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The Pedestal Magazine > Archives > Issue 55 > Reviews >Stefanie Freele's Feeding Strays

Feeding Strays
Stefanie Freele
Lost Horse Press
ISBN Number: 978-0-9800289-5-9

Reviewer: J. K. Andrews


          It is only fair to state up front that I am a relative newcomer to micro-fiction, slipstream fiction, and other flash fiction incarnations. So, in preparing to review Feeding Strays by Stefanie Freele, which includes numerous examples of this genre, I did a little research, and googling yielded an article by Camille Renshaw titled “The Essentials of Micro-Fiction.” It was appropriately succinct. Briefly, some of her essentials were: “Length and form obviously matter. [Use] soul-stirring language. [Powerful] imagery. Make it tight: Use a minimum of words. Play against expectations.”

          I would assert these are elements of all good writing. But really fine writing requires more of its author. And, as you must have guessed, more from the reader. As a reader, if you are not ready to engage with a text, probably multiple times, you should not read Stefanie Freele’s Feeding Strays. You cannot suck the juice from her delicious stories unless you are willing to spend some time with them. Savor them.

          What the stories share is a sensibility that recognizes and celebrates the synchronicity of the ridiculous and the likelihood of the unimagined. Some stories, such as “James Brown Is Alive and Doing Laundry in South Lake,” give readers a sense of encountering what they secretly feel but would never make public. Freele is masterful at crafting first sentences such as,
Stu is driving to South Lake Tahoe, to take his post-partum-strained woman to the snow, to take his nine-week-old infant through a storm, to take his neglected dog on a five hour car ride, and to take himself into his woman’s good graces.
           Really, how could you not keep reading? One of my own requirements for successful short stories is the presence of conflict. Does this first sentence have conflict or what? Setting, yep. Characterization, yep. And history—back-story just waiting to explode. Given from a close third person, it’s Stu’s story. Stu’s woman, child, and dog are not named. Later in the same paragraph they are all identified as “The Family.” A thing. An organization or institution comprised of, but somehow separate from, its component parts. Freele imposes white space and dingbat insertions to indicate point of view shifts. The woman now identified as Megan indulges in unvoiced meditations and preoccupations—swollen feet, the baby and dog—that are spot on. Next, the baby whom we learn is Phillip, has likes and desires that are what would be expected. Beebop, the dog, is given equal narrative time with baby Phillip. There is no superfluous language in this story.

          “Stu is afraid to talk because his woman might cry again,” begins the next paragraph, focused on Stu. “Megan is trying not to cry” starts the following section. Bits of character and action are separated again by space and some ambiguous graphic, but joined by content and context. No one so far in this story gets what he or she wants. No one gets anyone else. Until. Stu stops for a red light and Megan spots
a dark man with black hair in a leather jacket. He wiggles thick eyebrows up and down and squints in the snow as he smokes a cigarette.
          You guessed, it’s James Brown. Suddenly, the characters are connected. In response to Megan’s observation—the first spoken words—Phillip pauses, the dog wags her tail, and Stu sees what Megan has seen. He notes that his woman is correct: “there stands a guy who looks just like a happy James Brown.” The man who looks like James Brown looks at The Family. The dog’s tail smacks the car seat, the baby croons, and Stu says, “Right on. Right on.” You must read it for yourself, but the last sentence of this short story is as effective as the first and completes the transformation of the characters. Megan says to look, and they do. They come out of their own thoughts and concerns and focus on the dark man. Is he James Brown? Almost certainly not. But Megan is using “her happy voice,” and the others must instantly choose before the light changes. Go with it, agree to participate in the delight of finding James Brown in South Tahoe “alive and doing laundry.” Or choose to ignore or mock Megan’s comment. By agreeing to see what Megan sees and embrace a bit of improbable whimsy, the characters have constructed a moment of understanding and harmony.

          Family relationships dominate this volume, but as with actual families much is left unresolved, and some stories leave the reader with a sense of undefined menace or unease. This is the case in the short-short “Fish Fishy” which begins, “She is in the fish tank hiding from her husband.” The woman’s husband sees her anyway and reminds her that the fish tank is only twenty gallons and she will not fit. No matter. Slipstream writing like this often exhibits surreal elements that require the reader to suspend disbelief and ponder the juxtaposition of concise language with over-the-top imagery. Such efforts are meant to unsettle the reader. They are also designed to encourage multiple readings.

          Feeding Strays also contains a few stories, “The Seven Year-Old” is one example, so short, so unburdened by plot, that all that supports them is acute observation, precise language, and paragraphs broken by white space and dingbats. “Kalispell” left me perplexed after several readings. Here it is in its entirety:
There are nights, such as this one, this thirty degree, dark, but a full moon, where chimneys smoke, dogs bark down-river, and the stallion with his purple mane paces. He puffs and snorts, trots a bit past my window. A flash of an eye, a flish of a coat is all I catch through the finger-printed glass. I could ride him in the moonlight. I could stay here by the fire.
          Well, okay. Turning to Google once again, I learned that Kalispell is located in, and the county seat of, Flathead County, Montana. Although I find the name pretty and vaguely mysterious, I couldn’t say this information about the title shed any light on the story. Most of the pieces in Feeding Strays surprised me with imaginative leaps and fresh takes on topics such as breast feeding, ocean cruises, suicide, baking, and other human struggles. Some stories will haunt me. A few just make me blink and say, “Whatever.” Perhaps that is what they are designed to do, to offer glimpses into the lives of other people, other dynamics, as if seen once and quickly from a passing car. Glimpses that fade quickly, leaving the viewer ready to be given other glimpses, ready to see—against all expectations—James Brown smoking outside the laundromat.

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