Frenemies by Destiny

Here, words and feelings come together in intimate encounters and through their implausible yet inevitable affairs alter each other-and in turn the reader. Written by the author of Visits to the Confabulatorium, this imaginative collection of short stories gleams with linguistic and psychological possibility. In these pages, the reader will find admiration and affection turning an apartment into a dormitory for the past selves forsaken by a friend. Panic launching a frantic search for lost concentration. Anxiety spurring on a plea to abandon plans for withdrawing from society by way of invisibility. Frustration at getting too much sympathy when the 9th bundle of it shows up. Annoyance at a long-overdue turn to use the taste in music shared with a friend. Disgust when swallowing someone else’s pride. In Frenemies by Destiny, unusual situations combine with familiar feelings, and friends find themselves in new territory where intimacy, vulnerability, uncertainty and even hostility lie in close proximity. Here, readers are invited to find out if the compass of intuition leads characters towards new emotional vistas or utterly astray, adrift in convolutions of language. I highly recommend Frenemies by Destiny to those who like fresh and intriguing brief vignettes which are complete in their own right while also contributing to the integrated tone and theme of the entire work. I enjoyed Soramimi’s inspection of humanity and society in brilliantly entertaining poetic prose. -Debra Leea Glasheen, author of Backbiters