with the world as it is and how we want it to be. Stories within have been published in journals such as Okay Donkey, CRAFT, Cheap Pop, Fractured Lit, and more.
I really do appreciate the skill of the short story it’s very much how storytelling started and on the days of the multi-volume best seller something I ever more admire. Flash Fiction is in sone ways short stories at an even more refined level - stories often little more than 2 pages and often less. A great example is Chelsea Stickle’s Everything’s Changing a small chapbook of tales but I was deeply impressed at the quality and skill on show
Stickle has an enormous skill for starting the top of the page in one apparently normal place and within a few paragraphs diversely turning the tale into often surreal, occasionally scary and always emotionally investing the reader into this snapshot of characters.
In the opening tale ‘Worship What Keeps You Alive’ a family sheltering from a hurricane in their bathroom become over reliant on mushrooms growing there for food in a deliciously unsettling way. I loved ‘More Beautiful Than The Moon’ where a lover’s promise to bring the moon to earth actually subtly shades a promise we all experience that may end in disappointment. A Reddit thread is the surreal format for a woman falling to pieces (literally) at their first social event after Lockdowns in ‘AITA for fall apart at a dinner party’ which again explores human frailty and fear of embarrassment. The wry ‘Modern Ghosts’ explain now that you’re dead how to use your time.
More unsettling tales await in ‘There’s a Hirl stuck in Marble’ which explores the damage parents can leave their children growing up. I loved ‘The Marionette’ set ina mysterious version of Prague where woman keeps glimpsing parts of her past and then a puppet shows her what she has now become emotionally. Both tales have a tinge of darkness and truth to them. While ‘Florence’ apparat’s funny - that’s the name a man named a sack of flour he is using to prove he is a good future parent and the story has a wonderfully disturbing final few lines about a whole relationship.
We also get Medusa’s life in miniature, a mysterious attack of peacocks on a small community and a ballet troupe of Ghosts. Each story really worked for me and I was hugely impressed with how they come together and as a short collection of less than 40 pages really make for an immersive experience. If you’re looking for high quality flash fiction I definitely think this can work for you! Highly recommended!
