These 19 short stories certainly live up to the second word of the title. Many of them are overtly weird. It’s a very eclectic mix, exploring love and loneliness in its many forms and set in locations as varied as Norway and the USA.
The first story in Big Weird Lonely Hearts, ‘Kong!’, features a slowly leaking three-foot tall inflatable gorilla – a companion for Dahlia as she plays the computer game of the same name. The second story’s title is a set of geographic coordinates, which the author later notes is the location of where his then-girlfriend dumped him. In this story, a writer’s narrative becomes ‘real’. When he writes of a woman finding a clitoris behind her knee, his partner wakes to find her own clitoris in that location.
Anthropomorphism, love and humour abound. Cross-species love emerges in ‘A Mexican Legend’. Domestic issues appear in ‘Mr Bird and the Big Meow’. A man is mistaken for a bush but still finds love in ‘Kingston and the Bush Woman’. Fraternal love is visited in ‘The Man Upstairs’, which has a much darker feel than other stories. The story before this one, ‘Two Arms’, has a Kafka-esque sensibility.
If I were in a position to direct Jones’ future writing, I would suggest more stories with the emotional depth of ‘Close Your Eyes and Listen’. This is writing in its most sublime form, with the power of words unsaid outweighing those on the page. Jones has an imagination unbound by mundane reality. His quirky stories offer a unique escape from its drudgery.
Reviewed by Bob Moore
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Award-winning California writer Allen C Jones serves as associate professor of Literature at the University of Stavanger, Norway. His research focuses on literary gaming pedagogy and his creative work includes a novel (Her Death Was Also Water), a poetry collection (Son of a Cult), a short story collection (Big Weird Lonely Hearts). His hybrid work includes the digital game Dylan Thomas Dominoes, a rap, spoken word, a metaphor-tracking interface, a web-based story, and a game-based translation piece.
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