Reviewed by Katelynn Schoop

For all the syntactical tricks and laden-with-irony judgments of culture that bear down upon contemporary fiction, there is something to be said for having heart. Not sentimentalism or transparent appeals to emotion, but the strength of heart required to take a good, long, unequivocal look at people – for all their weaknesses and idiosyncrasies– and see something worth writing about. Elyse Friedman's Long Story Short treads the boundary between playfully satirical and deeply incisive, and while the tension may falter at moments, the collection manages to articulate a keen sensibility of the divide between ourselves and the selves we present to others.

The collection is made up of a novella, "A Bright Tragic Thing," and five stories that include the Gold National Magazine Award for Fiction winner "The Soother." The six pieces display an impressive range of narrative rhythm while echoing themes and character-types amongst themselves. Moving from one story to another is then surprisingly comfortable for an uncomfortable book, content-wise. Beginning with "A Bright Tragic Thing," the reader is immediately introduced to Friedman's ear for dialogue and sharp perception of the subtlety intrinsic to the best kind of irony with the novella's teenage protagonist searching for "so-bad-they're-good" t-shirt slogans. "Bright Tragic" seems to carry on for longer than need be, despite its moments of poignancy in which lessons are learned.

The stories that follow, however, speak to a degree of care and craft in their construction that force the reader to imaginatively and emotionally participate. Some are stronger than others, with "The Soother" exploring a tobacco executive's hidden life through terse and effective prose:

Irma unfastened the plastic clip on her nursing bra and brought a hard brown nipple to Lucas's mouth. He latched on and sucked greedily. She watched his hands curl into fists.

The story is propelled by rhythmic dialogue, demanding a fast pace and perpetual forward-motion that mirrors the pace of life required to maintain Lucas's constant charade. Minimalist dialogue similarly drives "Truth," in which the rhetorical trick of uninhibited honesty allows Friedman to deftly shift between the despairingly comic – "[T]he fact that you're a boozehound pretty much puts me off for anything long term, but makes me wonder if I'll be able to take you home tonight and have insincere sex with you once you're sloppy drunk" – and the desperately real – "They reached for each other in the dark room."

Naiveté and sentimentality are given like treatment in the somewhat structurally incomplete "Lost Kitten," as characters struggle with representing themselves and the ways in which it can be artificial or entirely unmediated. The delicacy of the story's prose create a strange sense of fragility around its central character, drinking Tia Maria and licking her lips, that tempers overtones of self-deception and tragically relatable cluelessness. It is in Friedman's deftly combining this redemptive handling of characters with a precise perception of just how and where these characters come together that Long Story Short finds its heart.