Night Train – 2005

Excellent fiction. Those two words sum up everything that Night Train is about. There is no poetry and only two pieces of non-fiction here, an Amy Bloom interview and a segment on the city of Petaluma, California. Otherwise we have eighteen solid short stories that work with a range of styles and topics. Excellent fiction. Those two words sum up everything that Night Train is about. There is no poetry and only two pieces of non-fiction here, an Amy Bloom interview and a segment on the city of Petaluma, California. Otherwise we have eighteen solid short stories that work with a range of styles and topics. This issue begins with the winner of Night Train’s Richard Yates Short Story Award, Dylan Landris’s “Fire.” This story of a young girl who is drawn towards the bullies that torment her ends fantastically in a way that is both surprising and leaves you with the feeling that “everything happened exactly as it was going to happen.” Other stand-outs for me were John Warner’s idiosyncratic “How The Universe is Going to End” and Paul Toth’s “Better Homes and Gardens,” about a man who is freed from jail yet struggles with his freedom. Toth writes with punchy sentences and develops a strong and engaging voice for this story: “Everything slumped, these shacks, the cars on blocks in driveways, the Tower of Pisa chimneys. Even the cross on the church was out of joint. They’d have a hell of time getting Jesus on that thing. They’d need Roman chiropractors to crack him into place.” I could go on if there was more space, but suffice to say that Night Train is well worth your time. [www.nighttrainmagazine.com/home.html] – Lincoln Michel