Diabolical Plots #47, January 2019
“The Divided Island” by Rhys Hughes
Reviewed by Jason McGregor
It’s Surreal Month at Diabolical Plots with three odd tales, including a humorous one which I enjoyed.
“The Divided Island” by Rhys Hughes
A flash fable about an island separated by a border which divides the order in the north from the chaos in the south, though each region spontaneously generates microcosms of the other in infinite loops. After describing this and disavowing any Taoist or other “neat and allegorical” interpretation, our narrator (an Exuperian lost pilot in a Calvino-esque homage) finally interjects himself to little effect. The prose is cleanly written, if a bit prancing.
“The Man Whose Left Arm Was a Cat” by Jennifer Lee Rossman
The very monochrome Thomas Fitzpatrick McAllister and his very colorful neighbor, Wendiie, are riding on the bus together when an event occurs which, together with its medicinal after-effects, will change their lives forever. Tom’s distaste for colorful paint stores and the like contrasts oddly with his interest in Wendiie and this story’s sense of humor certainly won’t appeal to everyone, but I liked the way some humorous elements were tucked into the middles of paragraphs and how most elements tied into the next paragraph and laughed at most of them. Some also may find this frustratingly surreal for a “realistic” fantasy, so to speak, and some may find it frustratingly realistic for surrealism but I thought it balanced well.
“The Dictionary For Dreamers” by Cislyn Smith
A “you,” several “shes,” and even a “he” are unclearly referenced throughout a series of sections made up of a word, one or more definitions, and a usage “example” which contains such narrative as there is. This is an apology for an accident that is meant to be invested with aesthetic significance to make it more universal than the event depicted.
This writing exercise forces the reader to read boring definitions in case they hold significance (signaled in the first definition but rarely later fulfilled) which otherwise only repeatedly interrupt what little “story” it has. That story suffers from pronoun confusion and confusion of person and attempts to hide its paucity of plot and character through its structural artifice and—despite nominally being a dictionary with poetic aspirations—its vagueness.
More of Jason McGregor’s reviews can be found at Featured Futures.