Review by Nora Nadjarian of "Homemade Weather: An Anthology of Novelettes-in-Flash" by Tom O'Brien, Ian O'Brien and Donna L. Greenwood

Homemade Weather (Retreat West Books, 2021) is an anthology of the three winning entries in Retreat West’s annual novelette-in-flash competition. A novelette-in-flash is essentially a mini-novella composed of linked flashes (or short-shorts), with each chapter or section being up to 1000 words.

Included in the anthology are the 1st prize winner Homemade Weather by Tom O’Brien, What the Fox Brings in Its Jaw by Ian O’Brien and The Impossibility of Wings by Donna L Greenwood. 

These moving narratives create three completely different worlds in beautifully distilled prose. The main characters are vivid and credible, presented as they are with the detail and depth of emotion we would expect from much longer novels. Human relationships with all their complexities are explored in intriguing ways. 

In Homemade Weather we see the world through the eyes of Celia Finn. Her astute observations of the goings-on both in and out of the family home are superbly handled by Tom O’Brien. “When I check the sky for signs of violence, cycling home, I find it on the other side of the mountain, brewing ominous cloud,” says Celia. Her intriguing claim that she can “Sign parts of [her] life away to someone else” keeps the reader hooked till the last page.

What the Fox Brings in Its Jaw is a masterful exploration of a man’s life through a single defining moment and the tragedy that follows. We learn that “It had started, as always, with little things,” and, gradually, the life of the unnamed protagonist unfolds before us. A heart-breaking story told from multiple points of view, it uses flashback to merge the past with the present in dream-like sequences. 

The Impossibility of Wings brilliantly depicts the tensions and difficulties of a resentful mother/daughter relationship. The protagonist, the eldest of four children, is caught in “the sticky mess of family garbage” and longs to escape from the vicious circle she is caught in. When she finally gets on the coach to London where she will study at university, she “can feel [her] wings unfurling with every mile [they] drive away.” But it is only at the end of the novelette that we are reminded that there are two sides to the story and “there’s a thin line” between them.  

About the reviewer
Nora Nadjarian is a poet and writer from Cyprus. Her work has been included in various international anthologies, most recently in Europa 28: Writing by Women on the Future of Europe (Comma Press, 2020), the 2020 National Flash Fiction Day Anthology (UK) and in SAND journal (2021).

You can read a review of Nora Nadjarian's short story collection, Selfie and Other Stories (Roman Books, 2018), on Everybody's Reviewing here. 

Review by Lee Wright of "Selfie and Other Stories" by Nora Nadjarian

'Let me start at the beginning, or what I think is the beginning,' says the unnamed narrator in the story, 'The Gentleman on The Train,' which makes up one of the twenty-five stories in this original collection by Nora Nadjarian, author of previous short story anthologies, Ledra Street (2006) and Girl, Wolf, Bones (2011) along with three further books of poetry. Each story here reflects true passion and intimacy through startling first-person narratives which are built around human contact. And, later on in the same story: 'Smashing girl. I’m a smashing girl, and I don’t even know it, because nobody’s ever called me a smashing girl before. I can just see myself going around, smashing men’s hearts and denting their lives with a hammer and asking them what they’ve done to deserve me.'

Nadjarian is a gifted wrier and in this book, she is at the top of her game. The story 'Truth' opens with 'At the exact moment my neighbour tells her lover “I’m leaving you,” a rainbow appears somewhere behind her.' This is the kind of fiction that shines light on blackness. 

There are pleasing similarities with Raymond Carver and Franz Kafka, whom she writes directly about in the story 'Kafkaesque': 'He hated me till the day he died. He called me a schmuck and he was right.' The collection is full-to-bursting with characters who live with people they think they know but don’t - who speak in puzzlingly witty dialogue, and have us engrossed until the often-ugly outcome.  

The author returns again and again to solitary women reconstructing their thoughts and desperate dreams: 'I’m a character in a play, but I’ve forgotten my lines ... In the kitchen my mother makes babies with flour and eggs ... My sister said she was carrying a bird inside her, a bird which would soon be drinking water out of her navel. “I am a cage,” said my sister.'
  
Nadjarian doesn’t concern herself with such old-fashioned basics as plot. Because life isn’t about plot, but about glimpses, moments. Some of these stories are just good moments, while others are purely wonderful.    
  

About the reviewer

Lee Wright was born in Nuneaton, Warwickshire in 1980 and has been writing both fiction and non-fiction since 2008. He is taking an MA in Creative Writing at the University of Leicester.