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All That Is Between Us
This collection of flash fiction stories explores the complex fragility of human relationships, both the challenges of belonging and how much we risk to avoid being alone. It is a book of moments, evoking the beauty and comfort that connection brings…and the pain when it is severed.
'Whoever you are, whatever you like to read, you need these stories in your life.'
–Tania Hershman, author of Some Of Us Glow More Than Others
'These insightful and disarmingly honest stories shimmer with quirky brilliance.'
–Meg Pokrass, author of Alligators At Night
'K.M. Elkes writes like a fallen angel, making the ordinary divine…This is breath-taking flash fiction at its finest.'
–Angela Readman, author of Something Like Breathing
'Brings a Cheeveresque emotional punch to his stories…a masterclass in the heart-jolting satisfaction of great flash fiction.'
–Nuala O'Connor, author of Joyride to Jupiter
'Whoever you are, whatever you like to read, you need these stories in your life.'
–Tania Hershman, author of Some Of Us Glow More Than Others
'These insightful and disarmingly honest stories shimmer with quirky brilliance.'
–Meg Pokrass, author of Alligators At Night
'K.M. Elkes writes like a fallen angel, making the ordinary divine…This is breath-taking flash fiction at its finest.'
–Angela Readman, author of Something Like Breathing
'Brings a Cheeveresque emotional punch to his stories…a masterclass in the heart-jolting satisfaction of great flash fiction.'
–Nuala O'Connor, author of Joyride to Jupiter
150 pages, Paperback
Published June 22, 2019
1 person is currently reading
25 people want to read
About the author
K.M. Elkes
1 book9 followersK.M. Elkes is an author, editor and writing tutor based in the West Country, UK. His flash fiction collection All That Is Between Us (Ad Hoc Fiction, 2019) was shortlisted for Best Short Story Collection in the 2020 Saboteur Awards.
Individual short stories have won, or been placed, in international writing competitions, such as the Manchester Fiction Prize, Royal Society of Literature VS Pritchett Prize and the Bridport Prize. He was longlisted for the BBC National Short Story Award in 2019.
His work has also appeared in literary anthologies and journals, including The Lonely Crowd, Unthology, Mechanic’s Institute Review, Short Fiction Journal and Structo.
He is a short story tutor for Comma Press and also runs online workshops on short fiction. His writing has featured on schools and college curricula in the USA and Hong Kong and has been used by bibliotherapy charity The Reader. In 2019, he was the recipient of an award from Arts Council England. He has an MA Creative Writing (Distinction) from Oxford Brookes University, where he won the Blackwell’s Prize. From 2016-18 he was Guest Editor of the A3 Review literary magazine.
As a writer from a rural working class background, his work often reflects marginalised voices and liminal places. He is currently working on a novel and a short story cycle.
Individual short stories have won, or been placed, in international writing competitions, such as the Manchester Fiction Prize, Royal Society of Literature VS Pritchett Prize and the Bridport Prize. He was longlisted for the BBC National Short Story Award in 2019.
His work has also appeared in literary anthologies and journals, including The Lonely Crowd, Unthology, Mechanic’s Institute Review, Short Fiction Journal and Structo.
He is a short story tutor for Comma Press and also runs online workshops on short fiction. His writing has featured on schools and college curricula in the USA and Hong Kong and has been used by bibliotherapy charity The Reader. In 2019, he was the recipient of an award from Arts Council England. He has an MA Creative Writing (Distinction) from Oxford Brookes University, where he won the Blackwell’s Prize. From 2016-18 he was Guest Editor of the A3 Review literary magazine.
As a writer from a rural working class background, his work often reflects marginalised voices and liminal places. He is currently working on a novel and a short story cycle.
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
July 3, 2019
Irving Howe once said of flash-fiction, or the short-short story as it’s otherwise known:
‘Everything depends on intensity, one sweeping blow of perception. In the short short the writer gets no second chance. Either he strikes through at once or he’s lost.’
