Dinner Time by Holly Howitt
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Holly Howitt’s microfictions confront the reader with an unsafe world on the edge of implosion or disintegration, a world where the contours are forever folding in upon themselves. The tour de force of the collection is undoubtedly ‘Dinner Time’, a sequence describing, in powerfully surreal imagery, the extremities of lust, longing and cruelty, between a man, a woman (and a dog), that is both awful and intoxicating in its attention to detail and its evocation of an obsessed state of mind. Nothing is quite what it seems here; a quality which intrigues the reader, inciting one to turn the page and discover where we are going next. The tales are gripping, the writing is intelligent, measured, funny, frequently delicious and Ms Howitt knows how to apply a sharp twist of the knife, often in a way that is as poetic as it is unsettling.
Richard Gwyn
Holly Howitt grew up in north Wales, and later lived in Cardiff for many years. She is the author of Dinner Time, a collection of microfictions, and a novella, The Schoolboy. She also co-edited Exposure, a striking collection of prose poems and microfictions, with Jan Fortune-Wood. Holly is interested in writing in small forms, but is also currently completing a new novel. She is a university lecturer when not writing. For more information, see www.hollyhowitt.com/