After the Rapture by Nancy Stohlman

 

 

I know how long this book was in process, as the writer struggled with it through the pandemic, so I’m pretty sure it is coincidental that it finally made it into readers hands the same year the Barbie Movie hit screens. But in many ways, the movie helps extend the metaphor of this smart Novel in Flash. If you don’t know what a Novel in Flash is, you will find not only that Stohlman is at the forefront of this exciting new-ish- form of literature. Each chapter is like looking at a short film or contemporaneous photograph where all the questions of “if” and “how” we have about culture in the 21^st century, when confronted with big box stores, pink plastic worlds inhabited by Fashion Model Dolls who do everything, contrast with ancient scripture. Human nature and confusion frolic with base needs and desire, and the whole doesn’t only make us question how we live but make us finally know we deserve answers.

This is art in high form. While we aren’t always sure we know what it means, we know “it tickled something forgotten, something buried so far down it seemed like a past life memory. Like an alternate childhood. Like fear.”