Chasing Nirvana and Other Stories - Rafaa Dalvi - ★★★.¾

AUTHOR: Rafaa Dalvi

GENRE: Flash Fiction Anthology

RATING: 3.75 stars.

Until a couple of years ago, short stories simply meant short stories to me. It's only through my Facebook group and the interactions I've had there with authors that I've learnt about various sub-categories even within short stories. One of these is flash fiction, a very brief short story with sufficient plot and character development. While there is no predefined word limit for it, a hallmark of this genre is a clear plot hierarchy (start-middle-end) while maintaining brevity, and very often, a surprise ending.

"Chasing Nirvana" is a flash fiction anthology that does a great deal of justice to the definition of the genre. It's a collection of 52 short-short stories, and most of these comply with the above requirements.

The stories come from a wide variety of topics and genres: dark fiction, romance, sci-fi, thriller, drama,... The protagonists are good and bad and morally grey. Some stories are straightforward, some are horribly twisted. There's a whole gamut of emotions generated by every story, ranging from goody goody sweetness to absolute horror at the depravity. If you're looking for a common thread tying the tales together, that won't happen. Basically, it's like getting a surprise with every subsequent story; you never know what genre it will come from!

For a self-published book, the writing is impeccable. I could discern very few grammatical errors, contrary to what I've come to accept as inevitable in self-published novels. In many stories, the language is more conversational than formal. But don't be fooled by this; the content is anything but routine. This casual approach creates a deeper connect with the characters, which is usually not possible in stories of this length when authors focus more on vocabulary than vivacity.

As I said above, great flash fiction often includes an unexpected ending. While this doesn't happen in all the stories here, many of the tales include this surprise element at the end, which will catch you unawares and make you reread the story to search for what clue you missed. Most of my favourite stories in this collection were the ones with this kind of unexpected ending.

On the contrary, I feel that the sheer variety of genres works both for and against the book, depending on what kind of a reader you are. For instance, if you prefer only light-hearted tales or only dark fiction, you'll still feel dissatisfied as the book includes both. Readers who are more diverse and open-minded in their reading preferences will certainly enjoy the book better than those who prefer specific genres. Those who don't like digging into the depths of human darkness will be put off by some of the tales.

This next feedback point comes from my personal reading preferences and isn't necessarily a shortcoming of the book. The language and content is R-rated in many of the stories. I'm not talking of profanity; that's something de rigueur in darker fiction nowadays. But at times, this book crossed my personal barrier of permissible sexual content. This took away my enjoyment in a few of the stories because I was turned off by the lewdness. (Yup! Turned off by sexual content. The irony! 👀)

I rated the stories individually, as I always do for anthologies. Of the 52 stories, a whopping 25 stories came within the 4 to 5 star range and 17 stories came within the 3 to 3.75 star range. That's a great deal of good content for sure.

I'd recommend this collection to short story lovers, as long as you are open to the range of genres and the variety in content. Preferably, don't read it in one shot. 52 flash fiction stories in a go can be saturating. Take it up a couple of stories at a time, so that you can relish each tale properly.

This book is free for KU subscribers.

My thanks to the author for a complimentary copy of his book.