Fat Time and Other Stories, Jeffery Renard Allen, 2023.

This is an impressive short story collection with far ranging settings and narrative styles. I didn’t sense that there was a universal theme between stories other than the exploration of Black lives, and this worked really well. Many stories were written in a style that I have seen called fictionalized history, speculative history, and alternative history where Allen reimagines the lives of well-known figures, such as Mile Davis and Muhammed Ali. I read in an Allen interview his suggestion that he sees this as riffs on small incidents in these peoples life’s and I found them quite pleasurable. Stories take place in Tangier, during an albino revolt, in Australia and in more local settings such as a high school.

If there is commonality between the stories I see it as the exploration of time. For example, in several stories there is the suggestion of Fat Time, or what I took to mean the moment that past, present, and future occur at the same time. For example in the story Circle we learn of a young woman caring for her dying mother but we also learn that she is also dying in the same manner. It’s more subtle than that in most stories, more like the feel of the narrative style where you float between past, present, and future. It is a fun, circular story telling method but not without worthy reading challenges.

The most straight forward story as far as narrative style and setting, and also one of my favorites in the collection, is Big Ugly Baby. The story deals with friendship, bullying, masculinity, and developing sexuality. It is beautifully written and expertly deals with coming of age in a time when norms are so aggressively militant.

I will definitely search out and read more Jeffery Renard Allen. He has an older story collection as well as a couple of novels available. Based on how much I enjoyed Fat Time I think it would be time well spent reading him further.