I read Randall Brown’s prize-winning chapbook Mad to Live in an hour, an hour and a half, and was sorry it didn’t last longer.  Soon, no doubt, I will have an entire book of his stories, especially considering how quickly Flume Press sold out of the 500 copies printed.  And with good reason—these 18 flash fiction stories about fathers and sons, men who want to make things right, and made up worlds are full of emotion and beauty.   I’ve been reading and rereading certain stories, stretching the time out, especially “The Real,” which was one of the most memorable stories.  The story starts out with a series of questions and then jumps into a first date scenario which ends with the couple going home and undressing.  After the woman tells the man he can touch her, as much and wherever he wants, the writer emerges.  The writer tells us that the story is made up, that it’s all lies, and the only truth is the reader.  I have to admit to being a little jealous.  I didn’t want to be the reader.  I wanted to be the writer, the one making stuff up.  But it’s petty, my jealousy, because here, in particular, I feel like Randall is able to do something I don’t have the skill set for, or I’m too scared to try.  Now that I’m in a creative writing program, I know this is called “meta,” though I’m still uncertain what this means exactly, other than there’s a certain self-consciousness on the part of the writer, and the reader is let in on something of the process.  The whole last section of the book—what if—is like this and I liked it a great deal more than I was prepared to.  It makes me want to write a story about a writer who has writer’s block or something, but I’ll refrain.   I love writers who pay very careful attention to their sentences, like you can tell he/she spent half an hour rearranging words to make sure it had the perfect rhythm and syntax.  I found myself rereading many of Randall’s sentences.  Sometimes he’s able to knock you down.  And he knows exactly where to do it, when it will hit you hardest.  I was thinking I could pluck out a bunch and show you my favorites, but it wouldn’t do them justice.  I’ll do it anyway, but you’ve been forewarned: these sentences lack context.  You don’t know how good they are until you contact Randall yourself and beg him for one of the few remaining copies.   My mother will pick her up, shake Annie as if she isn’t real, and spit into her face, “I’m tired of your mother fucking my husband.” I wonder what Morton wants; most of my characters want to inhabit discarded bodies—that of my grandfather, aunt, mother, brother, ex-es—but Morton feels different.  He wants his own body and life. The best thing about this collection is the way the flashes build upon each other.  Like Kim Chinquee’s Oh Baby, these stories pile on top of each other to create something they aren’t capable of alone, and I think all flash fiction is basically this way, especially with writers who have very distinctive voices.  This isn’t to say the stories can’t stand alone, they can, they’re only better in a collection.  Mad to Live is the kind of book you’ll want to reread—to try and figure out the stories’ secrets and what the writer intended, but mostly because these flashes are complete and whole as they are.