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52FF is a collection of short stories in the flash fiction format. If you're new to flash fiction, you should know there are various definitions but here, Marc Nash chooses a format of under 1,000 words. This gives him some leeway and so the pieces are in a wide variety of styles - some experimental - but all of them exploring a single central metaphor and all with a darkness about them which is sometimes explicit and sometimes only emerges after you've had time to think and digest.
My favourite was ''The Caller to the Bingo Caller's House Calls "House"'', which begins in a lighthearted pastiche of the "two fat ladies" bingo calls and moves through an explosion of violence to a chilling and cold-hearted finale, and in which everything is implied in a way that makes one's own inferences extremely troubling. It made me shiver. I also loved ''Bowing Out'' which sees an aging ageing actress making up for the last time in front of her brightly-lit mirror. And there's ''27 Grams (The Weight of The World)'' - a marvellous and darkly comedic piece of extended word play based around a strippergram ''deprogramming her strict upbringing''.
Flash fiction is a fascinating form - unlike a traditional short story, the structure is often subtle. You might need to look for the beginning, the middle and the end. The resolution may not be obvious to you. Some aspects of a particular piece may not occur to you until after the second, third or even fourth reading. I love this concept and I think Marc Nash has understood it perfectly. Some of his pieces are smash, bang, inyerface stuff but deliver subtleties on a second reading. Others seem opaque at first but obvious later. Some are funny then sad. Others are sad then funny.
