58 micro and flash fiction stories by the author of Drivers. Published in 2006 by Ravenna Press.
Diving into this dense wave of stories I soon realized that a greater part of the collection consisted of MICRO and FLASH FICTION. To my knowledge there are very few (if any) writers releasing books that fit into this genre and it's exciting to see the MICRO form emerge from Hypertext onto the printed page.
The volume itself is hard to pin down. It tests the waters of experimental forms (Brauner's Muse) and Absurdism (The Meager) then passes on to make more serious statements as in The Beachcomber:
"I expected to see his gray hair pop up from under the waves with a thick clump of ambergris on his rod, but the water was silent. Two days later his body washed up on the sea, wrapped in sargassum and flecked with sand and shells. I hear his bag was gone, but that he still clutched that divining rod which jerked from right to left, depending on the movements of the black clods in the ceaseless tide." (page 15)
Some of my favorites included the Micro Fiction pieces Breathe, Curtains, and Magazines, previously published in Rumble.
It would be fair to say that Leslie ventures into the abstract far more often than in Drivers, which features very immediate and accessible stories of relationships and characters grounded in the lower middle class of small town America. A certain unevenness is to be expected. The book claims no theme, stresses no point but the straightforward "nowness" of the hyper-short tale, the best of which draw their strength from quickly exploring a unique or startling idea.
Illustrating this point, an excerpt from the title story Reverse Negative:
"...They told us our son had died in Miskloc to the north, not in Budapest. "He fell from a warehouse in Miskloc," the ambassador said. "We couldn't release the information at first for obvious, sensitive reasons."
"For what reasons?"
"For our reasons."
Then there was the battle to retrieve his body, which took weeks. The red tape ensnared us. The red tape sent shudders through us. The red tape ripped us asunder.
He was twenty-two, unwise and spontaneous. Brilliant and kind. Pained and depressed.
In Reverse Negative, Leslie walks the tightrope between serious and experimental fiction, sometimes succeeding, sometimes failing, but with 58 stories tightly packed in this slim volume all you need do is turn a page to enter another of his compact little worlds. If you like the MICRO and FLASH forms it's certain you'll discover a number that amuse, provoke, or startle.
Read another review of Reverse Negative at Urbanite (bottom of page)