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.
- 110 pages, Paperback
- January 1, 2020 by Klabb Kotba Maltin
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