Train Girl: A Short Story by Kristina Rienzi
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Fast-paced with constant forward movement, Train Girl is a short story I finished very quickly. I couldn’t stop reading it! The author chose a way of telling it that classically means the reader has no idea which direction the story will go in because there are so many options: a mysterious stranger who seems to know exactly what will happen to the main character in the near future. There are tons of different directions an author could take, so I couldn’t predict anything ahead of time. I guessed that the stranger would be correct in his predictions, but to what end? And would he be involved in the things he predicted? Would his telling her the future cause the main character to follow his predictions or break them?
When you think you know where the story has gone, Rienzi takes it in a totally different direction. She whips you out of your, “Ah, now I’ve got it” state of mind and throws you into a scenario you couldn’t guess. Then, when you immediately think you know where it’s gone, she takes it in yet another direction. I’m a great lover of unpredictability and it’s hard to surprise me, but this short story did take me by surprise, especially for how short it is!
I’ll definitely be reading more of Rienzi’s work in the future.