BINGO, BANGO, BOINGO

A book of microfictions featuring an even more experimental foray into the narrative structures of chance.

This collection, slender on the shelf at 140 pages, contains the hidden heft of no fewer than 47 individual flash fictions. Rarely more than two pages long, the stories are pithy, whimsical, ironic, and poignant by turn. Often, they use the extreme efficiency of their language to poke fun at some absurd exigency of modern society, as in “Ella’s Letter to the Editor of the Universe,” which whipsaws between peevish acerbity (“Someone has put Beauty in the same aisle as Health Essentials”) and existential complaint (“Someone has used the human penchant for choice to justify hatred”) in almost the same breath. Other stories use their brevity to eschew narrative linkage, as in “How Phil Imagines the Afterlife,” which uses an enigmatic list of non-sequiturs (“17. Did you make the reservation? 18. I guess it’s okay that the lifeguard’s a teenager”) to portray the afterlife as a series of overheard remarks at a crowded resort pool. The whimsy in these stories creates a pleasant, chatty overlay of language that sometimes parts to reveal a startling moment of insight as the largely earnest characters struggle through the narration’s insouciant wit. This conflict—character vs. language—is a fascinating one to follow through its various paces, but Parker’s other project here is less successful. Interspersed between the stories are 26 bingo cards with titles like “Change Your Life Bingo,” “Feti’s Border Crossing Bingo,” and “Don’t Hate Your Daddy Bingo.” These pieces push the experiment of narrative brevity to an extreme, inviting the reader to interact with a single word or brief phrase contained within the standard 25-square grid of a bingo card whose context is provided only by the card’s title. This freewheeling play with story structure—the reader can arrange the story along horizontal, vertical, or diagonal lines as they see fit—is intellectually stimulating the first time it appears, but the pleasure of the form doesn’t hold up to repeat engagement.

A collection that asks the question, “Can a story ever be too brief?” The answer is yes.