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I'm Not Saying, I'm Just Saying
I'm Not Saying, I'm Just Saying, a novel in flash fiction, is a raw, honest look at parenting, commitment, morality, and the spaces that grow between and within us when we don't know what to say. In these 115 titled chapters, a man, who learns he has a 5-year-old son, is caught between the life he knows and a life he may not yet be ready for. This is a book that tears down the boundaries in relationships, sentences, origin and identity, no matter how quickly its narrator tries to build them up.
“In Matt Salesses’s smart novel-in-shorts, a newly-minted father flees telling his own story by any means necessary—by sarcasm, by denial, by playful and precise wordplay—rarely allowing space for his emerging feelings to linger. But the truth of who we might be is not so easily escaped, and it is in the accumulation of many such moments that our narrator, like us, is revealed: both the people we have been, and the better people we might be lucky enough to one day hope to become.”
– Matt Bell, author of In the House upon the Dirt between the Lake and the Woods
“Matthew Salesses has written an extraordinary and startlingly original novel that explores connection and disconnection, the claims and limitations of the self, and the shifting terrain of truth. Poetic, unforgettable, shot through with fury and yearning, I’m Not Saying, I’m Just Saying captures in clear and chilling flashes our capacity for the cruelty and tenderness of love.”
–Catherine Chung, author of Forgotten Country
“Matthew Salesses’ I’m Not Saying, I’m Not Saying is an absolute stunner of a novel. Told is short, sharp vignettes with prose that is taut, yet overflowing with meaning, this is the story of a year in the life of a complex and haunted, cobbled together family. The beauty of Salesses’ writing here lies in his fearlessness, the emotional blows to the heart and head and gut he’s willing to deliver, as if to say: This, this is life! And we are all, in one way or another, survivors.”
– Kathy Fish, author of Together We Can Bury It
“I’m not Saying, I’m just Saying renders the messiness of life, family, love in its myriad complex forms—romance lost and found, blood ties, squandered, unrequited—via 115 micro-stories that add up to a pointillist masterpiece.”
– Marie Myung-Ok Lee, author of Somebody’s Daughter
“In Matt Salesses’s smart novel-in-shorts, a newly-minted father flees telling his own story by any means necessary—by sarcasm, by denial, by playful and precise wordplay—rarely allowing space for his emerging feelings to linger. But the truth of who we might be is not so easily escaped, and it is in the accumulation of many such moments that our narrator, like us, is revealed: both the people we have been, and the better people we might be lucky enough to one day hope to become.”
– Matt Bell, author of In the House upon the Dirt between the Lake and the Woods
“Matthew Salesses has written an extraordinary and startlingly original novel that explores connection and disconnection, the claims and limitations of the self, and the shifting terrain of truth. Poetic, unforgettable, shot through with fury and yearning, I’m Not Saying, I’m Just Saying captures in clear and chilling flashes our capacity for the cruelty and tenderness of love.”
–Catherine Chung, author of Forgotten Country
“Matthew Salesses’ I’m Not Saying, I’m Not Saying is an absolute stunner of a novel. Told is short, sharp vignettes with prose that is taut, yet overflowing with meaning, this is the story of a year in the life of a complex and haunted, cobbled together family. The beauty of Salesses’ writing here lies in his fearlessness, the emotional blows to the heart and head and gut he’s willing to deliver, as if to say: This, this is life! And we are all, in one way or another, survivors.”
– Kathy Fish, author of Together We Can Bury It
“I’m not Saying, I’m just Saying renders the messiness of life, family, love in its myriad complex forms—romance lost and found, blood ties, squandered, unrequited—via 115 micro-stories that add up to a pointillist masterpiece.”
– Marie Myung-Ok Lee, author of Somebody’s Daughter
138 pages, Paperback
First published February 1, 2013
17 people are currently reading
750 people want to read
About the author
Matthew Salesses
22 books528 followersBestselling author of The Hundred-Year Flood and Disappear Doppelgänger Disappear, among other books. Craft in the Real World comes out Jan, 2021. I’m adopted.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 36 reviews
December 5, 2018
Each vignette, snippet, flash is rounded like a wee pebble--indeed what I've always thought flash fiction novels could be. You know, pearls on a string.
& the daily dramas of an immature father meeting his loin-product could be pathos-filled. Or comedic. And we've seen this before. So perhaps a more bombastic, less clichéd theme, would have made the stories truly flare, like a certain kite on a novel's whimsical cover.
& the daily dramas of an immature father meeting his loin-product could be pathos-filled. Or comedic. And we've seen this before. So perhaps a more bombastic, less clichéd theme, would have made the stories truly flare, like a certain kite on a novel's whimsical cover.
December 7, 2012
First chapter:
The Night I Met Her She Said Once You Go Yellow
The boy I still wasn't sure was mine stared at the wash of starfish stinking on the sand and said something boyish about the ocean being big and cruel. I tried to tell him the starfish weren't all dead yet, but he knew enough already to tell the difference. So I lied more. I told him that starfish were even better than lizards, that if you broke off a dead piece of them it grew back alive. His mother, a one-night stand, had told him about lizards. She'd gotten it into his head that this was what he should tell the man he thought was his father—she had a keen sense of metaphor, was all I remembered about her, which was enough. The ocean washed over the starfish and they twinkled their deadness. The boy rushed against the wake and plucked one out of the surf and I noticed his black hair curl at its ends like mine. He brought the starfish back, stiff as a bad joke. He snapped off a leg, and I could see on his half-white face that he'd overestimated both how mean and how hopeful he’d thought he could be. Don't worry, I thought, those feelings will come.
The Night I Met Her She Said Once You Go Yellow
The boy I still wasn't sure was mine stared at the wash of starfish stinking on the sand and said something boyish about the ocean being big and cruel. I tried to tell him the starfish weren't all dead yet, but he knew enough already to tell the difference. So I lied more. I told him that starfish were even better than lizards, that if you broke off a dead piece of them it grew back alive. His mother, a one-night stand, had told him about lizards. She'd gotten it into his head that this was what he should tell the man he thought was his father—she had a keen sense of metaphor, was all I remembered about her, which was enough. The ocean washed over the starfish and they twinkled their deadness. The boy rushed against the wake and plucked one out of the surf and I noticed his black hair curl at its ends like mine. He brought the starfish back, stiff as a bad joke. He snapped off a leg, and I could see on his half-white face that he'd overestimated both how mean and how hopeful he’d thought he could be. Don't worry, I thought, those feelings will come.
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February 5, 2013Formally interesting, emotionally uncomfortable, lots to admire here.
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May 17, 2013My review at HTMLgiant:
"Koi fish have hundreds of scales that form a protective armor around them. Matthew Salesses’s I’m Not Saying, I’m Just Saying is a collection of 115 flash fictions that, like those scales, explore the spoken and unspoken nuances that connect and glue relationships in all their misfit forms."
http://htmlgiant.com/reviews/im-not-s...
"Koi fish have hundreds of scales that form a protective armor around them. Matthew Salesses’s I’m Not Saying, I’m Just Saying is a collection of 115 flash fictions that, like those scales, explore the spoken and unspoken nuances that connect and glue relationships in all their misfit forms."
http://htmlgiant.com/reviews/im-not-s...
July 26, 2013
I'm Not Saying, I'm Just Saying by Matthew Salesses
(released February 2013 / Civil Coping Mechanisms)
4 Stars - Flashiest of the Fiction
Read 3/13
A very interesting book, this, and another potential cheat from me. Called a novel in flash fiction, I prefer to look at it as a collection of interconnected stories. Either way, it's written by a guy who knows the confusion of love and the power of hidden secrets coming to light.
I read this at the exact inappropriate time, without realizing it until I was a few stories in, but I was hopeless to stop. I was disgusted and pissed at the narrator, yet at the same time, I was intrigued. And the breaks between each segment urged me to read on even though I knew I shouldn't. Salesses writes as though he is speaking. His words hit the page fluidly, and run quietly down the edges and into your lap, and suddenly you realize you are carrying them with you.
(released February 2013 / Civil Coping Mechanisms)
4 Stars - Flashiest of the Fiction
Read 3/13
A very interesting book, this, and another potential cheat from me. Called a novel in flash fiction, I prefer to look at it as a collection of interconnected stories. Either way, it's written by a guy who knows the confusion of love and the power of hidden secrets coming to light.
I read this at the exact inappropriate time, without realizing it until I was a few stories in, but I was hopeless to stop. I was disgusted and pissed at the narrator, yet at the same time, I was intrigued. And the breaks between each segment urged me to read on even though I knew I shouldn't. Salesses writes as though he is speaking. His words hit the page fluidly, and run quietly down the edges and into your lap, and suddenly you realize you are carrying them with you.
