Tumbling Down the Rabbit Hole: Review of Red Pill by Hari Kunzru
Its characters and events, while sinister, are plausible: an uncomfortable mirror to our own world.
‘You’ Series Loses Original Heart in Third Installment: Review of You Love Me by Caroline Kepnes
As per usual, Kepnes pulls out all the stops with bottomless cliffhangers and narrative-shaking revelations.
The Mean Streets
I was Indiana Jones, hanging from a rope above a pit of snakes, my moves skilled and sure. My recorder was below, begging to be rescued like whatever unrealistic female heroine Jones would fall in love with and then totally forget about by the sequel.
Announcements
Past Announcements
2021 Sudden Fiction Contest Winners!
We’re thrilled to announce the winners and honorary mention of our 2021 Sudden Fiction Contest! Read more to find out who won!
2021 Sudden Fiction Contest Shortlist
The shortlist for our 2021 Sudden Fiction Contest is out! Read to find out what we sent our judges.
Book Reviews
To Death and Back: Review of Milk Blood Heat by Dantiel W. Moniz
Dantiel W. Moniz’s debut story collection, Milk Blood Heat, pulsates with the everyday horrors of being alive.
The Reader’s Paradise: Review of The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern
Morgenstern’s work is a novel for the book lovers and the story fanatics. It is the reader’s paradise, filled with reading nooks, secret libraries, mysterious books, and attractive storytellers.
Through Twists and Timelines: Review of The 7½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton
Stuart Turton’s debut novel, The 7½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle, is a book filled with surprises.
More Reviews
Stars and Starts: Review of Honey Girl by Morgan Rogers
The book spins a vibrating tension between silken, lyrical imagery, and anxiety-inducing plot.
“He is Sawdust in the Wind”: Review of The Lumberjack’s Dove by GennaRose Nethercott
The Lumberjack’s story is attractive because it offers readers some folkloric mysticism in the time of quarantine.
Learning to Love Yourself: Review of Someone Who Will Love You In All Your Damaged Glory by Raphael Bob-Waksberg
These stories provide incisive and cutting looks into being alone in the world and grieving lost relationships.
Bitter Reality: Review of Douglas Stuart’s Short Story “The Englishman”
This story entails an impressively raw and explicit depiction of David’s queer sexuality through the unconventional means of a financially and sexually beneficial relationship.
Glittery and Gritty: Review of Pass with Care: Memoirs by Cooper Lee Bombardier
At the heart of the memoir are Bombardier’s negotiations with his gender presentation and identity throughout the years and the very idea of the “trans memoir.”
Commentaries
To Delete or Not To Delete: Fanfiction and Lost Writing on the Internet
Fanfiction, and literature on the internet in general, raises new sorts of questions about the pitfalls and possibilities of archiving. How do you save not just an artifact, but all the software and hardware that is needed to run it?
Editors’ Most Anticipated: Spring 2021
This Spring, the editorial team at the Berkeley Fiction Review wanted to highlight a selection of upcoming releases that we are especially looking forward to reading and viewing. These selections mean something special to each individual editor, so we hope this list inspires an interest in these works!
Comfort Books: What Are They and Why Are They Important?
A comfort book is just as the name suggests: a personally significant piece of literature, typically fiction, that brings a person solace and allows for an escape from reality.
Watching and Waiting: The Slow Rise of South Asian Representation on Screen
Even so, I was disappointed to find that Mismatched had taken a narrative by an Indian-American author about Indian-American characters, with a unique premise about growing up American yet being submersed in Indian culture, and had set it entirely in India.
More Readings
Bury Your Gays (Literally): How The Haunting of Bly Manor Uses and Subverts the Trope
Mike Flanagan’s The Haunting of Bly Manor, the anthology series follow-up to the popular The Haunting of Hill House, may have all the makings for a classic ghost story, but don’t be mistaken—it’s actually a love story.
A Paean to Otherness: How Shirley Jackson Makes the Supernatural a Safe Haven
I saw myself and my sister in Merricat and Constance – two sisters from a deeply troubled family, survivors of traumatic experiences who rely on each other to make it through the day.
The Gender Binary of Directors and Editors: A Retrospective Look into The Twilight Saga
Crisp, icy air fills our lungs, whispering, pulling us inward into the fauna-choked landscape of Forks, Washington. Residing inside this quaint town, someone of equal brilliance: perfectly tousled hair, cold skin, brooding saunter, piercing eyes, and a slightly outdated fashion sense. Sound familiar? We’ve stepped into the glorious world of Twilight filled with fantastical vampires, bloody violence, and of course, romance.
Fiction
His Scaly Self
Gradually, he grew accustomed to his alternate form, to the point that he could forget about it for hours at a time.
More Stories
Port-au-Prince
…she took in another breath, reminding herself of the hours she would have to spend today making forced smiles to cover her nerves, laughing anxiously to prevent herself from saying something she didn’t mean, and breathing in and out to steady her heartbeat.
Multiple Deterrents
I know what Venita does. I’m not stupid. She doesn’t know I know, the fragrances of her leaving and the taste of her returning.
Crab Girl
There are two honors for women here. One is that you marry well; your husband doesn’t beat you and will hold you close at night. Two: you become a crab girl in the crab factory.
Forget the Line Breaks
Did he think about telling me that summer, when there was nothing but us and the truck and the highway for miles? Maybe not, didn’t want to ruin it all.
Nurture
Out here, she knew, was his sanctuary, away from his daughter’s problems. Here, only these more easily governed fruits of his labor existed.
How To Make Good Stock
You keep the bones. I learned this as a girl, cleaning after a chicken dinner.
Homecoming
I was just taking some time off, I told myself. From college. But more and more it felt like from life.
Bless Me Father
The little bird’s so still, just looking up at me with those robin eyes, just staring like it sees what’s deep inside me, like it’s stunned by the horror of it. I think that’s when I begin to understand: sin’s damn personal.
Interviews
Breaking the Canon: Interview with K-Ming Chang, Sudden Fiction Guest Judge & Author of Bestiary
Something about flash fiction and short fiction is just so ripe with experimentation and with breaking boundaries and for kind of completely turning on its head what a story can look like.
A Flash of Lightning and Heartbreak: Interview with Ashley Hutson, Sudden Fiction Guest Judge & Author of One’s Company
I feel like when you write flash, you’re giving something to the reader, like an electric shock.
A Case for “the surreal and the strange”: Interview with Anna Vangala Jones, Sudden Fiction Guest Judge and Author of Turmeric & Sugar
When I picture a flash fiction story done well, a story that’s getting so much across in this tiny space, I imagine a little snow globe or something that’s bursting with how much is going on inside it.
More Interviews
On Craft and Contradictions: Interview with Jen Fawkes, Author of Mannequin and Wife
A few weeks ago, I sat down (virtually) with short story writer Jen Fawkes to discuss her debut story collection, Mannequin and Wife: Stories. We talked about the origin of her writing career, the ocean, and her goal of capturing the spectacular mundanity of everyday life through fiction.
Issue 40 Release Party Transcript
Read the transcript of our release party for Berkeley Fiction Review Issue 40, which took place on April 30th via Zoom!
An interview with Meagan Johanson, author of “Spent” and Sudden Fiction winner
“Spent” came like this—from a feeling, the remorse of only having one life to spend. Even if we hold love in armfuls—real love, true love, good love—there will always be a life you can’t be living, a timeline you’ve left behind.
Personal Essays
Lucia’s Lessons on Leaving
Berlin’s writing captured a sort of reckless joy I recalled from my time in Paris: living on that rugged edge between foolish risk-taking and worthwhile adventure.
Blue Pills as Always
Across this textured face, I count all the bleeding and irritated spots, hooking onto them with my eyes and making sure that each and every unwanted citizen of a pimple on the once-clear expanse of my face is ingrained in my mind.
My Unseen World
The Unseen World grapples with this abstract notion: if memories are the fundamental building blocks to a coherent identity, when one loses these memories or memories are distorted —who does this person become? Who are they in relation to you?
More Readings
How Reading Has Helped Me in the Age of COVID-19
“I….have been able to use reading as both a reprieve from reality, as well as an educational tool to become a more productive version of my isolated self.”
Writing in Ten Easy Steps
Step 1: Once you are roused from slumber by thoughts of the monumental task at hand, brew some coffee. If you don’t drink coffee, thoughtfully bob a bag of tea into a cup of microwaved water. Optional: Add alcohol to taste.
Averting the Apocalypse, Quietly
The Academy Award for Best Picture — arguably one of the most monetarily valuable honors given anywhere in the world, a fact which is itself absurd — was recently bestowed upon the wrong film.
Visuals
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