Caketrain

188 pgs/$8.00

I wasn’t necessarily losing faith in the modern short story before I read Sara Levine’s debut collection Short Dark Oracles, but I was experiencing a dry spell of sorts- a month at most in these saturated times- in finding stories that went beyond simple compound emoting, surrogate characters using bad dialogue, or weird anti-narratives with no foundation. I take only partial blame. This book, excellent as it is on its own in a vacuum outside of my life, became my reminder that people are still out in the world crafting peculiar tales that resonate with the humor and sadness inherent in any truth.

There’s natural propulsion to Levine’s sentences. One is a promise and the next is the delivery and the doubling of that promise. In “Must We Stoop For Violets In the Hedge?”she says,

“I was going through a phase in which it was difficult to eat, that is to say I needed to eat but did not like to feed myself because I was so disgusted with my personality at the time.”

Her skill works in more compact ways, as well, and earlier on in the same story she writes,

“For years I had gotten by pretending to be bored with things that, in fact, I could only simply recognize, let alone understand.”

In the title story, she reveals even more in an even smaller space, trouble and beauty with an economy to desire: “Since his father’s death, Alex’s mother had become artistically wide, emotionally narrow.” Continue reading →