Author: Christina Milletti

 ISBN NUMBER: 0-88748-453-0

The following review was contributed by: Deborah Augustin

Despite the different settings, the different characters, The Religious and Other Fictions are perfect together in this collection. Each story asks the question, what is fiction and what is fact? One person’s truth is another’s fiction and vice versa. The title itself is apt, encapsulating the essence of the stories, fictions.

It took me some time to read this book. Not because the stories were long, the shortest is a brief six pages long, but because these stories need time. It may be just me, but I do think that to really savour the stories inside, a little time has to be taken. It is a testament to Christina Milletti’s writing that after finishing each short story I had to stop and think about what I had just read. This book was not something I could pick up and finish in one sitting even though it was not long.

The stories all have a glint of the fantastical in their eyes; not quite here, not quite there. If you were to read the whole thing from start to finish, it would be quite a journey. From the amusing opening, The Retrofit right, down to the last story, Amelia Earhart’s Last Transmission, a whole gamut of feelings and emotions are evoked.

The writer’s gift lies in her ability to capture a moment, to take something fleeting and pin it down for us to see. The prose used fleshes out her characters and stories nicely, you can clearly see and feel what is going on. Never fear the use of clichés that so many writers fall into when using similes. From Sweetbreads, “…her youth was like a scar she touched infrequently…” This is just one of the lines that struck me, there are plenty more throughout the collection.

With that said, I had some trouble with the endings of her stories. These stories are by no means literal, they are not meant to be skimmed through, I believe. Ms. Milletti’s target audience is probably not of the sort that reads paperbacks on the bestseller lists, aiming perhaps at the slightly literary minded crowd. Still, this doesn’t make up for a lack of bite at the end of some of her stories.

An example of what I am talking about is the title story, The Religious. The story is of a man who sells maps to tourists, maps that eventually lead tourists to the Restaurant Suisse. The story builds and builds, you want to read it to the end, the pacing makes it page turning. Yet, at the very end you wonder if maybe something else could have happened. 

There are a few other stories where the same thing happens. You reach the end and wonder if you are missing something. Don’t let this stop you from reading The Religious and Other Fictions however. Its liquid prose alone should be a reason to read it. And even though I have a bone to pick with the way some of the stories ended, it says something that I am already game to reread them and see if I missed something.