‘All That Is Between Us’ is a collection of flash-fiction that strikes through. This debut by K.M Elkes crackles with all the complexities of human relationships, narrative blazes, if you like, that may be tiny in size but vast on matters of the heart. Stories crafted with an emotional wisdom that scythes. Birth and attachment, parenting, love and loss, regrets and nostalgias underpin these diverse tales with their strong narrative push. Psychologies of relationships are drawn out in vivid technicolour and Elkes courts his readers with emotional balance.
The range of these forty stories runs from the domestic to the oblique, disparate moments that accumulate bright as silver bolts and most carrying enough stun to make the heart ache. A man meets his birth mother in a café for the first time. An estranged father takes his son to the zoo without his mother’s consent. Another father eats an apple tree. An origami addict lets paper get the better of his relationship. A sick woman chooses to die amongst her beloved rose beds.
Many of these stories speak the language of manual labour, of the domestic, of making do, the words of hard knocks. Rural landscapes are never far from earthily drawn settings with ripe loaded fruit trees and riverbanks, a sugary village bakery, a red call box.
A personal favourite is ‘Still Warm’ which brings us a boy emotionally neglected due to his mother’s ill health. Loss resonates as his father shaves at the sink removing stubble that used to feel ‘alive and mysterious, like radio static’ on his cheek in the days when his father still used to kiss him. Whiskers symbolise the white noise of love, the lip graze he depends on to feel loved. Narrative artfully rotates around the school packed lunch his mother prepares each day, a sausage meat sandwich ‘fried the colour of night’ lunch prepared with all ‘the weight of a human heart’, but even so, the boy disposes of it en route to school. Family dynamics emerge keenly through that sandwich alone and achieved within three hundred words.
The strongest pieces in this collection give spaces where ideas and images are glimpsed at but remain ambiguous, inviting the reader’s interpretation, giving rise to conjecture. In the opening story ‘Could Have Would Have Should Have’, a man who has had an affair supposes on different outcomes in life, a list heavy with atonement; a new born baby, a wife, a daughter, an enduring marriage, a trip to a water park, a pint with his daughter’s friend’s dad. Readers can’t know what is the protagonist’s fact or fiction. We speculate on a dot to dot of events and conclude in a layby waiting on a lover’s call, a voice on the radio informing of ‘…snow, coming slowly from the east.’ Elkes’s wily use of ambiguity invites his readers to linger awhile in that landscape of unknowing.
Many flash fiction collections lack a unifying theme, an overarching scaffold to make the stories feel like a collection of words which really should be hanging out together. Not so, here. Structurally, the book is organised in to a triptych of stories starting with ‘Parents and Children’, ‘Couples and Lover’ and concluding with ‘Friends and Strangers.’ This arrangement makes sense. It feels organic, carefully mirroring the life cycle of human relationships which takes us from infancy through childhood, to adolescence and beyond. Not only does this structure function to stagger the emotional gravity of each story but each section thrums with interpersonal conflicts, those recurring themes of trust vs mistrust, intimacy vs isolation and, how ultimately, the success of any relationship depends upon mastering these.
Readers seek to find connective themes in collections, often unconsciously emerging ones, but it is incontestable that hands emerge, here. A sister dips her finger in a pan of stew for her siblings to taste in ‘The Knock of the Broom’, ‘…as though we were lambs suckling.’ ‘Send Me Down’ features the death of a scaffolder in a tragic fall where his colleagues ‘pressed that battered harmonica into his hand, …sent him on his way down that long, empty elevator shaft.’ In ‘Extremities’, Bobby loses one of his hands in a logging accident, its whereabouts unknown, ‘…there was nothing on the end of his arm.’ Empathy is given up for the mislaid hand that lies somewhere ‘out in those woods, fingers curled, grasping at nothing.’ In ‘The Noise Was Blades’ a woman ungloves hands that play ‘a faint, bitter jostle of sharps and flats’ Musicality is at work here in the personification of ecstasy. Melodic and lyrical, this tale is a triumph of sound and immediacy that builds and builds, the double edged blade being that euphoria can kill. Readers will find hands that nurture, hands that cut, hands that are lost, hands of course, being the writer’s tools, the labourer’s livelihood.
