Avoka

by Elle Nash

This micro-chapbook is a part of the 2017 Ghost City Press Summer Micro-Chap Series.

https://ghostcitypress.com/2017-summe...

Genres: Short Stories

19 pages, Micro-Chapbook

First published July 27, 2017

About the author

Elle Nash is the author of the novel Animals Eat Each Other (Dzanc Books), which was featured in the 2018 June Reading Room of O - The Oprah Magazine and hailed by Publishers Weekly as a ‘complex, impressive exploration of obsession and desire.’ Her debut collection of stories, Nudes, was published in 2021. Her next novel, Deliver Me, is out from Unnamed Press in 2023.

Her work appears in Guernica, The Nervous Breakdown, Literary Hub, BOMB Magazine, The Fanzine, Volume 1 Brooklyn, New York Tyrant and elsewhere. She is a founding editor of Witch Craft Magazine.

Reviews

[Keith [on semi hiatus] · Rating 4 out of 5]

It was brilliant reading over this earlier Elle Nash work; having already read and loved Animals Eat Each Other I can see how she's developed her writing style and story structure from having also now read Avoka (and I believe there's still a few more gems in the back catalogue).

I love her style of adding a real-life reference to her writing through the means of goods and things, such as Gatorade, Blackheart rum, the movies: The Artist and the Model (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1990217/) and Choke (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1024715/), etc.

I found some of the stories a bit darker to what I've accustomed myself thus far to liking in Elle's work but enjoyed the majority of the segments throughout this chapbook, favourites being 'Leanne and Leah', 'Avoka', and 'Tierney'.

[courtney · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reading this gave me the same feeling as being a passenger in the backseat of a car on a rainy night, on your way to your home that doesn't quite feel like home, but it is somewhere you can comfortably lay down and stare at the wall while 'Vienna' by Billy Joel plays.