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VEER
Veer is Chinquee's second collection of innovative fictions with Ravenna, following OH BABY (2008.) She also appears in TRIPLE #3 (2012) with a short entitled Pistol. Many pieces in VEER are collected from the pages of NOON, DENVER QUARTERLY, WILLOW SPRINGS, STORY QUARTERLY and CONJUNCTIONS. Combined for the first time, these stories artfully apply unspecified menace like a fine-bristled brush to first the background then the uncertain foreground of ordinary events.
148 pages, Paperback
Published May 8, 2017
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
July 1, 2017
There are approximately seventy-two short stories in Veer by Kim Chinquee. Written between 2002 and 2017, the stories run from half a page to nine pages long, and there’s not a dull moment or a wasted word in any of them.
Some are hard stories, tales of brutal fathers and young daughters that took my breath away. Some are tiny keyhole portraits, like Books. In it, the narrator says, “My car was like an envelope, always sending me.”
One of my favorite stories is called Heifer and it concerns a young girl caring for her cow that has a nosebleed. The girl’s grandfather appears and dismisses what’s happening, but his actions “He brushed her hard and fierce-like” say something else that the smart young narrator intuits. I had to look up nosebleeds in cattle and I was thrown into the world of animal husbandry. Heifers get sick from standing long hours on cement being milked. Chinquee isn’t proselytizing against the dairy industry; she’s too busy showing us the girl’s deep love for her cow, an animal that represents all the cows we use so blithely for their milk and meat.
Another favorite story is Twist, which is rife with word play. It’s a sheer pleasure to read because the author’s joy of language sings. Pistol is a pistol of a story that is surprising and humorous. In fact, it’s the kind of story every writer should be able to write, at least once. If you study these stories (and I am), they can teach you how to write.
Some stories like I Was in the Bathtub When I Heard the Knocking are mysteries that defy the reader. This story makes me wonder, how did this writer write this, what does she mean by this title? I may never know exactly but it made think about it the whole process of story and what a story is. Some stories make their own sense, even if the reader doesn’t completely understand them. This is very hard to do but it’s the hallmark of a vivid writer who knows her craft.
Like Lydia Davis, Diane Williams, and Joy Williams, Kim Chinquee has her own particular way with the short and short-short story form. She is a mistress of this art. She bends the rules; breaks them. She dares you to reread. She sends you on journeys that you didn’t expect to take, some you might not even want to go on, but the language, the intelligence, the feelings and the heart behind the words compels you to read on.
Read Veer. You will be glad you did!
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March 26, 2018I must be honest, I’m entirely at a loss to know how to review this collection of shorts. Kim Chinquee has a list of accolades and publications longer than the full biographies of most of us mortals. Moreover, every one of these shorts, ranging from micro-fiction to flash fiction to short, short stories has been published in literary journals or online.
Who am I, then, to critique any of them? Perhaps just another well-meaning but ignorant—or at least deficient—reader.
I think it best just to choose a random piece and set it down here in its entirety, then let you—a potential reader—decide for yourself. If Goodreads will allow it, I will abstain from awarding any stars at all to Kim Chinquee's opus. This, not because I think the work is worthless, but rather because I just wouldn’t know how to recognize it properly.
And so, “He Has Juice” (on p. 115) is the piece of flash fiction I’ve chosen to replicate in this review.
“It is a routine now: first the man will pour his coffee. She will drink her water before anything, and they will hear the other couples, however politely. Most everyone is not English.
They’ll put on snowshoes.
And now their usual stuff is waiting: the bread and cheese, the boiled egg, sliced portions of a turkey. Ham, and creamer. Jam by his plate and she has butter. They’ll take whatever bread and put it in their pockets: not for hunger, but if anything is left, the lady will bring less for them the next time. This concerns them. The lady comes to deliver. The lady has no English, but the lady’s son has come to them, all smiles and his hands in, with a nodded welcome.
They’ll climb. Higher and look down, in, the wind slapping. They might sit. Their jackets are thick, like they are, and she will lean there, with his stick up. He might clutch his chest with neither of them laughing, and he would blame nothing.
He has not mentioned his condition. She never pressed. She’d been a medic.
They’d met in California, talking at the café. It seemed silly, then.
But he says now, what to lose? Is anything really anything?
They will go again, and they will cross the ocean.
They will.
But won’t they?
For now, they sit quietly, watching the woman outside, her shovel so seemingly heavy. The wind chimes chime, and it smells like cinnamon toast.”
I rest my case. If this piece of flash fiction makes any sense to you—any sense at all—you’re a better reader than I am, and you should put your reading comprehension skills to the test with all of the 145 pages of this collection.
RRB
Brooklyn, NY
26 March 2018
Who am I, then, to critique any of them? Perhaps just another well-meaning but ignorant—or at least deficient—reader.
I think it best just to choose a random piece and set it down here in its entirety, then let you—a potential reader—decide for yourself. If Goodreads will allow it, I will abstain from awarding any stars at all to Kim Chinquee's opus. This, not because I think the work is worthless, but rather because I just wouldn’t know how to recognize it properly.
And so, “He Has Juice” (on p. 115) is the piece of flash fiction I’ve chosen to replicate in this review.
“It is a routine now: first the man will pour his coffee. She will drink her water before anything, and they will hear the other couples, however politely. Most everyone is not English.
They’ll put on snowshoes.
And now their usual stuff is waiting: the bread and cheese, the boiled egg, sliced portions of a turkey. Ham, and creamer. Jam by his plate and she has butter. They’ll take whatever bread and put it in their pockets: not for hunger, but if anything is left, the lady will bring less for them the next time. This concerns them. The lady comes to deliver. The lady has no English, but the lady’s son has come to them, all smiles and his hands in, with a nodded welcome.
They’ll climb. Higher and look down, in, the wind slapping. They might sit. Their jackets are thick, like they are, and she will lean there, with his stick up. He might clutch his chest with neither of them laughing, and he would blame nothing.
He has not mentioned his condition. She never pressed. She’d been a medic.
They’d met in California, talking at the café. It seemed silly, then.
But he says now, what to lose? Is anything really anything?
They will go again, and they will cross the ocean.
They will.
But won’t they?
For now, they sit quietly, watching the woman outside, her shovel so seemingly heavy. The wind chimes chime, and it smells like cinnamon toast.”
I rest my case. If this piece of flash fiction makes any sense to you—any sense at all—you’re a better reader than I am, and you should put your reading comprehension skills to the test with all of the 145 pages of this collection.
RRB
Brooklyn, NY
26 March 2018
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews