BANANA FACTORY AND OTHER STORIES

In Fotch’s debut collection, cryptic short stories simmer with the potential for violence and menace.

Most of the narratives in this trim anthology unfold as simple vignettes or fragmentary impressions of situations, delivered in stylized prose that challenges the reader to make logical sense of the dire things that are transpiring. “Frank,” perhaps the collection’s most accessible piece, is a first-person workplace satire from the point of view of an office worker—a demonic scion of a dark religious cult—who goes about his workday carrying the bloody head of a sacrificial victim while narrating in mundane, watercooler banter. “Rabbit Man” reveals that imaginary childhood playmates will, under some circumstances, follow their wards into the grown-up world, even into the hellish reality of bottomed-out drug addiction. The title story describes a place where all bananas are manufactured (“No one knows that the bananas they lovingly slice atop their kid’s breakfast cereal are made and assembled in an industrial factory that has a hazmat permit from the state”), an employer of minimally skilled workers with bad attitudes. More sobering is “Closet,” which conveys the panicked impressions of a family man caught in the outbreak of a nuclear war. A post-apocalyptic tone also hangs over the puzzling “Forks,” in which a mother bloodily gives birth to an “egg” every year in time for a Christmas feast. In other tales, a homicide accomplice prepares to flee pending the arrival of the actual murderer, who may be imaginary (“Troy”); a psychiatric clinic's captive can hear the thoughts of nearby “dogs” (“Dogfight”); and a betrayed husband transfers his affections to a seabird (“Beatrice”). The material leans toward the fantastic, surreal, and macabre, and its often mystifying nature immerses the reader in Fotch’s eerie dreamworld all the more deeply.

Intriguingly textured short stories, generally of a disquieting nature when they can be deciphered.