One doesn't need a lot of words to create intricate drama, as Diane Williams (How High?--That High) demonstrates with gratifying abruptness in I Hear You're Rich, her collection of flash fiction. These 33 stories, a few as short as a paragraph, pack inordinate complexity into tiny spaces and take unpredictable turns toward unexpected conclusions. Take "A Slew of Attractions," which begins with Williams on a turbulent flight and ends with her musing upon her resemblance to the duenna in a 17th-century painting. A woman in "To What Beautiful End?" broods about her marriage before wondering why dropped vases shatter into "a whole batch of sad, but very sparkly charms," while a fallen plate has only a crack in the middle--a succinct commentary on the inexplicable variations of everyday phenomena.
All of Williams's protagonists make similarly distinctive connections. Consider "Catalpa," in which a woman sees a pigeon and wonders, "Why does this pigeon choose to walk? Why not just fly?" before self-reflecting, "She is not in a hurry either--to face the facts of her marriage." From the elusiveness of love to the desire for escape, the themes here are hard to mine in flash fiction. That Williams does so is a tribute to her talent. A character in "We Had a Lot of Fun Dancing" asks: "what is it that constitutes deep and enduring affection?" In these witty, bare-bones glimpses into the human condition, Williams's characters struggle mightily to answer that question. --Michael Magras, freelance book reviewer