Nine short stories comprise the collection Connections by writer and poet Mihai Brinas. Yet to call them stories is to do them a disservice; they are also poems, or include poems, that make up an integral part of each tale.
The stories seem simple, but deceptively so. “Path to Anywhere,” for example, is about watching trains that pass without stopping, until the day when one with only a single passenger car halts at the platform. And a journey begins.
“The Drawing” concerns a woman condemned to life imprisonment for being a witch, until another prisoner devises an extraordinary means of escape. In “The Crystal Ball,’ the fortune teller places a towel over her head, and disappears, with her client left wondering where he is. “Paintings” might be better titled as “the fishing settlement at the end of the world.”
Mihai Brinas
“Connections,” the title story, is about a patient discharged from what seems to have been a mental hospital. But the state of his clothes and shoes suggests that the former patient might not have been officially discharged. In “The Bait,” a couple on a fishing vacation at a lake are the victims of a crime – and how justice gets ultimately served. “Introspection” concerns a writer who tries to help a neighbor deal with the abduction of her daughter, who had been trying to buy a specific brand of oil paint. And then the story becomes circular – and a story about a story.
“Werewolves” is about a man who keeps finding his garden disturbed and damaged by a large animal, and he hears the stories about werewolves on the prowl. And “The Nightmare” tells a dark tale of a police officer on his way home who hits a barn owl – and how his life changes.
Brinas’ poetry collections are Alignment of Thoughts, Crossroads, Thoughts That Bring Us Closer, and Invitation to Poetry. Born and raised in Romania, he lives in the city of Arad in the western part of the country, not far from the Hungarian border.
These stories are all jarring, slightly offbeat, and sometimes disturbing. They invite you to reconsider the reality you know while they rather poetically ask, “What if?”
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