Two Reviews of Trickster Tales
Editorial Reviews
From Booklist
The trickster of the title is the force of transformative chaos, a god-devil who appears in many mythologies to mock our certainties and tempt us into dissolution or freedom. Briggs finds the trickster in human form: as a strangely powerful hooker, as a woman who believes herself to be a shaman. But the trickster also haunts us in enormous bugs, flying bowties, and mass-production lines that won't turn off. There is a breathless quality to Briggs' fiction that is not so much suspense as a sense of suspension, as though the moorings of reality had been cut. Often his stories start with a deceptively straightforward scene: a woman coming upon her husband talking to two coworkers, and none of them notices her presence. But then the trickster energy starts its work: the husband's thoughts turn into insects and devour him. Whether in brief flash-fiction or in more apparently conventional short stories, Briggs is masterful at creating dreamy but somewhat nightmarish narratives. Patricia Monaghan
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From Margin, the Matical Realism Magazine
AS A way to pay tribute to our contributors over these last five years, we offer these brief reviews of books published by our writers. We hope you'll seek out these books and read them. Your support of imaginative literary writing is essential, not only to their careers, but to the spirit and purpose of all creative writing. All reviews written by MARGIN editor, Tamara Kaye Sellman
JP Briggs
~ Trickster Tales ~
Short stories which evolve around a loose concept of the Trickster, a Native American mythological entity which behaves in ways both foolish and wise. Briggs captures the humorous essence of the Trickster well in his stories. Stories to read, in particular: "An Urgent Message," "The Bow Tie," "Haircut" and "A Disproportionate Affair." I couldn't put down this collection.
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