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Wetsuit
Another in the Ravenna series of fabulous short fictions by Kim Chinquee, this one as exciting as the venerable Oh Baby . Per James Thomas (editor of Flash Fiction, Sudden Fiction, Flash Fiction International), This book is brilliant, every bit of it. One delight after another. Chinquee makes the English language sing--amazing sentences, beautiful lines, incredible strokes. Dazzling.
86 pages, Paperback
Published March 17, 2019
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
March 12, 2019
Kim Chinquee's Wetsuit overflows with lapidary sentences and odd juxtapositions, and sharp, evocative phrases, like "repeating faces," "then-guy," "bright-lipped," "down parts," "Forbidden rice," "and other men in short installments," "doing everything normal," "leaned into her shirt," "watch the water waltz with itself," "smoky lovemaking," "the white white whoosh," "sounded kind of soupy," and more. The individual sections are at turns sad, whimsical, and horrifying (the section "Rape" is both utterly harrowing and oddly philosophically contemplative), the whole cohering into a portrait of a woman on the brink of breaking, breaking up, breaking through.
July 3, 2019
In reviewing WETSUIT, the overwhelming temptation is to simply reprint a story. It is, after all, a collection of short-shorts. And what can possibly convey Kim Chinquee’s artistry better than one of her actual stories? A review seems a fool’s errand, one which uses ten times as many words to convey the experience of reading hers.
Chinquee’s concision can be like Amy Hempel’s (the tiny stories “Rape,” Prince,” and “Diamond District”). Her surreality can approach Julia Slavin’s WOMAN WHO CUT OFF HER LEG AT THE MAIDSTONE CLUB (Chinquee’s “Which Way to the Beach?”).
The topics of these seventy stories run the gamut from athletics to family to Halloween. They are set in hospitals, bars, on beaches and in barns. In each, Chinquee conveys an everywoman’s sensibility in familiar quandaries — sisters discussing how to treat a dead parent’s medications, lovers in bed with fire alarms going off during sex.
But her narrators’ observations elevate every situation. She digs a moment or a thought out of an episode, and polishes that moment or insight until it gleams on the page and in our imaginations.
Consider this excerpt from “The Kill One”: “Now the girls and their mom all said the words, “Our Father,” and then they recited The Ten Commandments, and the kill one was the one that always got her, this girl who was the eldest, like anyone would have to have a rule, or that anyone would have to remind herself daily not to kill…”
And without fail, Chinquee’s closings provide a satisfying denouement. A favorite is “The Shirt in the Pile,” which ends on a many-layered note—a chord, if you will: “She looked in the mirror. The sweatshirt said Go, only backwards.”
Never one to waste words, Chinquee is not only a flash-fiction virtuoso, she is the master of the last line.
Chinquee’s concision can be like Amy Hempel’s (the tiny stories “Rape,” Prince,” and “Diamond District”). Her surreality can approach Julia Slavin’s WOMAN WHO CUT OFF HER LEG AT THE MAIDSTONE CLUB (Chinquee’s “Which Way to the Beach?”).
The topics of these seventy stories run the gamut from athletics to family to Halloween. They are set in hospitals, bars, on beaches and in barns. In each, Chinquee conveys an everywoman’s sensibility in familiar quandaries — sisters discussing how to treat a dead parent’s medications, lovers in bed with fire alarms going off during sex.
But her narrators’ observations elevate every situation. She digs a moment or a thought out of an episode, and polishes that moment or insight until it gleams on the page and in our imaginations.
Consider this excerpt from “The Kill One”: “Now the girls and their mom all said the words, “Our Father,” and then they recited The Ten Commandments, and the kill one was the one that always got her, this girl who was the eldest, like anyone would have to have a rule, or that anyone would have to remind herself daily not to kill…”
And without fail, Chinquee’s closings provide a satisfying denouement. A favorite is “The Shirt in the Pile,” which ends on a many-layered note—a chord, if you will: “She looked in the mirror. The sweatshirt said Go, only backwards.”
Never one to waste words, Chinquee is not only a flash-fiction virtuoso, she is the master of the last line.
August 7, 2019
Like any book, Kim Chinquee's Wetsuit asks you to learn how to read it. For me, it’s in the cascade, the ripples that accumulate against the shore or against a body as it floats. It’s a sensory experience, one that asks me, at least, to feel as the sentences and words, the one story and then the next, accumulate in the body’s memory. I don’t ask the stories so much to make sense as to make corporal.
There’s an intuition in how Chinquee constructs her stories, letting sentences and scenes associate as they might, often in small surprises. Of course, that doesn’t mean there isn’t craft in what she does--because there’s a lot. As you read the book, or any of her books, you trust the years she’s spent developing her idiom, you can feel and know it.
Wetsuit cycles through hope and anger and fear, disgust and ennui, boredom, tenderness, and it takes up a rhythm as you read through it. I might almost say it becomes meditative, except she’s always popping in with those surprises, in language, character, or observation.
A lovely book.
There’s an intuition in how Chinquee constructs her stories, letting sentences and scenes associate as they might, often in small surprises. Of course, that doesn’t mean there isn’t craft in what she does--because there’s a lot. As you read the book, or any of her books, you trust the years she’s spent developing her idiom, you can feel and know it.
Wetsuit cycles through hope and anger and fear, disgust and ennui, boredom, tenderness, and it takes up a rhythm as you read through it. I might almost say it becomes meditative, except she’s always popping in with those surprises, in language, character, or observation.
A lovely book.
August 6, 2019
This book is amazing in its ability to capture details of intimate lives, details that feel so authentic they take hold of the reader, making one feel there is no difference between fiction and reality. Precisely written in a clean, clear, almost minimalist style, these flash fictions are about complex characters and moments of realization, the painful knowing that comes from living. The collection has a finetuned since of timing and time passing, of scene and of memory. Hard to put down, this collection takes hold of you and makes you feel as if you have a relationship with its characters.
February 12, 2020
The stories in Kim’s Chinquee's new collection, Wetsuit, are the barest of wisps, impressionistic in their minimalism and yet dense with implied meaning. Each one is a gem, deceptively simple but hiding entire, barely concealed worlds in the silences. With each revisiting you discover the truth: that the stories are shadowboxes that continue into infinity, a magician's hat with no bottom.
August 13, 2020
It would be easy to read Chinquee’s collection of short fiction in a day, but I don’t recommend it. These stories require contemplation and they need to savored. They are like novels, stripped of everything but the important words and feelings. Highly recommended.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews