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Inner Core
Death, anxiety, masculinity, family and children, social good and rocks. All things that touch the life of a middle-aged man. In these stories, written over the past two years, Miki Lentin goes in search of a rock with his child in Ireland, travels to Istanbul with his wife while sleep-deprived, recounts memories of working and growing up in Dublin and explores what it means to do good in society today. All told with Lentin's minimalist tone, Inner Core portrays his life on the edge.
“Great opening paragraph. Narrative slides effectively in and out of time, and the voice feels authentic,” about story Inner Core. David Shields,author of Reality Hunger, The Thing About Life Is That One Day You’ll Be Dead and The Trouble With Men.
“Miki Lentin takes linear time and smashes it to pieces, reassembling the shards as narrative mosaics. There is beauty, sadness, love, loss in the fragments but you need to stand back and take it all in to appreciate the bigger picture.” Lynda Clark, author of the short story collection Dreaming in Quantum and Beyond Kidding.
"With delicacy, Lentin lets the most ordinary items and details – a rock, clothes that smell of bread, meringues, a café mess, a butter dish – to suggest larger, more nuanced and complex feelings and perceptions. There is an admirable urgency, authenticity and grim humour throughout these stories." Gerry Stembridge, author of The Effect of Her, co-writer of the film Nora and the crime comedy Ordinary Decent Criminal.
"Miki's stories about working with refugees are sensitively observed and moving - and they will enrich your understanding of an ethically complex subject." Daniel Trilling, journalist and author of Lights in the Distance and Bloody Nasty People.
“Great opening paragraph. Narrative slides effectively in and out of time, and the voice feels authentic,” about story Inner Core. David Shields,author of Reality Hunger, The Thing About Life Is That One Day You’ll Be Dead and The Trouble With Men.
“Miki Lentin takes linear time and smashes it to pieces, reassembling the shards as narrative mosaics. There is beauty, sadness, love, loss in the fragments but you need to stand back and take it all in to appreciate the bigger picture.” Lynda Clark, author of the short story collection Dreaming in Quantum and Beyond Kidding.
"With delicacy, Lentin lets the most ordinary items and details – a rock, clothes that smell of bread, meringues, a café mess, a butter dish – to suggest larger, more nuanced and complex feelings and perceptions. There is an admirable urgency, authenticity and grim humour throughout these stories." Gerry Stembridge, author of The Effect of Her, co-writer of the film Nora and the crime comedy Ordinary Decent Criminal.
"Miki's stories about working with refugees are sensitively observed and moving - and they will enrich your understanding of an ethically complex subject." Daniel Trilling, journalist and author of Lights in the Distance and Bloody Nasty People.
141 pages, Paperback
Published April 26, 2022
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
June 4, 2022
Generally, there are two kinds of short story collections. One is a catchall anthology encompassing various styles and subjects that represent the breadth of an author’s works. The other selectively gathers stories on particular themes and presents them as an integrated statement. Londoner Miki Lentin’s collection, “Inner Core,” is somewhere in between.
Part One features main characters confounded by the familiar, white maile mid-life trials of angst, anger, and bewilderment. Jerry Ryan, who explicitly appears in three of the stories, stifles his antisocial impulses, although they manifest in odd ways – in “Efflorescence,” he succumbs to temptation to key a total stranger’s car, and in “Varifocals” he embarrasses his wife by standing during dinner and serenading a restaurant with, “Oooohooo, Mercy Me.”
The subject of Part Two – the experience of working to help resettle refugees – is more topical and distinctive. It contains five stories, all from the perspective of a service provider, such as a host or a consultant. Four are in the first person and the last, “Persepolis,” revisits Jerry, who here entertains the idea of smuggling a refugee into the country.
Part Three contains just three stories loosely dealing with memories of youth and coming of age. Perhaps the strongest piece in the collection, “Butter Dish,” envisions the family dinner as a two-act play.
Stylistically, Lentin’s prose is direct and compact. What he lacks in embellishment he compensates for with vivid sensory description. For example, the following describes Jerry’s car keying episode:
“The sky is now clear. Deathly dark. An orange hue from the streetlights on the pavements. Jerry ups his pace, feeling for the key to his office drawer, gripping the tip between his first finger and thumb, feeling the cut edges on his cuticles. There. That one. A Ford Fiesta…”
Most stories depict single incidents and take place in the present, which evoke a sense of immediacy but less so depth. Apart from the Jerry stories, they are written in first person by an unnamed narrator (who may in fact be Jerry). Either way, the transitions can feel gratuituous.
My biggest criticism is that the three parts are too short to depict the nuances of their subject matter and do not interact organically. Despite decades of experience in communications, Lentin is a relative newcomer to fiction. A more cohesive and satisfying collection perhaps awaits a time when he has a larger body of work.
Part One features main characters confounded by the familiar, white maile mid-life trials of angst, anger, and bewilderment. Jerry Ryan, who explicitly appears in three of the stories, stifles his antisocial impulses, although they manifest in odd ways – in “Efflorescence,” he succumbs to temptation to key a total stranger’s car, and in “Varifocals” he embarrasses his wife by standing during dinner and serenading a restaurant with, “Oooohooo, Mercy Me.”
The subject of Part Two – the experience of working to help resettle refugees – is more topical and distinctive. It contains five stories, all from the perspective of a service provider, such as a host or a consultant. Four are in the first person and the last, “Persepolis,” revisits Jerry, who here entertains the idea of smuggling a refugee into the country.
Part Three contains just three stories loosely dealing with memories of youth and coming of age. Perhaps the strongest piece in the collection, “Butter Dish,” envisions the family dinner as a two-act play.
Stylistically, Lentin’s prose is direct and compact. What he lacks in embellishment he compensates for with vivid sensory description. For example, the following describes Jerry’s car keying episode:
“The sky is now clear. Deathly dark. An orange hue from the streetlights on the pavements. Jerry ups his pace, feeling for the key to his office drawer, gripping the tip between his first finger and thumb, feeling the cut edges on his cuticles. There. That one. A Ford Fiesta…”
Most stories depict single incidents and take place in the present, which evoke a sense of immediacy but less so depth. Apart from the Jerry stories, they are written in first person by an unnamed narrator (who may in fact be Jerry). Either way, the transitions can feel gratuituous.
My biggest criticism is that the three parts are too short to depict the nuances of their subject matter and do not interact organically. Despite decades of experience in communications, Lentin is a relative newcomer to fiction. A more cohesive and satisfying collection perhaps awaits a time when he has a larger body of work.
May 5, 2022
Miki speaks of daily life with poignant insight and depth of emotion. His description of things as mundane as picking up pebbles from the beach with your child evokes memories and feelings long since forgotten, or buried. My only complaint about this book is that I wanted more.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews