REVIEW

Cold Toast by Kathryn Aldridge-Morris is an incredible walk through three decades of stories about women with feminist dreams, men behaving badly, and the children who grow up in their wake.

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In twenty-nine flash fictions, Aldridge-Morris offers a master class on the form. Ranging from the ekphrastic “These Boots Are Made for Walkin” to the hermit crab “Dinner Party Classic Recipe” to the brilliant extended metaphor of “Elephant,” the reader is treated to a wealth of domestic stories. Enough cannot be said about Aldridge-Morris’s ability to pin an era. She is simply a wizard of time-and-place vibe. Hamlet cigars. Cigarettes stolen from the purses of stepmothers. The hotline to learn the current time of day. Flintstones reruns on television—or better still Hart to Hart. Orange sofas in the seventies. Loop carpet in the eighties. Each detail placed so authentically in its scene that the reader cannot help but be transported.

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The collection begins in the 1970s, a time of women’s lib, serial criminals, continual cigarette smoke, and long calls on rotary phones. “Divorce is like sugar,” one character announces of the era. Men do whatever they want while women wait and wait and wait for the life their women’s studies texts have promised. The kids are—hmm, where are the kids? No one knows. They’re going to have to fend for themselves.

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And they do. As the collection shifts to the 1980s, Aldridge-Morris turns the mic over to a collection of child narrators trying to survive their latchkey, two-household lives. The microfiction “Wall Space” encapsulates the underbelly of blended families brilliantly in 100 words flat: A daughter recounts her dad’s house with his new wife. Photos on display everywhere. Mostly of the stepmom’s kids, though. Often them enjoying a happy time with her dad. The lone photo of the narrator? Replaced with a pet certificate for a dog the stepmom wishes they had.

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As the collection progresses into the 1990s, a new register emerges. The kids have grown up. Whatever they thought about their parents’ choices, they now struggle to make sense of their own messy world. Meanwhile, the parent generation grapples with illness and end of life worries. Everyone is just trying to make it through whatever this thing called life is. And it’s here where this book shines. Because for all the delicious time-period specific feel of the book, there is a timelessness to the struggles of these characters. At the end of it all, we may or may not work through the detritus of our lives, but we will have to say goodbye—and no one has a clear map on how to do that. Aldridge-Morris’s genius is that she doesn’t try to draw one, she merely sits with us while we all stare down the inevitable together.

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Book Details

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Published by Dahlia Books. The volume is 5.25”x 7.75” and is comprised of 51 pages of prose. The cover is pleasingly smooth with phenomenal cover art by Tim Mara. The paper stock is a classic, crisp white.​​ Cold Toast was recently selected as Book of the Month by the Republic of Consciousness Prize, in collaboration with Queen Mary London, University.

 

Cold Toast can be purchased here. Dahlia Books ships internationally (quite quickly too).

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