Spinning to Mars by Meg Pokrass (Blue Light Press, June 2021) is an introspective collection of linked micro-fiction. For those who might be unfamiliar with this form, micro-fiction is an even more abbreviated style of storytelling than flash fiction, though micro still technically falls under flash’s umbrella. Pokrass is an award-winning expert of the genre, and reading this collection highlights the form’s charms, strengths, and possibilities. The inciting incident of the book as a whole is the loss of the protagonist’s father when she is five years old. The feeling of his absence permeates the sequence. It is as though he is on another planet, unreachable and alien. The fatherless protagonist grows up spinning (sometimes sure of what she wants, other times disoriented and confused). Always, though, she carries with her a profound sense of solitude in spite of the presence of her mother, boyfriends, husbands, lovers, children, and cats. Most of the individually titled micros in Spinning to Mars are less than half a page long. The reader may feel an impulse to rush through them, but I’d encourage against it. These micros are like the narrative cousin of haiku: they are most impactful when, rather than reading ten continue...