Make/Shift

by Joe Sacksteder

Readers of Make/Shift will find themselves confronting moments in which status and ceremony are shown to be destabilized, contingent―sorting through the suddenly unfamiliar contents of a time capsule, hanging poolside with parents while their hockey player sons devastate a hotel, and wandering the memory palace of a traumatized valedictorian during a commencement address―all while flash vignettes based on corporate slogans saturate the story collection with greater and greater frequency, like the commercials of a TV movie.

Genres: Short Stories

189 pages, Paperback

Published April 9, 2019

Reviews

[Bradley Frederick · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some of these short stories were amazing and some I really had to drag myself to finish. That said, the ones I enjoyed, I really enjoyed. They were very interesting thought experiences, and I love how the author created worlds not unlike our own but also entirely new and exciting.

[Tessa Fontaine · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an amazing range of short stories, with generic and structural variance so extreme that as themes begin to emerge and build, their resonances are even more wonderous. Though there are many gems in this collection, a few stories, like “Enough Sealant to Pool the Concavity,” are just plain breathtaking—gorgeous, weird, and heart-breaking. These stories operate within a logic of their own begetting. They’re wonderful. When I finished the book, the world felt just a little off-kilter, dazzlingly so.

[Mary · Rating 5 out of 5]

Normally, I don’t have time for short stories. They just are so…unsatisfyingly short. They end too soon. Or, if they’re so short as to be lacking any major elements that would make me care, they’re unsatisfyingly pointless. But not this time.

I was engrossed, forgot I was even reading short stories. I was looking forward to the next one. I was thinking about the one I’d just read, I wanted to read it again.

[John Madera · Rating 5 out of 5]

Like Coover's Pricksongs & Descants, Barth's Lost in the Funhouse, Elliott's The Wilds, and Keene's Counternarratives, Joe Sacksteder's Make/Shift is a marvelous, genre-trespassing collection, Sacksteder effortlessly moving from slice-of-life Americana to satire to screenplay to Joycean thought-interjections to Barthelmean collage.

[Martina Anto-Ocrah · Rating 2 out of 5]

I LOVE short stories but could not get into a single one of these. Almost felt like the author was trying too hard. Didn’t feel natural. Tough read.