Elkes’s writing is spare with imagery that surprises. Spare is not to imply any skimping on metaphoric juice, rather more that he employs metaphoric restraint. The baby’s hands in ‘Could Have, Would Have, Should Have’ grip ‘…like tiny, soft-shelled crabs.’ A lover in ‘Fanciful Visions of Death’s Sweet Embrace’ fears death in all its guises and takes on the characteristics of her imagined deaths in a fantastical way. She imagines dying in a cryotherapy chamber, her partner noting: ‘Her hair became brittle as iced grass and she smelled of something hard, like nail polish. She clicked and juddered when she walked, so she stopped walking.’ In ‘A Secret Weight’ a married man reminisces on how fast his life has passed, how ‘time bowed like the curve of the Earth…’ and the lover he jilted the night before his wedding, ‘…her taste, like a sharp apple, freshly bitten.’ Subtly placed metaphors function as slant cues to a bigger picture. It is this sort of precise sensory compression that gives Elkes’s stories their command.
A skilfully crafted collection which explores human relationships with authenticity and tenderness. It comes highly recommended.
‘Everything depends on intensity, one sweeping blow of perception. In the short short the writer gets no second chance. Either he strikes through at once or he’s lost.’
‘All That Is Between Us’ is a collection of flash-fiction that strikes through. This debut by K.M Elkes crackles with all the complexities of human relationships, narrative blazes, if you like, that may be tiny in size but vast on matters of the heart. Stories crafted with an emotional wisdom that scythes. Birth and attachment, parenting, love and loss, regrets and nostalgias underpin these diverse tales with their strong narrative push. Psychologies of relationships are drawn out in vivid technicolour and Elkes courts his readers with emotional balance.
The range of these forty stories runs from the domestic to the oblique, disparate moments that accumulate bright as silver bolts and most carrying enough stun to make the heart ache. A man meets his birth mother in a café for the first time. An estranged father takes his son to the zoo without his mother’s consent. Another father eats an apple tree. An origami addict lets paper get the better of his relationship. A sick woman chooses to die amongst her beloved rose beds.
Many of these stories speak the language of manual labour, of the domestic, of making do, the words of hard knocks. Rural landscapes are never far from earthily drawn settings with ripe loaded fruit trees and riverbanks, a sugary village bakery, a red call box.
A personal favourite is ‘Still Warm’ which brings us a boy emotionally neglected due to his mother’s ill health. Loss resonates as his father shaves at the sink removing stubble that used to feel ‘alive and mysterious, like radio static’ on his cheek in the days when his father still used to kiss him. Whiskers symbolise the white noise of love, the lip graze he depends on to feel loved. Narrative artfully rotates around the school packed lunch his mother prepares each day, a sausage meat sandwich ‘fried the colour of night’ lunch prepared with all ‘the weight of a human heart’, but even so, the boy disposes of it en route to school. Family dynamics emerge keenly through that sandwich alone and achieved within three hundred words.
The strongest pieces in this collection give spaces where ideas and images are glimpsed at but remain ambiguous, inviting the reader’s interpretation, giving rise to conjecture. In the opening story ‘Could Have Would Have Should Have’, a man who has had an affair supposes on different outcomes in life, a list heavy with atonement; a new born baby, a wife, a daughter, an enduring marriage, a trip to a water park, a pint with his daughter’s friend’s dad. Readers can’t know what is the protagonist’s fact or fiction. We speculate on a dot to dot of events and conclude in a layby waiting on a lover’s call, a voice on the radio informing of ‘…snow, coming slowly from the east.’ Elkes’s wily use of ambiguity invites his readers to linger awhile in that landscape of unknowing.
Many flash fiction collections lack a unifying theme, an overarching scaffold to make the stories feel like a collection of words which really should be hanging out together. Not so, here. Structurally, the book is organised in to a triptych of stories starting with ‘Parents and Children’, ‘Couples and Lover’ and concluding with ‘Friends and Strangers.’ This arrangement makes sense. It feels organic, carefully mirroring the life cycle of human relationships which takes us from infancy through childhood, to adolescence and beyond. Not only does this structure function to stagger the emotional gravity of each story but each section thrums with interpersonal conflicts, those recurring themes of trust vs mistrust, intimacy vs isolation and, how ultimately, the success of any relationship depends upon mastering these.
