Jen Calleja

Absurdist and Oblique Shorts
Review of the Prototype Publishing paperback edition (Feb. 1, 2020)

The cover image of I'm Afraid That's All We've Got Time For provides a signal that not everything in this book is as it would be in regular life. A disembodied hand motions at another hand in the universal gesture of "Time's up!" or "Time is running out!" Opposite to real life, it is the hand which is doing the gesticulating that is the one which is wearing a watch.

Jen Calleja takes seemingly show more normal events but turns them in sometimes absurdist or oblique ways which results in humour and satire from unexpected places. My favourites here were those most associated with writers, which were Literary Quartet and Apart From When. The former is summarized in the book's synopsis as "A novelist questions why she's been shortlisted for the Prize of Prize's Prize" (which made me think of the Booker of Bookers Prize from a few years back). The latter has a writer going AWOL while returning to their hometown for a book reading event and producing a short story from the experience. Gross Cravings has a pregnant woman craving luxury consumer goods instead of the usual standard quirky food cravings. All of the stories were enjoyable as they took an offbeat view of otherwise normal activities and the results often were a social commentary on the events themselves.

I read I'm Afraid That's All We've Got Time For as the April 2020 book perk from my support of The Republic of Consciousness Prize for small independent publishers.

Trivia and Link>/b>
You can read Literary Quartet at the Somesuch Stories site . show less

Mostly unintelligible pretention, with a few good bits. Shame, as the book itself is well made and lovely to hold. I might, perhaps, get the latest edition out of curiosity to see whether it's a less deliberately obtuse collection.