JENNIFER FLISS / WRITER
Northwestern University Press/Curbstone Books, July 2023
“Inventive, witty, and bracingly true, As If She Had a Say made me laugh, made my heart drop, and made me think deeply about the ways women must navigate a world that is not made for us. These are sneaky stories that got under my skin in the way the best art can, ever expanding to reveal new layers of meaning and depth. Unforgettable and most certainly what I want to be reading now. Fliss is all-seeing, a fearless noticer, and exactly the right person to deliver us to the heart of what matters, and to ourselves.” —Chelsea Bieker, author of Godshot and Heartbroke
Who has a right to tell us how to experience our grief? How to perform--or not perform--the roles society prescribes to us based on our various points of identity?
As If She Had a Say, the second story collection from Jennifer Fliss, uses an absurdist lens to showcase characters--predominantly women--plumbing their resources in the face of misogyny, abuse, and grief. In these stories, a woman melts in the face of her husband's cruelty; a seven-tablespoons-long woman lives inside a refrigerator and engages in an affair with the man of the house; a balloon-animal artist attends a funeral to discover he was invited as more than entertainment; and a man loses all his nouns.
Fans of Karen Russell and Carmen Maria Machado will appreciate how As If She Had a Say's inventive narratives expose inequities by taking us on imaginative romps through domesticity and patriarchal expectations. Each story functions as a magnifying glass through which we might examine own our lives and see ourselves more clearly.
Okay Donkey Press, December 2021
These stories felt dangerous. And like Hitchcock’s film, which some interpret as a political or environmental allegory, Fliss’ stories are rife with symbolism and meaning...In Fliss’ crisp, taut, active sentences, men are constantly instructing, demanding, betraying, inflicting harm, persecuting, and subjugating women...The absurdity strengthens the allegory, and it underscores in imaginative ways how we as humans consume one another — or, if we happen to be among the voiceless, the powerless, are ourselves consumed. - Southern Review of Books
Aptly titled, this wild, reeling book holds forty flash stories along with an abundance of absurdity, trauma, and nail biting, some mold, and above all, compassion. Fliss writes with great tenderness for her main characters, a deep understanding and acceptance of their confusion, bizarre behavior, and bad decisions...She allows her ideas and narratives to travel between conscious and unconscious, reality and absurdity, then weaves them into the strange shapes of dreams—that is, with a logic that defies reason. Yet the stories in this collection make sense in the way that they don’t. Ultimately, Fliss has discovered a profound way to parse the impact of shock and grief on our lives. - SmokeLong Quarterly
*
Crisp and haunting, the stories of The Predatory Animal Ball are bite-sized delights that will gnaw at your bones. In this fierce debut, Jennifer Fliss sharpens her claws and stuns with every spellbinding tale.
~ Kira Jane Buxton, author of HOLLOW KINGDOM and
FERAL CREATURES
*
The Predatory Animal Ball” is a raucous, wonderous event of a book. It arrives with sharp teeth and fancy feathers and surprises right to the last page.
~ Ramona Ausubel, author of AWAYLAND
and A GUIDE TO BEING BORN
*
Unique and haunting, the stores in The Predatory Animal Ball use style and format to showcase the ways in which an animal tale is always about our inner human instincts. The stories are bite-sized yet biting and beautifully crafted. Fliss demonstrates a master-class on flash fiction with this book. Well done!
~ Tyrese Coleman, author of HOW TO SIT