Readers seek to find connective themes in collections, often unconsciously emerging ones, but it is incontestable that hands emerge, here. A sister dips her finger in a pan of stew for her siblings to taste in ‘The Knock of the Broom’, ‘…as though we were lambs suckling.’ ‘Send Me Down’ features the death of a scaffolder in a tragic fall where his colleagues ‘pressed that battered harmonica into his hand, …sent him on his way down that long, empty elevator shaft.’ In ‘Extremities’, Bobby loses one of his hands in a logging accident, its whereabouts unknown, ‘…there was nothing on the end of his arm.’ Empathy is given up for the mislaid hand that lies somewhere ‘out in those woods, fingers curled, grasping at nothing.’ In ‘The Noise Was Blades’ a woman ungloves hands that play ‘a faint, bitter jostle of sharps and flats’ Musicality is at work here in the personification of ecstasy. Melodic and lyrical, this tale is a triumph of sound and immediacy that builds and builds, the double edged blade being that euphoria can kill. Readers will find hands that nurture, hands that cut, hands that are lost, hands of course, being the writer’s tools, the labourer’s livelihood.
Elkes’s writing is spare with imagery that surprises. Spare is not to imply any skimping on metaphoric juice, rather more that he employs metaphoric restraint. The baby’s hands in ‘Could Have, Would Have, Should Have’ grip ‘…like tiny, soft-shelled crabs.’ A lover in ‘Fanciful Visions of Death’s Sweet Embrace’ fears death in all its guises and takes on the characteristics of her imagined deaths in a fantastical way. She imagines dying in a cryotherapy chamber, her partner noting: ‘Her hair became brittle as iced grass and she smelled of something hard, like nail polish. She clicked and juddered when she walked, so she stopped walking.’ In ‘A Secret Weight’ a married man reminisces on how fast his life has passed, how ‘time bowed like the curve of the Earth…’ and the lover he jilted the night before his wedding, ‘…her taste, like a sharp apple, freshly bitten.’ Subtly placed metaphors function as slant cues to a bigger picture. It is this sort of precise sensory compression that gives Elkes’s stories their command.
A skilfully crafted collection which explores human relationships with authenticity and tenderness. It comes highly recommended.
October 5, 2019
Having already read several of Elkes' award-winning stories, I was excited about this collection, and it didn't disappoint. I felt the third part of the triptych, 'Friends and Strangers' was the strongest in terms of emotional depth and stories that lingered. Indeed, I highlighted the closing paragraphs in the majority of those pieces as they were so strong. 'The Conservation of Angular Momentum,' (great title!) in particular, brought to mind mashed up nights of long gone days, where the moment is all there is and the conversations of such moments are so meaningful, until the morning after that is. I admit that I found myself brushing over several stories the first time I read them, only to discover hidden depths upon the second reading. This confirmed something I've always believed; namely, that good flash fiction is anything but simple. As another reviewer pointed out, this is a collection to be read and re-read, and it represents a great introduction to flash fiction for anyone new to the form.
July 31, 2019
I first came across Ken Elkes' flash fiction as a result of two competitions he won. His collection, All That Is Between Us, includes those two stories and many, many more, all of which are tender and beautifully written, and yet which frequently deal with difficult moments - or eras - between people. His ability to write complex, empathetic characters in a few hundred words is exceptional - especially given the inevitability of a large and wide-ranging cast in a collection such as this. I particularly loved Paper Cuts and The Noise Was Blades. I really look forward to reading what Ken produces next.
October 4, 2019
K.M. Elkes is a master of the short form. All That Is Between Us comprises a fascinating collection of flash fiction stories, exploring the fragility of relationships in a quirky yet honest voice. I really enjoyed the underlying, dry humour peppered throughout Ken's work, which often made me smile at situations I wouldn’t expect to find amusing.
In short, this is an excellent read. From story title through to the final line, Ken makes every word in every story count. He’s won many awards for his flash fiction writing and attracted great critical acclaim. After reading this book, I can see why.
In short, this is an excellent read. From story title through to the final line, Ken makes every word in every story count. He’s won many awards for his flash fiction writing and attracted great critical acclaim. After reading this book, I can see why.
