I have read Diane’s stories over the years and always been struck by her ability to evoke situations and emotions in clear, direct prose. That skill is evident here. A book about grief inspired by personal circumstances could easily become mawkish and self-indulgent. That certainly isn’t the case here. The flash fictions in this linked collection are a powerful and unsentimental evocation of a family living with the sudden loss of an adult daughter. Each flash is firmly rooted in the everyday, offering a window into the family’s different experiences of grief. Told in four different voices the collected stories convey that there isn’t a single way of grieving and that there isn’t a direct path through grief. Flash fiction as a form demands an outstanding final sentence and Diane delivers on that score every time. There were times when those sentences made me catch my breath.

And, yes, there were places I cried but I came away with the sense of a warm, connected and loving family discovering ways to survive their devastating loss.