MittKelma 
by Rita Saliba. Available from Midsea Books.

Short stories can be very long, and even those of an average length can be a few thousand words long. In this collection, Rita Saliba has decided to write mini-stories, all exactly a hundred words long, and has written a hundred of them.

Many of them are first-person narratives, reminding the reader of what she says in her foreword to the book, that there are autobiographical elements in a number of the stories. Another interesting statement of hers in the foreword is that each story is by way of being a little trip she and the reader have ‘woven’ together, meaning, I imagine, that the stories are interplays of her reactions to her experiences of others.

Most of the pieces have a satisfying completeness. The best ones end with a punchy line that is amusing, such as Rabja, where the narrator suffers the tirade of a shrewish wife with equanimity, revealing in the last sentence that his hearing-aid had been switched off while she was speaking. More disconcerting to readers living through this pandemic year is to discover at the end of Passi that the narrator’s acts such as looking for remnants of food in an empty supermarket are due to his or her being the only person in town spared by a supervirus.

Terapija alternattiva is an amusing piece, surely autobiographical in nature. Gustav has tried to find means of ridding himself of his depression, and has failed again and again. He has always sought to do things, such as changing wives, to alienate him from his ailment, but succeeds only when he begins to write stories for others.

He has always sought to do things, such as changing wives, to alienate him from his ailment

Another piece about making things for others is Qlugħ, where a model yacht made by the narrator attracts attention for different reasons, but not for the one the maker had in mind. This seems to be a comment on the different ways in which a created work affects different viewers, and rarely to the maker’s satisfaction.

In some cases the author wants to create a frisson. In Forensika, the story is narrated by a forensic scientist who finds herself the victim of a criminally-minded colleague, whilst in Abrakadabra, a woman who has served as a magician’s subject for tricks lets us into a gruesome secret, while making us chuckle rather than shudder.

But perhaps the most chilling story is Ħelsien, told by an insane narrator. Indeed, each story in MittKelma will make you eager to read the next.