August 9, 2019
The overall standard's impressively high. Perhaps because the author is a short-story writer more than a poet or a theorist, the stories suit my taste - they don't seem desperate to squeeze everything in. They don't shake themselves apart. The discontinuities are more controlled. For example, the elements on p.44 ('My soul's too hard. I want to crack it like a walnut ... But I think we both know you're not the sort to attempt to unfold, let alone sit, in a deckchair.') could have been presented as a wild list, but are linked by sub-themes (soul and confession; opening up and hiding)
I liked "Giraffe High", "You Wonder How They Sleep", "Fair Weather", "The King of Throwaway Island", "Flabberjacks". p.73-83 is a good patch just when you might expect the book to sag. I wasn't so keen on "Biological", which tackles a common topic (re-uniting with biological parent) in 4 pages but doesn't do enough with it. Nor "Knowledge" (an Eden retread) or "The Knock of the Broom" (too bland). "My father, who ate a tree" makes a change, but it's not for me. I don't understand the end of "The Noise was blades" or "it is always good to have a moon (two would be better) in your back pocket" (p.9). There's variety - "The Relationship Algorithms" is good SF, "A Secret Weight" is a weepie. In "Love, Labour, Loss" there's too little motivation for the self-sabotage, though the components are appealing. "That Greta Woman and the Chrysanthemum Man" has the plot, and sometimes the pace, of a short story.
The language isn't over-poetic. Here are some of the similes that caught my eye - "[baby's] plump hands gripping like tiny, soft-shelled crabs" (p.3), "the smell of their scalps. like a freshly cooked poem" (p.10), "tree roots have breached the surface, like the backs of whales coming up for air" (p.20)
Typo: "it would a treat for Alice" (p.25)
I liked "Giraffe High", "You Wonder How They Sleep", "Fair Weather", "The King of Throwaway Island", "Flabberjacks". p.73-83 is a good patch just when you might expect the book to sag. I wasn't so keen on "Biological", which tackles a common topic (re-uniting with biological parent) in 4 pages but doesn't do enough with it. Nor "Knowledge" (an Eden retread) or "The Knock of the Broom" (too bland). "My father, who ate a tree" makes a change, but it's not for me. I don't understand the end of "The Noise was blades" or "it is always good to have a moon (two would be better) in your back pocket" (p.9). There's variety - "The Relationship Algorithms" is good SF, "A Secret Weight" is a weepie. In "Love, Labour, Loss" there's too little motivation for the self-sabotage, though the components are appealing. "That Greta Woman and the Chrysanthemum Man" has the plot, and sometimes the pace, of a short story.
The language isn't over-poetic. Here are some of the similes that caught my eye - "[baby's] plump hands gripping like tiny, soft-shelled crabs" (p.3), "the smell of their scalps. like a freshly cooked poem" (p.10), "tree roots have breached the surface, like the backs of whales coming up for air" (p.20)
Typo: "it would a treat for Alice" (p.25)
July 26, 2019
If you are new to Flash Fiction then KM Elkes collection is a perfect introduction to this delicious short form. His writing delivers an emotional punch through every story. There is pathos, poignancy and lots of humour in these stories. Interestingly, some of the characters are difficult to like: complex and multi-layered, often with disturbing traits and yet you still want to read about them. Therein lies Elkes' talent as a storyteller and weaver of tiny worlds. I relished and enjoyed every story in this collection. It is one to keep and re-read.
December 2, 2019
I am a huge fan of flash fiction and this collection is one of my favourites. K M Elkes manages to build complete worlds with very real characters in such a short space and many of the stories leave a lasting resonance. 'Extremities' and 'Flabberjacks' are two of my favourite and what I love about all of the stories is that they can be read over and over again. A great collection for both those new to flash and those familiar with the form.
July 29, 2019
A collection of flash fictions about relationships - between lovers, adopted sons and lost mothers, fathers and long-away daughters, showmen and their fans, divorced couples...In these small pieces Elkes manages to say so much about what lies between people - the unsaid, the regrets, the memories, the griefs, the loves. A lovely collection. Something to dip into again and again.