February 26, 2013
This novella told in flashes follows the story of the narrator, a reluctant father, as he navigates relationships with his newly discovered son, the various women in his life, and his parents who really want him to just be a good Korean boy.
If you want to know more, check out the latest issue of my podcast at www.summerbooks.podbean.com
If you want to know more, check out the latest issue of my podcast at www.summerbooks.podbean.com
April 3, 2013
Moments of absolute beauty. From page to page, a father comes to terms with his son, his wife, and his place in the world. By the end these vignettes make up the portrait of a tender and thoughtful narrator. It's after you've read the last line, when you step back, when you realize how beautiful the painting is.
April 4, 2013
Matthew Salesses masterfully infuses each word, each sentence, each flash/chapter with raw emotion, tension and characterization. Everything is laid bare with only as many words as necessary. Gut wrenching, funny and brutal. And tender.
March 2, 2013
You MUST read I'm Not Saying, I'm Just Saying by Matthew Salesses. It's amazing. I don't know how someone can fit so much power and depth into so few words. His writing is masterful. I love it. Buy this book.
When you're done and you want more, check out his novella The Last Repatriate.
When you're done and you want more, check out his novella The Last Repatriate.
March 30, 2013
The beauty here is how aptly and fluidly Salesses uses flash / short form "chapters" to build a narrative that still feels full and smart. This is a good writer at work.
January 24, 2022
reading this book made me feel like I was looking at a possible future for myself. I felt sort of nervous that I could end up with someone like the main character.
also made me feel very ready to raise someone else's kid. currently looking for a toddler to bring up so please hmu with leads.
also made me feel very ready to raise someone else's kid. currently looking for a toddler to bring up so please hmu with leads.
February 13, 2014
Hands down, still my favourite book of 2013 thus far. The short prose really does it for me, and the way Salesses has mastered this craft is something I can only dream about. Each prose piece transitioned perfectly into the next with a well-crafted storyline that was as human as human gets. Mid-novel I was already in the narrator's headspace; we were already friends and I wanted to take him out for a drink to pick his brain about his situation. I saw a lot of my almost-30 year old choices/questions/confusion in I'm Not Saying, I'm Just Saying. I look forward to reading it a couple times this year to really get it all in.
February 13, 2013
Real life is fragmented akin to the wonderful lost-and-found of these flash fictions.
September 25, 2015
I loved how effortlessly the mini chapters all flowed together, for a short book it packed a big punch
March 8, 2020
I’m glad I ended up reading this novel. I hesitated for some time to open it and start the first chapter because at the time I was looking for something more fast paced and didn’t expect this book to be it, but when I did it just took me in for a ride. I think that part of it is the easiness of the read. It’s like a song, it just flows nice, and it makes me think without overburdening me. The story is of parenthood of oneself and those we bring into the world, those that we are ultimately responsible for. The man I followed in this novel grew through trials that didn’t shy away from showing the raw inner struggle we all sometimes face without trying to pretend to be too smart about it. I think Salesses did a nice job and I recommend this novel if you don’t mind reading something different than what you may be used to.
January 10, 2018
Not my favorite work of Salesses but not because it isn't good, just because it seems more like poetry than fiction.
Each chapter - some short and some longer - tells part of the story but can stand on its own.
Each chapter - some short and some longer - tells part of the story but can stand on its own.
January 25, 2018
This book made me feel like I walked into the middle of the movie where the character only uses pronouns and I had to work WAY to hard to figure out what the hell was going on.
March 25, 2018
Really enjoyed this book . The several times I’ve read his column in The Good Men Project made me feel like I walked away a better person.
March 6, 2022
At first I thought it was lazy writing. But then I thought if the author had filled it in more, it would have strayed into clever writing.
January 19, 2021
Microprose - very poetic. Lots of emotion packed into the not-so-mundane details of everyday life.
March 2, 2017
Pretty bad.
July 3, 2015
I never really read flash fiction, not because I didn't like them, but because I never really knew much about the genre, and never liked reading on the internet since a lot of it is published online. For those who are familiar with Nouvella authors, you would probably know who Matthew Salesses is. The extra S's in his last name is kind of scary, I keep feeling like I'm missing one.
