Where most collections consist of ten to twenty selections of a given author's short fiction, Upright Beasts is something else. It's twenty-five selections of “flash fiction”. To explain the quotation marks. Flash fiction stories are typically less than a a page, a length which almost every story in Upright Beasts surpasses. But by very little. Most stories are two to three pages. Neither a good or bad thing, would-be readers should nevertheless be aware the collection is closer to smorgasbord than five-piece meal. (It goes without saying Michel was in no way trying to create meta-commentary on the the phenomenon of flash fiction itself.)
The other atypical aspect of Upright Beasts is that the overwhelming majority of the stories appear to be unpublished. If the ISFDB is to believed, in fact, only two were previously appeared elsewhere. This could be concerning to would-be readers. Is Upright Beasts a vanity project? Were Michel's submissions to zines rejected to the point he gave up and self-published a volume of his own creation? The answer appears no. Upright Beasts was published by Coffee House Press, an indie press that picks up lesser known writers with small run anthologies and collections. It has been vetted.
If Upright Beasts is shaping up to be unique from a structural and publishing perspective, then add a third aspect: substance. Post-modern with a toe or three in meta-modern, all the stories present themselves in direct, stark tones but do not resolve themselves by obvious, standard means. There is little exposition dedicated to setting or appearances. Michel sketches just enough to create a scene, a mood, an idea. 99% mimetic, the stories begin in domestic and social normalcy but attain auras of the absurd or surreal through the skewed injection of elements which are beyond accepted reality. As a result, some readers may be tempted to describe the collection as magic realism, and there is an argument to be made in favor. There are similarities. But I don't think magic realism encapsulates the whole. There are shadows underlying Michel's deadpan deliveries which reveal themselves in said abnormal resolutions. In short, the collection is anything but orthodox speculative fiction with Bruce Sterling's term slipstream once again coming to the rescue in these strange, interstitial cases.
I won't touch on all twenty-five stories in this review but will give you an idea via a few, representative samples. “Our Education” is an intriguing piece highlighting the subjectivity and uncertainty of high school education. Shifty, it puts the reader in the shoes of a student with unorthodox expectations for delivering a homework assignment. “Neighborhood” is about a pregnant woman who has recently moved, along with her rules-obsessed husband, into a suburban neighborhood. While he gets deeper into espionage, trying to catch his neighbors breaking condo rules, she drifts away from the marriage and gets a tinder account. The culmination of their conundrum defies Hallmark. “Filling Pools” tells of a man whose job is to fill family swimming pools with concrete (to prevent drowning and injury, natch). He has a come-to-Jesus moment while filling a pool one day, only to discover it was Satan. And so on.
But for as strange as each piece in Upright Beasts is, the collection's impact is felt more at the macro than micro level. Turning the last page, many of the stories will have already have slipped away. None are long enough to completely invest the reader or leave a mark. But the tone, the style of the whole will linger; Michel maintains remarkable consistency across the twenty-five pieces and continually zigs when you expect a zag. There may even be readers who grow tired of that style the deeper they get into the collection. One story, two, three, ten, ok. Twenty-five is a fair amount.
In the end, Upright Beasts is, if anything, an esoteric collection of stories that almost defy description. No particular story poking its nose far above the rest or falling on its face, Michel maintains a strong uniformity of voice and style, even as the individual stories can feel like pinning jello to the wall. Slipstream in nature, the collection will appeal to readers looking for stories that are realist in nature yet wear bits and pieces of clothing that don't entirely add up.
The following are the twenty-five stories collected in Upright Beasts:
Our Education
If It Were Anyone Else
The River Trick
Little Girls by the Side of the Pool
The Room Inside My Father's Room
Almost Recess
Our Neighborhood
Filling Pools
Hike
The Deer in Virginia
Halfway Home to Somewhere Else
Some Notes on My Brother's Brief Travels
What You Need to Know About the Weathervane
Things Left Outside
Lawn Dad
My Life in the Bellies of Beasts
The Soldier
The Head Bodyguard Holds His Head in His Hands
The Mayor's Plan
Colony
Routine
Everybody Who's Anybody
What We Have Surmised About the John Adams Incarnation
Dark Air
Getting There Nonetheless
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