Fourteen Hills – Summer/Fall 2006

I often read on the train, and no issue has brought more questions from strangers than this issue of Fourteen Hills. Much of the credit belongs to this issue’s gorgeous and disturbing cover, The Best Intentions by Tiffany Bozic. The stories are often like the painting—imagistic and somewhat scientific, but with something slightly discomfiting about them.

I often read on the train, and no issue has brought more questions from strangers than this issue of Fourteen Hills. Much of the credit belongs to this issue’s gorgeous and disturbing cover, The Best Intentions by Tiffany Bozic. The stories are often like the painting—imagistic and somewhat scientific, but with something slightly discomfiting about them. Tim Etchells turns Schrödinger’s cat into one of the most fascinating suicides I’ve ever read (yes, the fact that I recognize that does make me uneasy), using pulleys and Quantum Mechanics to be both dead and alive. In Gabriel Haman’s “In Return,” the narrator accompanies their grandmother as she waits for death. Haman’s rhythmic, poetic prose raises the narrative above its well-worn subject matter, “There is the house wren outside the windows after the sun. It is too early for her to nest. We have decided that the small brown bird is a she.” The poetry has a slightly different, more personable aesthetic than the fiction, and the two create an intriguing tension. “Incognito” by Jennifer Merrifield stands out, “fingerprint whorls on wineglass for I’m mute to my name my / tongue having / forgotten its place here with your lovely / big desk and plans outspread.” Fourteen Hills features some of the best art in literary journaldom today, and this issue is particularly strong, especially the paintings of Jacqui Oakley. With all their departments working at such a high level, Fourteen Hills possesses that rare gift to impress both passengers on a train and subscribers familiar with the magazine.
[www.14hills.net]