Island Rule

January 22, 2024
Flynn (The Companions) blends realism and fantasy for a diffuse collection that probes the limits of democracy. In the title story, set in 2009, a San Diego geography professor tries to feel hopeful about President Obama and reflects on the unnamed Pacific island dictatorship she fled from. The country, where some people grow to become giants, has denied her request to return. “The Thirteen Films of Victoria Umlat,” set in the wake of the 2000 presidential election, follows disenchanted married American couple Alan and Phyllis during an extended stay in Norway, Phyllis’s birthplace. There, people frequently point out how she resembles wildly popular actor Victoria Umlat, who’s disappeared. Eventually, Phyllis plays the part by appearing in a photo shoot as Victoria. In “The King of South Phoenix,” a standout entry set in the near future, a washed-up TV writer lands a spot on a reality show called The People’s Choice. On the program, he lives in a glass bubble high above the Arizona capital and tries to convince the audience to pick Phoenix for revitalization funds over other cities. Flynn shines brightest when committing to strange ideas such as this one. Often, though, the speculative conceits and themes feel underdeveloped. The overall sensation here is one of aimlessness. Agent: Stephanie Delman, Sanford J. Greenburger Assoc.

February 15, 2024
Set primarily in California, this short-story collection mixes the mundane and the bizarre with an authority stemming from its concrete sense of place. This collection of linked stories takes its name from a hypothesis positing that small mammals may grow larger on islands while large mammals may grow smaller. While teaching a geography class at San Diego State University at the outset of the Obama administration, a professor reflects on how the theory manifests in her home country, a nameless island nation run by a dictator known for dressing in skimpy bathing suits. Ostensibly protecting her small daughter from bad influences, a San Francisco mother takes a dislike to a clique of schoolgirls who hang out near her home, inviting more trouble than she can possibly realize. Some of the stories stay firmly or mostly anchored in realism, focusing on characters and conflicts that feel all too plausible: A child of divorce forced to move from Oklahoma to Minnesota disappears; a perpetually single woman is invited camping by an old friend; a survivalist teaches her nephew the ruthless ways of the wild. Other stories, however, veer into supernatural or dystopian territory. A Hollywood agent has a monstrous encounter during a drug trip. A professional image rehabilitator "polish[es]" reputations for a living. Characters sometimes recur, typically in the form of passing references, but certain objects, events, and threats serve as the overarching throughline: a set of teeth extracted from the mouth of a 17th-century Norwegian explorer, mysterious mounds of human bones that fuel rumors of a serial killer on the prowl, the tragic death of a cosmonaut in a spaceflight accident, the constant specter of environmental disaster. Some stories feel tighter and more polished than others, and the collection as a whole could be more cohesive, but the overall effect is appealingly weird, as if the uncanny valley took literary form. A compelling exercise in worldbuilding and genre blending that toggles among the recent past, present, and near future.

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