Monday 31 October 2022

MittKelma by Rita Saliba

 

MittKelma

by Rita Saliba


It is fair to say that Rita Saliba has made of flash fiction her signature literary form. MittKelma (literally “HundredWords”, but possibly also a pun on “mitkellma”, which means “spoken”) is one of her collections exclusively dedicated to the form. It features one hundred stories, each of which limited to one hundred words.   The pieces are well-crafted, painting a satisfying narrative with a few broad brushstrokes, often leading to a final twist. This makes this book compulsively readable:  the temptation to try “just one more” stories often turns out to be hard to resist.

While all the works follow the same format, the content varies greatly, from realistic narratives to stories which borrow heavily from “genre fiction” including horror and sci-fi.  Much as I love genre fiction (as readers of my reviews are surely aware), if I have a general criticism of the volume it is that in some stories, particularly the “genre fiction” ones I found it difficult to suspend my disbelief, as if the author were trying a tad too hard to make an impact in one page. In actual fact, Saliba has little need for that. Even the more understated pieces touched me with their often poetic approach and their ability to convey a character and/or a situation with a few choice words. 

Format
    110 pages, Paperback

Published
    January 1, 2020 by Klabb Kotba Maltin

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