Review: The Roadkill Collection
Jon Sindell
Flash Fiction
110 pages
6” x 9” perfect-bound trade paperback
ISBN 978–0990487234
First Edition
Review copy: PDF
Big Table Publishing Company
Boston, Massachusetts
Available HERE
$14.00
Review originally published on 3/6/15
Jon Sindell uses a variety of topics to showcase his talent in short verse in his flash fiction collection, The Roadkill Collection. He tackles topics that make you laugh and smile, before surprising you with more controversial content, such as gender identification, self-mutilation, and the consequences of our daily choices.
He shows himself a master of the plot twist in such shorts as “Pop-Up,” where it begins with scattered memories told by friends and loved ones, ending with:
It was just the hypnotic spell of the ball, rising up from the batter’s box […] looking like the white rubber ball his dad had thrown to him thousands of times […]. [S]ometimes he’d catch them, and sometimes he’d drop them–and when he dropped them, he’d dive to the ground […] as if the winning run of the last World Series ever were standing on third […]. He dove like that when the ball brushed his fingers and sank below the third-deck railing. (p. 58).
Jon has an impeccable knack for capturing the voice of each of his characters, giving you the ability to relate wholly and completely to a seventy-something man in one story, and an eight-year-old boy in the next. His layout, from thoughtful, to pensive, to amusing and back again, is excellent for leading you through the importance of his topics without leaving you feeling exhausted from an emotional rollercoaster. His work is relative to that of Joseph Michael Owens’ in the way that he is able to take a mundane task or daily practice and make it into an entrancing tale you find yourself referencing in your day-to-day life. The Roadkill Collection is an excellent collection in which to lose yourself, be it for a story or a day.