July 20, 2019
This is an astounding collection of the short form with pieces on family life ground breaking in their honesty. There are stories here that rank among the finest flash fiction I’ve ever read. I sent some to reading and writing friends as examples of what great Flash Fiction looks like.
June 19, 2021
A chocolate box of powerful, condensed nuggets
In All That is Between Us, brief flashes reach incredible depths.
In a few sentences, Elkes is able to convey whole lives that stretch far beyond these bite-sized pieces.
There are no 'extra' words. Every precise detail works to build setting and character and leave the reader with memorable impressions.
I bought the collection after reading Still Warm, because the image of charred, blackened meat was burned into my mind. In 2018 it won the Reflex Fiction Prize. Subtle details hint at larger problems and the ending packs a punch.
Strong imagery grounds the stories in a sense of reality: the woman who longs to "lie in the tall, good-smelling grass." (Flabberjacks). "A concept garden, the concept being that it is made from green fishing nets and broken umbrellas" in The King of Throwaway Island.
The stories give us brief vantages into all sorts of lives, as in Black Window: "On his afternoon trips, Moldo always chooses a house with black windows. Sometimes he climbs into the backyard, takes off his shoes and socks and sits on the lip of the swimming pool, drawing his feet back and forth through the cool blue water until it is time to leave."
In Hard White Towns, an older couple become reckless as they seek adventure: "She tossed the map out of the window and wore a pair of children's sunglasses with her short dungarees. He drove barefoot and a little too fast."
A few well-placed details immediately transport the reader: "They survived on dusty apricots bought at roadside shacks or plates of tapas, eaten in cool, silent village bars."
The thrill to leave home turns to a subtle disenchantment as "They started waking earlier, irritable from night sweats, and talked, shyly, of home. She bought some lace to take back and he put on shoes because the car's pedals played havoc with his heel spurs." The story ends with a complete arc, showing how the characters have altered as they commence their journey home.
In A Secret Weight, Elkes brings a wedding to life in a paragraph of realistic details: "Afterwards, they had dodged confetti rice hard as hailstones, ducked into her uncle's car, rode silently to the reception, ate sweating sandwiches kept under frayed tea towels, saw good ale froth from warm barrels, clapped at half-drunk speechmakers, danced, talked, nodded, smiled, then left for their first uncertain night of 'are you asleep?' and 'are you happy?' "
There's a delightful variety to these pieces.
There are fun and whimsical stories like The King of Throwaway Island, Fair Weather, Paper Cuts, Future Tense, and The Good Guys, and Fanciful Visions of Death's Sweet Embrace. Others are sad but sweet like The Relationship Algorithms, and Love, Labour, Loss.
In Paper Cuts, a husband takes up origami as the gulf widens with his wife, leading to a startling conclusion.
Fanciful Visions of Death's Sweet Embrace seemed to end too suddenly, but there are subtle clues scattered throughout that show the protagonist's illness without telling it, as she and her partner come up with absurd ways of dying, creating a piece that is funny, strange and sad all in one.
That Greta Garbo Woman and the Chrysanthemum Man provides strong imagery in a few glimpses: "...Lily hurries past That Greta Garbo Woman's grubby doorway with its faint smell of cigarette smoke, fearing the old woman will scuttle out. Lily imagines clotted hair and bare feet, uncut toenails ticking on the ground. She imagines fingers like spiders' legs and one clouded eye with a pin-point pupil."
Late Blackberries is brimming with memorable details: "So we squeezed the lid down on the tub, our hands wine-dark and sticky, as though they had burst from being too ripe."
He evokes the English countryside with tiny, well-placed details: "At the railway cottages we smelled a petrol mower and fresh cut grass, saw a pair of old shoes coupled on the front step, waiting for a polish."
And the quiet contentment of a countryside afternoon: "The sun glossed our backs and in that warm silence we sensed a kind of perfection."
So many lives, in their manifold expressions, are compressed into these pages.
What is most remarkable about this collection is how deeply Elkes is able to take us into these lives in so few words.
All That is Between Us is like the last crumbs of a crumpet: a collection to be savoured.
