The week’s best online fiction, with recommendations from FictionDaily’s editors.
The In-Between Woman by Rabindranrath Tagore
Tagore was the first non-European Nobel Laureate and had he lived longer than most men he’d’ve turned 150 this year. There’s been some celebration, and for good reason. This new translation of a long short story is devastating. It turns inside out. It’s the cycle of birth and death played on the hearts of a threesome created by sickness that brings on more sickness. The end is incomprehensible because peace and love are incomprehensible and all souls continue in their twirling gigaflops of tragedy hoping for redemption but finding the inevitable ——- of being awaiting them at the end of every breath. Mmmmmmmhm. –David Backer
MUTANT POWERS by Lauren Lavin
This kind of paradox really does seem like a superpower: A story that can both whisper and shriek, race and mosey, exclaim and ponder, all at once. MUTANT POWERS has a simple plot, but don’t let that fool you; it achieves levels of complexity and literary gymnastics that are nearly impossible to pull off. Detailing the interior and exterior anatomy of rage, Lauren Lavin’s flash work manages to give you every violent act at the violent pace they’re due, while draping it all in a captivating internal tapestry of reflection. Powerful mutation indeed. –Matt Funk
Instruction on how to by Francesca Chabrier
in Action, Yes
Instructions for what to do when you have valuable advice to offer on a range of topics – crossword puzzling, angel mimicry, espionage, the malaise of the unfrequented – an expansive imagination, a playful and fearlessly exercised voice, a scrapbooker’s love of snippets and a comic’s grasp of the absurd. Well, you write something like Chabrier’s “Instruction on how to” in Action Yes. Contemporary short fiction, the shortest fiction, or at least those susceptible to it, love a good gimmick. They must. In the modest space afforded them, authors find ways to showcase their craft and cleverness without resorting to narrative techniques best reserved for grander arenas. Often this involves an organizing device or unifying principle to reconcile what might otherwise be taken for scraps. Those who scoff at gimmicks are as likely to revile scraps. I myself would much prefer to banquet on Chabrier’s scraps than gorge joylessly on the bottomless gruel of less daring magazines. –Ryan Nelson
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