Stained Glass Lives

A Collection of Flash Fiction Short Stories

De: Louise Worthington

Narrado por: Oshun Aje'

In Stained Glass Lives, Louise Worthington’s writing fuses poetry and prose, beauty, and violence. Sometimes, tender, sometimes harsh, she explores loss, female power, and the power of distorted thought, as well as creating stark portraits of family, violence, and revenge.

The characters are flawed and visceral, from ghosts, daughters, mothers, wives, to taxi drivers, teachers, a frail widow, and a mercenary shop assistant.

From the delightful insight into aging in "Visitors", gently humorous at the same time as pulling at the heart strings, to the unexpected gruesome climax in Humming, the hilarious yet humiliating embarrassment in Red Swimsuit, the sumptuous words to complement the themes in Reflections from an Epicure, to Beauty, brief but beautiful in its poignancy, reminiscent in some ways, of The Velveteen Rabbit, we are taken on a journey of words, phrases, and themes which make up our diverse, varied, chaotic, and changeable lives.

©2020 Louise Worthington (P)2021 Louise Worthington

Great Prose. I liken it to a confessional booth.

Louise Worthington has excellent prose. These shorts are full of vivid visceral concrete images. I enjoyed indulging in that richness while listening.

I will note to other readers, I found these stories serve more as psychological milieu than a driving plot. It has the same feel as sitting within a cathedral having access into the mind of others while they stare into the stain glass. I liken it to what a catholic priest might receive if all his sinners were poets. It itches that I'm wondering what she's thinking pulsation. They're ephemeral yet pleasing.

Now onto the audio. The narrator had a solid performance. Yet as the listener I needed a longer pause between each short. One short jumping into another caused an effect similar to a poetic enjambment. However, in this case, I found this lack of negative audio space made the story hard to follow. I wished the audio engineer on this had added 4-5 second after each chapter segment narration to help distinguish one story from another.

A Menagerie of Stories

I must admit some of these short stories broke my heart because they hit home. The stories are graphic and well written and some are truly on point of things that can and do happen. I truly enjoyed most of the stories there were some that bothered me to my core but all in all they all held power in their own way. I highly recommend this book if you love short stories and flash fiction. I am voluntarily leaving my honest unbiased review of Stained Glass Lives.

Just not my cup of tea

This style of writing just isn't what interests me. I had a tough time following any of the stories because they just didn't get or keep my attention.