April 5, 2020
I consider myself lucky to have followed Ken Elkes’s writing for many years. In fact, I think the first story of his I ever read is included in this collection – ‘Busy Lizzy’. That story is an exemplar of his writing – emotional without being trite or mawkish. He has a deft, light touch with emotions – sometimes an almost matter-of-fact distancing that hits home all the harder for its controlled delivery.
This collection is all about relationships, split into sections: Parents and Children, Couples and Lovers, Friends and Strangers. Each section reveals things we recognise in ourselves, and often things we’d prefer to pretend we don’t recognise. The Couples and Lovers section, in particular, often made me think of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s writing – of hankering after a past that was, possibly, not the real past but one we wished it had been. It contains one of my favourite stories in the collection ‘Dry Run’. Taking the form of a reverse Dear John letter, it looks at the most personal end of a relationship, how lovers know when something is over. Like many other stories in the collection, it is not without wry humour, which is another of the author’s strengths.
As a parent of adult children, ‘Sisyphus and the Black Holes’ is the story that spoke to me most and made me hold my breath so I wouldn’t cry. I still cried. I cried quite a few times reading this collection, but I also smiled and laughed.
This is a collection I’d recommend to anyone who is interested in flash fiction or who is already a fan of the form. Unlike many collections, there is not a single weak story here. It really is excellent.
This collection is all about relationships, split into sections: Parents and Children, Couples and Lovers, Friends and Strangers. Each section reveals things we recognise in ourselves, and often things we’d prefer to pretend we don’t recognise. The Couples and Lovers section, in particular, often made me think of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s writing – of hankering after a past that was, possibly, not the real past but one we wished it had been. It contains one of my favourite stories in the collection ‘Dry Run’. Taking the form of a reverse Dear John letter, it looks at the most personal end of a relationship, how lovers know when something is over. Like many other stories in the collection, it is not without wry humour, which is another of the author’s strengths.
As a parent of adult children, ‘Sisyphus and the Black Holes’ is the story that spoke to me most and made me hold my breath so I wouldn’t cry. I still cried. I cried quite a few times reading this collection, but I also smiled and laughed.
This is a collection I’d recommend to anyone who is interested in flash fiction or who is already a fan of the form. Unlike many collections, there is not a single weak story here. It really is excellent.
November 26, 2021
This was an unexpected treat.
I've never really got into flash fiction. I've read it occasionally and enjoyed it but have never felt the need to read a collection of it. I bought this book because I'd been on a writing workshop run by Ken and was impressed with his insight into the craft - I didn't realise it was flash fiction.
Ken writes with a rare understanding and economy and creates snapshots of finely crafted worlds and characters that resonate long after the final full-stop. There's a lot of depth in these stories and humour too. I'm sure this is a book that I will return to again and again.
It's hard to pick out individual stories, but Sisyphus and the Black Holes struck a painful minor chord with me as my son has just left home. In less than two pages, Elkes aligns parenthood with the five stages of grief and the trials of Sisyphus and captures the struggle and joy of parenthood and the black hole offspring leave behind when they're gone.
The stories in this collection won't take long to read, but they will sit with you long after you've read them.
I've never really got into flash fiction. I've read it occasionally and enjoyed it but have never felt the need to read a collection of it. I bought this book because I'd been on a writing workshop run by Ken and was impressed with his insight into the craft - I didn't realise it was flash fiction.
Ken writes with a rare understanding and economy and creates snapshots of finely crafted worlds and characters that resonate long after the final full-stop. There's a lot of depth in these stories and humour too. I'm sure this is a book that I will return to again and again.
It's hard to pick out individual stories, but Sisyphus and the Black Holes struck a painful minor chord with me as my son has just left home. In less than two pages, Elkes aligns parenthood with the five stages of grief and the trials of Sisyphus and captures the struggle and joy of parenthood and the black hole offspring leave behind when they're gone.
The stories in this collection won't take long to read, but they will sit with you long after you've read them.
January 27, 2021
I reread so many of these stories, marvelling at the tenderness of language, the loss of hope, the frailty of humans and the beautifully conveyed present. Many stories stayed with me for a long time. This is a thorough and striking revelling in the human condition, delivered with skilful, balanced language, and not a word or a moment out of place.
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews