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iridium's review
2.0
These stories mostly ranged from unforgivably bad to OK.
A mini review of each short story:
-"Beached" by Ray Daniel: I thought you were supposed to put your best foot forward, but this may be the worst short story of the whole bunch. It's also (I think) the longest. It's only 25 pages long and it still somehow manages to work in an unnecessary romance subplot and all these superfluous details. The whole private investigator angle is stupid. One star.
-"A Clean Sweep" by Ann Parker: If "Beached" isn't the worst short story in the bunch, then this is. It's unfortunate, because it had potential and the most interesting premise, but the following is actual, honest-to-God dialogue in the beginning of this short story: "Tom, these are modern times now. It's the year of our Lord, eighteen-hundred and seventy. This is Wyoming territory." One star.
--"Absentee" by Alison Catharine: Um... what does voting have to do with this short story, anyway? What did the absentee ballot have to do with anything? In fact, what do politics have to do with anything, other than to make the dad more loathsome? I also hate "political" stories that go out of their way to elide the names of the politicians and the parties. It's always "the incumbent candidate" and "the majority party" and shit like that, and it's always the worst combination of cowardly and smug (this is incidentally part of the reason why I hate Mr. Smith Goes to Washington). Two stars.
--"Chicago Style" by David Hagerty: This is the best story in the bunch. Interesting, relevant setting, unique, excellent establishment of setting, solid writing style. Four stars.
--"Operation Fair Vote" by Kris Calvin: Second-best story. This one also had a good writing style, just right for the main character set up here. The premise was cute, and I suppose you could interpret it as an allegory. Somewhat predictable, but it stayed on topic the whole time. Three and a half stars.
--"Civic Duty" by Camille Minichino: Possibly just the slightest bit questionable on the racial front. Kind of a nothing of a story, but not otherwise objectionable. Two and a half stars.
--"Momma's Ballots" by Derek Marsh, Jr.: I almost liked this one at first but it only thinks it's political. The concept of voting intersects with story in the absolute dumbest way possible.Like why did the dad hold onto those stolen ballots for like forty fucking years? Where did he even get them? Why were they in the mother's room? He was working for some sort of cabal of racists but then it turned out the stolen ballots were not about race, they were about something else entirely? Putting a throwaway reference to Flint, Michigan doesn't stop me from noticing that this story is soap opera shit. Started off as a better version of "Absentee" and ended as a worse version of "Absentee". Two stars.
--"Another Statistic" by Travis Richardson: Well-written overall, but once again the main theme of the story wasn't really voter suppression, it's just to give the main character something to fight for.In fact, the whole voting thing was barely relevant thematically. The story would have been more cohesive if he'd been fighting police brutality instead of voter suppression, but then it wouldn't be included in this collection. Also, the author of this one is a white guy trying to write a black guy and um... let's just say you can totally tell, and it's cringier than"Civic Duty". The attempts at hip music references that a black college kid would be listening to are the biggest giveaways here. Three stars.
--"Who Is Stuart Bridge?" by James W. Ziskin: I get what this was trying to do, but, like, when you're telling a story to someone else, why would you intentionally include superfluous details that make you look like a bitch? The framing device sank this one. Two and a half stars.
--"Bombs Away" by Mariah Klein: Needed a little beefing up, but it was pretty fun to read. I googled these authors, and some of them I couldn't find any information on at all, but all the others seemed to be white. That's a questionable choice for a collection about voter suppression mostly in the US, but anyway, of all the "white writer writing about black people's electoral disenfranchisement" stories, "Bombs Away" was the least embarrassing. Three stars.
--"Twelve, Angry" by Catriona McPherson: Maybe I was just speeding through this story because I wanted this book to be over, but the writing style of this was close to incomprehensible. Also, this one has the most tenuous connection to voting yet, just a vague allusion to the fact that she's in town doing a report on suffragettes.Besides, what does a groping gauntlet accomplish, in the literary sense, that a single instance of groping does not? Don't show me the same thing more than once. I get the point. I also feel like, either every story should take place in the US or there should be more than one that doesn't. If there was only one set in Scotland, it's too bad it had nothing whatsoever to do with voting and I didn't learn anything about the Scottish or UK political system. One and a half stars.
