Did you ever read one of those short shorts that is so astonishingly ordinary it takes your breath away? When I first started reading this collection of Jason Copple’s short shorts, I got the impression this was the sort of effect he was going for. All the stories start off with something wonderfully mundane, like a headache, or a woman standing in line at the deli. I was disappointed when almost every story evolved into a struggle to consciously extricate something profoundly extraordinary from such promisingly ordinary beginnings. The simple beauty of the woman in line at the deli, “giving the guy behind the counter a real hard time,” is betrayed when Copple tells us: “To me she seems deeply, profoundly disappointed – as though she never got anything she ever wanted.” And the starkness of the opening sentence, “I have headaches,” is immediately followed by, “They seize me in the night…pushing in until my head is full and about to explode.” Copple is headed in a good direction here and I’m looking forward to seeing what he does next.
chapbook / publisher: Black Bile Press / main creator: Jason Copple / $5 / 1315 Niagara St., Suite #4, Windsor, ON, N9A 3V8