So the story of this novel is about a guy whose life gets flipped around, when a boy who claims that he is his son walks into his life. The son's mother was a woman he had a one night stand with, who recently passed away, hence is why the boy ends up looking for him. He seems to be an unfaithful man because he has affairs with other woman while he is in one relationship. All of the woman who he knew are called by their description and not by their names like 'the Asian girl', 'the white girl', and 'the wifely woman'.
So the plot centers around the man's life on his decision, should he get rid of all the other woman and be a father, and keep his job that he probably hates. He always seems to be so confused of what to do, because he's so used to aimless deeds. He soon gives up everything just for the boy, whom he slowly grows affection for despite misunderstanding his odd behaviors and shares his culture with him, the father is an Korean American and the boy is half white and Korean, and seems to have no connection with his Korean culture. The man grows connected to the boy after spending more time with him.
What is most intriguing about this book is the writing style, but that's mostly because I've never read flash fiction or even poetry that often. The writing style was very beautiful, it's flash fiction but it felt more like those free verse poems, I don't know what to call them, but they don't rhyme so I'm assuming that's what you call them. And, I don't know, I liked this book, it was really sad and amusing in some parts, I couldn't put it down. It's one of those books that are sad but they kind of give you hugs, because it's one of those books about life. Life sucks, but not all the time.
So the story of this novel is about a guy whose life gets flipped around, when a boy who claims that he is his son walks into his life. The son's mother was a woman he had a one night stand with, who recently passed away, hence is why the boy ends up looking for him. He seems to be an unfaithful man because he has affairs with other woman while he is in one relationship. All of the woman who he knew are called by their description and not by their names like 'the Asian girl', 'the white girl', and 'the wifely woman'.
So the plot centers around the man's life on his decision, should he get rid of all the other woman and be a father, and keep his job that he probably hates. He always seems to be so confused of what to do, because he's so used to aimless deeds. He soon gives up everything just for the boy, whom he slowly grows affection for despite misunderstanding his odd behaviors and shares his culture with him, the father is an Korean American and the boy is half white and Korean, and seems to have no connection with his Korean culture. The man grows connected to the boy after spending more time with him.
What is most intriguing about this book is the writing style, but that's mostly because I've never read flash fiction or even poetry that often. The writing style was very beautiful, it's flash fiction but it felt more like those free verse poems, I don't know what to call them, but they don't rhyme so I'm assuming that's what you call them. And, I don't know, I liked this book, it was really sad and amusing in some parts, I couldn't put it down. It's one of those books that are sad but they kind of give you hugs, because it's one of those books about life. Life sucks, but not all the time.
August 28, 2016
I read this short story in two evenings and one lunch afternoon at work. When it ended so unexpectedly that I wanted more. I thought to myself, "This is it?" I was expecting a dramatic conclusion; perhaps, a moral atonement for his multiple relationships. However, without a dramatic conclusion allow the characters to be real to me the way the relationship between the father and the son gradually progress.
I had never came across an author using the word "sadder" before, nor write a narrative with "etc" to end a sentence. However, the story was told in first person perspective in the father's tone and voice so the informal language make sense.
I had never came across an author using the word "sadder" before, nor write a narrative with "etc" to end a sentence. However, the story was told in first person perspective in the father's tone and voice so the informal language make sense.
December 26, 2015
From my Goodreads account, but I purchased it from Amazon
I've never read this sort of novel before, at first I didn't understand it. But once I got the feel of it, I didn't stop reading. It portrayed beauty, denial, regret, loneliness and finally, acceptance. I liked it, I hope I will have another opportunity to read a flash fiction.
I've never read this sort of novel before, at first I didn't understand it. But once I got the feel of it, I didn't stop reading. It portrayed beauty, denial, regret, loneliness and finally, acceptance. I liked it, I hope I will have another opportunity to read a flash fiction.
January 24, 2016
A quick read. Engaging and thought provoking. Reads like poetry. Premise: A young, single man who struggles with relationships and monogamy is left to care for his 5-year-old son. While it may sound like a story line that's been overplayed, the raw, honest voice Salesses gives his main character makes reading the book a visceral experience.
June 2, 2013
I received this book from Goodreads. It is quite different then any other book I have read before. I have never read a novel in flash fiction. It was interesting to see how the main character came to terms with being a parent when he learns he has a son.
January 7, 2014
Listen to the podcast review at www.summerbooks.podbean.com
November 24, 2013
This book is full of over a thousand amazing sentences, in addition to the wonderful turns of phrase that title each chapter. It's a true one-of-a-kind, as a novel in flash fiction.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 36 reviews