Still Life in Motion

Still Life in Motion, Sean Brijbasi, Pretend Genius Press, 2004

This is a group of very short stories, practically vignettes, on a variety of subjects.

A husband discovers that his wife is a shoplifter. A man walks into a hospital, asking for a refill on brain, or a new one, then discovers that he likes playing dead. Another piece consists of excerpts from unwritten novels. In a room across the street is a large, blue balloon that seems to float on its own. A married couple are living in a apartment with a picture of a tiger on the wall, which turns into a love-letter affair between a man named Stanislau Verbinsky and a woman named Elizabeth. After years of work, a man introduces a new punctuation mark called the rhetorical question mark. Imagine a pair of play-by-play announcers watching an author typing at a keyboard.

Those who like "modern" writing, where stories are told in broad strokes, with little or no background information, will enjoy these stories. On the other hand, those who like their fiction with character development, storyline, climax and all those English Literature terms, should consider looking elsewhere.