It's a shame, I think this is a really cool idea for a collection. I also like the idea of supporting small presses and local authors and whatnot. But a lot of these writers just couldn't think of ways to make voter suppression interesting. Several of these authors have apparently been published before, but a lot of these stories came across as very amateurish. Also, there were some typographical errors; this needed more thorough copyediting. Overall this book was missing cohesion.
A mini review of each short story:
-"Beached" by Ray Daniel: I thought you were supposed to put your best foot forward, but this may be the worst short story of the whole bunch. It's also (I think) the longest. It's only 25 pages long and it still somehow manages to work in an unnecessary romance subplot and all these superfluous details. The whole private investigator angle is stupid. One star.
-"A Clean Sweep" by Ann Parker: If "Beached" isn't the worst short story in the bunch, then this is. It's unfortunate, because it had potential and the most interesting premise, but the following is actual, honest-to-God dialogue in the beginning of this short story: "Tom, these are modern times now. It's the year of our Lord, eighteen-hundred and seventy. This is Wyoming territory." One star.
--"Absentee" by Alison Catharine: Um... what does voting have to do with this short story, anyway? What did the absentee ballot have to do with anything? In fact, what do politics have to do with anything, other than to make the dad more loathsome? I also hate "political" stories that go out of their way to elide the names of the politicians and the parties. It's always "the incumbent candidate" and "the majority party" and shit like that, and it's always the worst combination of cowardly and smug (this is incidentally part of the reason why I hate Mr. Smith Goes to Washington). Two stars.
--"Chicago Style" by David Hagerty: This is the best story in the bunch. Interesting, relevant setting, unique, excellent establishment of setting, solid writing style. Four stars.
--"Operation Fair Vote" by Kris Calvin: Second-best story. This one also had a good writing style, just right for the main character set up here. The premise was cute, and I suppose you could interpret it as an allegory. Somewhat predictable, but it stayed on topic the whole time. Three and a half stars.
--"Civic Duty" by Camille Minichino: Possibly just the slightest bit questionable on the racial front. Kind of a nothing of a story, but not otherwise objectionable. Two and a half stars.
--"Momma's Ballots" by Derek Marsh, Jr.: I almost liked this one at first but it only thinks it's political. The concept of voting intersects with story in the absolute dumbest way possible.
--"Another Statistic" by Travis Richardson: Well-written overall, but once again the main theme of the story wasn't really voter suppression, it's just to give the main character something to fight for.
--"Who Is Stuart Bridge?" by James W. Ziskin: I get what this was trying to do, but, like, when you're telling a story to someone else, why would you intentionally include superfluous details that make you look like a bitch? The framing device sank this one. Two and a half stars.
--"Bombs Away" by Mariah Klein: Needed a little beefing up, but it was pretty fun to read. I googled these authors, and some of them I couldn't find any information on at all, but all the others seemed to be white. That's a questionable choice for a collection about voter suppression mostly in the US, but anyway, of all the "white writer writing about black people's electoral disenfranchisement" stories, "Bombs Away" was the least embarrassing. Three stars.
--"Twelve, Angry" by Catriona McPherson: Maybe I was just speeding through this story because I wanted this book to be over, but the writing style of this was close to incomprehensible. Also, this one has the most tenuous connection to voting yet, just a vague allusion to the fact that she's in town doing a report on suffragettes.
It's a shame, I think this is a really cool idea for a collection. I also like the idea of supporting small presses and local authors and whatnot. But a lot of these writers just couldn't think of ways to make voter suppression interesting. Several of these authors have apparently been published before, but a lot of these stories came across as very amateurish. Also, there were some typographical errors; this needed more thorough copyediting. Overall this book was missing cohesion.
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