In the Springtime Everything is New All Over Again by Esmerelda Q Jones: book review

In the Springtime Everything is New All Over Again: A Dark Humor Short Story (2016) is a 20-page story in the genres of metafiction and experimental fiction. 

Metafiction is a literary style in which the writer emphasizes the process of writing as a work of the imagination. It poses questions about the relationship between reality and fiction, usually using irony and self-reflection. I received a review copy of this story.

This story is like Vladmir Nabokov’s 1962 poem Pale Fire, but it is not a poem. It is like Italo Calvino’s 1979 If on a Winter’s Night A Traveler, but it is not about traveling. In the Springtime uses stream-of-consciousness like James Joyce’s 1922 Ulysses, without the carefully structured narrative and minus 790 pages. Actually it’s more like John Bach’s 1960 The Sot-Weed Factor. Or maybe not.

What is is really about? In the Springtime is set in contemporary America, I guess. 

Some people would say the story is about Carl and Edwina. Is Carl an ‘old grandpa kind of guy’? No, he’s not really anybody’s grandpa. Maybe Carl isn’t an old guy after all.

It’s about the author, the fictional author (of no name) thinking about writing a book. Maybe the character will be called Carl, and maybe he has a girlfriend or wife or whatever called Edwina. Is it autobiographical and therefore a self-reflection by the real author Esmerelda Q Jones?

It could be a story about Carl and Edwina, but this is not a story – yet. It is the process of writing a story. It is the what ifs – what if Carl does this or should he do that?

In any case, although this ‘dark humor short story’ is only 20 pages, skip the first three pages (they will make you NOT want to read the rest), and start on page 4, where it begins …’Oh man! That Carl just has no luck at all!’

MARTINA NICOLLS is an international aid and development consultant, and the author of:- The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).