Review
“Animals and plants can talk without mouths.” - Gort Taking time out of his moral crusade with Yuck!, James Andre presents a collection of eleven flash fiction pieces for your edification and enjoyment. The subject matter is monsters, human or otherwise, as Andre explores the definition of the term “monster” and turns in a surprisingly strong collection. If you like flash fiction, and who doesn't, then this is a collection that you will be wanting to read. Lets fire up the electrodues and cast some light on what might be lurking in the shadows. Within the pages of Monster Addict you will find the normal assortment of nightmares one would expect to find in a horror collection. We're got psychos, nutters, werewolves, zombies, talking spiders, and monsters that prey on the edge of darkness. Andre delivers the creatures the collection's title refers to and doesn't take a backward step in showing them in all their gore detail, or in as much detail as flash fiction allows anyhow. Where Monster Addict drifts from the normal horror collection is in the prose style, that very much delivers up our main treats in a nightmarish, surreal fashion. Don't expect the normal story structure here, Andre takes an almost Kafka approach to things, though we do get a huntsman rather than a cockroach if you wanted to be pedantic, and writes from a very different perspective than one might reasonably expect. So, for example, in the zombie piece The End's Not Too Bad If You Are Already Decomposing Nicely we get a revenge tale wrapped in a zombie framework, that calls to mind the Twilight Zone episode where the dude survives a nuclear holocaust and is initially excited because he has the chance to finally read a whole bunch of books, until he finds his reading glasses have been smashed during the conflaguration. Andre writes with an often times ironic twist that raises the pieces in this collection above the normal mood items that tend to contaminate, for mine, flash fiction. You could readily envisage a television series based on the pieces in Monster Addict that would quickly achieve cult status. All of the flash pieces presented in the collection are pretty solid in terms of writing style and getting their message across. You will need to re-read a few pieces as the intent of some of the writing is not readily noticable till the final few words, so there is some work involved for the reader wanting to get full value here. If after a safe read that gives up it's meaning in neon flashes then you are in the wrong place, Andre writes with an increasingly ironic flourish in some pieces, and just a stretch for mood in others. The pieces don't set out to line up targets and then strafe them, but there is more to be taken from the collection than simply something to read to fill in the time before turning out the lights at the end of the day. Andre recognises I think that safety in dark genre reading is not a foregone conclusion, and the Author takes the sort of risks one would expect in a self published work. I was actually quite surprised by how good and how very polished the pieces in the collection turned out to be, the actual packaging of Monster Addict doesn't indicate the quality the reader will discover between the pages. So that was a pretty cool treat and a welcomed surprise. I'm going to go out on a limb here and state that James Andre rivals the great Australian flash fiction writer Shane Jiraiya Cummings in both style and content. Also noteworthy with this collection are some striking illustrations provided by various local Artists, and perhaps showing James Andre is still only dipping his toes in pure prose with more than a firm grip on the graphic side of things. Tom Bonin, Frank Candiloro, Brendan Halyday, J Marc Schmidt, and James Andre himself add some artistic flair to proceedings. There's an intensity to the collection that I certainly enjoyed and I had a high old time reading the pieces, and in some cases re-reading individual items to get full enjoyment and meaning. James Andre shows an amazing ability to use the language to it's best ability, and thankfully writes clearly within the dark genre. It's been a while since I got my sticky paws on a flash collection, so I was a happy camper when Monster Addict surfaced in the review queue. Full recommendation on the collection, as a debut release it shows a Writer with a lot of potential is upon us.
ScaryMinds Rates this read as ... Seriously excellent flash collection
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