One Last Good Time by Michael Kardos

Why don’t more people talk to their 9^th-grade teacher’s ashes, and to rabbits? Or maybe a better question: why don’t more people admit to this kind of thing? Personally, I judge the kindness of strangers based on the grill-face that their car seems to make. What? Kardos’ stories prove that there are an awful lot of exceptional writers these days, but an astonishingly few who have maintained a really clever, sharp sense of creativity. And I do mean “prove”: these stories remind you of a child’s imagination—utterly hilarious and unique. Plus, he’s able to pull off equally unique structure—a play with genre that stretches the definition of fiction, in a really good way. The title story is almost a document: clinical. It’s like a little map for how the mind works: how your own life can get out of your control, but that you’re always still there, thinking it through. These stories are linked, through a fictional town: Breakneck Beach, NJ. They’re linked the way a small town always is: overlap, crossover. Smells and streets and restaurants. Kardos gives his reader credit for knowing what life is like, never giving more than he needs to in order for the story to really shine, over and over. -Micah Ling