Flash fiction applies to stories of maximum 1,000 words. One of the most entertaining example in this respect is the SMITH Magazine, whose 6-word game I used to play passionately week after week a couple of years ago. The flash fiction stories do have a plot, dialogues and action, but everything should be concentrated in a very short amount of words. Big literary names as Kafka, Hemingway, Saadi of Shiraz or Daniil Kharms, to mention only few of them tried their hand to this type of writing as well. My latest collection of flash fiction was written by Tolupe Popoola - Memoirs of a Lagos Wedding Planner.
Popoola is a Nigerian-born writers living in England that authored several colllections of short fiction and a novel. Memoirs was my first for me and I am happy to add her on my list of Nigerian writers to follow. The ten stories are inspired by the everyday experiences of a wedding planner in Lagos. A well chosen and a never ending source of inspiration. You got all the emotions, feelings, stress, craziness and family dynamics in short installments.
The tone is descriptive, matter of factly, focused on describing facts and events. Sometimes I had the feeling I am reading some entertainment pages in glossy magazines - the style of flash fiction was actually promoted by glossy magazines like Cosmopolitan, for instace, so the category may suit. As the topic is well chosen, the stories are the various illustrations of the encounters of a wedding planner which happens to operate in Lagos, therefore the geographical and social emphasis.
Some of the stories are so hilarious that I couldn´t stop by laughing a bit. And as I was about to finish the book I started to miss this world and felt a bit frustrated for the limited amount of stories included in the memoir. I would have love to stay for at least the same amount of pages...
Rating: 3 stars
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