Light Reflection Over Blues

by Avital Gad-Cykman

While entertaining on many levels, this strong collection of short prose reaches deep below the reader's consciousness, poking at the mysteries there with a lighter touch than would seem possible for the quickening it causes. The pieces are perfectly matched by original art by Revital Lessick.

A stunning collection. Though I nearly inhaled Light Reflection Over Blues in one sitting, Avital Gad-Cykman’s opalescent stories had me turning over each one in my mind. With poetic, condensed language, she evokes the pains of young women growing up amidst conflict in the landscape around them―as well as deep in their own hearts. Sometimes surreal, sometimes frank, but always engaging, these stories hit like smart bombs. --Viet Dinh, O’Henry Award winning author of After Disasters

The people in Avital Gad-Cykman's stories are haunted by both the past and the future. They live in a world where everything is fluid and impermanent--geopolitical boundaries, family bonds, the self itself. Their lives are simultaneously holy and profane, joyful and heartbroken--which is another way of saying deeply, recognizably, stirringly human. Life's unspeakable mystery winds through these stories like a whisper in the dark. --Ron Currie, Jr, Addison M Metcalf Award recipient from the Academy of Arts and Letters

A stunning collection. Though I nearly inhaled Light Reflection Over Blues in one sitting, Avital Gad-Cykman’s opalescent stories had me turning over each one in my mind. With poetic, condensed language, she evokes the pains of young women growing up amidst conflict in the landscape around them―as well as deep in their own hearts. Sometimes surreal, sometimes frank, but always engaging, these stories hit like smart bombs. --Kim Chinquee, recipient of two Pushcart Prizes and editor of ELJ and New World Writing

162 pages, Paperback

Published February 15, 2022

About the author

Avital Gad-Cykman is the author of the flash collection "Life In, Life Out", published by Matter Press and the flash and story collection "Light Reflection Over Blues", published by Ravenna Press. http://ravennapress.com/books/light-r...
Her work has appeared in The Doctor T. J. Eckleburg Review, Iron Horse Literary Review, Prairie Schooner, Ambit (UK), The Literary Review, CALYX Journal, Glimmer Train, McSweeney’s Quarterly, Prism International, Michigan Quarterly Review and elsewhere.
Other stories have been featured in anthologies such as W.W. Norton's Flash Fiction International, Sonder Press's Best Small Fictions 2020, Politically Inspired Fiction, and The Best of Gigantic. Her flashes have been twice listed in Best of the WEB, Wigleaf.
She is the winner of Margaret Atwood Studies Magazine Prize and first placed in The Hawthorne Citation Short Story Contest. Her story collections were finalists for Iowa Fiction award.
She grew up in Israel, and lives in Brazil. She holds a PhD in English Literature with a focus on women authors, gender, minorities and trauma studies.

Reviews

[Len Joy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Avital Gad-Cykman, the award-winning author of “Life In, Life Out,” is back with another masterful collection of short prose. Each story is beautifully crafted and the collection is brilliantly organized, like an intricate puzzle, that all comes together. The stories are incredibly rich with metaphor, and yet there are no wasted words. With her deft use of point-of-view, it feels like the narrator is talking (or sometimes whispering) just to us, the story of her life. Highly recommended.

[Debbie Ann · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think most of us read collections of prose, short prose, over time. Or, if we’re honest, we admit that we partially read collections. Maybe we pick the first story, the last, and a few in between. Maybe we skim and pick one favorite story. I did not do that. I read each story as presented, one after another. I read it this way because I believe this threaded collection should be read linearly, carefully. Emotionally. It’s a collection of feelings.

These stories, most flash fiction, tell the story of a character born in Israel, raised by parents who escaped the Holocaust. One parent lost his entire family. But history did not appear to be discussed in this family or this community. It was rarely mentioned. They escaped death, life became this child, this life. However, their escape from death was temporary; cancer took both of them, leaving the daughter orphaned but determined-- to not just survive, but leap into the blue water of life.

The entire collection begins with this water. In her first story, “Water Memory,” we travel quickly through a life that begins and ends with water. The blue salty water of Galilee: “The Galilee Sea and the Jordan River drop their slanted lids as they stray. The soil cracks, gaping like a disaster area, an abandoned battlefield. “ The character is drawn to water because no matter her grief, she believes in life.

We travel with her. We hike, meet men from around the world, we explore relationships and feel regret. Avital leads us on this emotional journey with metaphor, witty, poetic stories, magical realism and even meta fiction. In one story, “The Key to this Story is Randomness,” the narrator rambles as she drinks. She rethinks all of her stories. What if she was not born in Israel? What if her father never left Poland, if her mother married him in Europe? What if they never married, never had children? Never passed on genetic cancer? It’s a sad reflection over a rather blue but beautiful life. Blue like the Galilee sea. Ironically, the writer places this story randomly in the collection, towards the end.

One of my favorite stories, “So far, Houses,” sets the theme of this character’s life. The stages of pain are felt with the different color houses the child moves into as life becomes more and more complicated. When death grips the family, the house color changes--from white to gray to blue to beige, all as her beloved father, then mother, both die of cancer. Then the character makes her own house-- the color of Cerulean. And there we are at the conflict. The pain and yet the beauty of this gorgeous, deep blue.

The metafiction, “Witches,” is placed appropriately at the end of the collection like a period. The narrator refers to her memories as witches rising from the water in Florianopolis, where she now resides.

I believe flash fiction is an important art form because, properly done, it emotes more effectively than any other form. Avital manages this form with perfection. She masters the poetry of words-- creatively placed to express a powerful world view.

It’s an important work of art. I highly recommend it.

[Frank]

Avital Gad-Cykman is a master wordsmith and my favorite living writer. How she does what she does with so few simple words is one of life's mysteries, but all the complex magic of human existence is rendered with stunning clarity on her page. I'm reminded of why I've so loved the writing a very select handful of other old, now dead white men. Except Avital's a multicultural, multilingual woman with a modern world full of experience, writing for the 21st Century.

And that makes all the difference, today.

Writing's a tough, often thankless business. No less so, publishing. The transference of ideas from one brain to another has never been made easier or more fluid. That we keep this creative exchange of ideas free flowing is today perhaps of greater importance than ever, too.

Avital Gad-Cykman and the good folk at Ravenna Press are doing their part. I urge you to support their efforts. You won't regret it.

[Beverly · Rating 5 out of 5]

There is probably no other writer on the planet like Avital Gad Cykman. Her views and visions of the human condition are so singularly quirky and poetic that you find yourself stopping in the middle of a paragraph to just read that one more time. It's the art of language, yes, but it's more. it's the art of perception which is a very personal and complex seeing of events, situations, persons with eyes that the rest of us do not have. My feeling is that many of us read poetry, hungering for this kind of perception -- whether it's that dreamlike quality of magical realism, or deft handling of metaphors and internal thought, poetry is the language of the unspoken/unknown in literature. Poetry and Avital Gad Cykman. Do yourself a favor and read this collection. There will be times, I promise you, when you'll have to stop and catch your breath. In my case, a hand to my chest.

[Mary McCluskey · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Light Reflection Over Blues" is an outstanding collection of evocative (and sometimes disturbing) short fictions. These stories cover a wide emotional and physical landscape and can be read as a series of perfect little gems or as a cohesive whole. Written with a fierce intelligence, and hard-won insights into the human heart, the prose sings and soars. Highly recommended.

[Hot Redhead Media · Rating 5 out of 5]

This collection is full of moving stories with a density of prose that is both startling and enjoyable. Hear Gad-Cykman chat writer's craft and read from this collection on the HRM Booktails podcast! https://www.hotredheadmedia.com/bookt...