Short Fiction Tuesday

Two stories this week, both by Alex Dally MacFarlane. "The City of Lobsters, or, the Dancers on Anchorage St." is the story of a travel reporter to the city of the title. Only, when she's stranded there beyond the end of the season, she learns that the face it wears for visitors is not the full story of the city. The story alternates a sort of grand, mythic tone to this city and what's said of it with the reporter's experiences, which creates a nice movement through the story, and the dynamics of the locals' interactions with visitors, which is more complex than you might think from my description of the story, is well done.

Bopping around links from that story led me to a story of hers that appeared in Sybil's Garage #5: "Tattoos of the Sky, Tattoos of the Days." Since one of my favorite stories I've recommended here in the past comes from Sybil's Garage (Brian Conn's whimsical "Six Questions About the Sun"), I decided to check this story out as well. There's some whimsy here also, and definitely a lyrical feel to the story of two women and the amazing tattoos one inks into the other's skin.