Baby is a Thing Best Whispered by Keely O’Shaughnessy
A must-read flash fiction collection
“Before the rehearsal dinner, I learnt that only thirty hours after conception a fertilized egg begins to divide and starts to grow, and I thought I could sense the swelling of my shape right then, the quickening of life within me.
Disabled girls aren’t supposed to be married or be mothers. They’re meant to fade into dirt like leaf mulch. Yet here I am wearing an off-white dress and drinking fizzy grape juice from a champagne flute. The pearl of life in my belly only the size of a mustard seed.” — Keely O’Shaughnessy, Baby is a Thing Best Whispered
The Collection
I have the great privilege of working with Keely at Flash Fiction Magazine. When I first heard that her flash fiction collection, Baby is a Thing Best Whispered, was going to be published, I couldn’t wait to read it. And I didn’t have to wait too long, as Keely was kind enough to provide an ARC copy so I could jump right in.
The title alone intrigued me. Baby is a Thing Best Whispered is a collection of twenty-two flash fiction stories that involve births and deaths. The dying, lost children and those looking to be reborn.
The collection is a coming-of-age narrative that centers around otherness that leads to revelation. Each story is one of self-discovery or escape, all of which are tethered to themes of family and womanhood. The complex relationships of mother/daughter/sister and the love, rage and confusion that come with them.
Quote from “The Asarco Smokestack ‘93” (first published with (mac)or(mic) 2021 on the Wigleaf Top 50 2022).
“When Sal has been gone a full month, I go to the gasoline station on the corner of our street. It’s been repurposed as a religious centre for years now and the pumps on old forecourt are painted with messages from God. During Sunday meetings, when most families were inside, Sally and I used to bike down together and take turns pretending to guzzle from the pump that said, “fill up with old time salvation and you will be reborn.” — Keely O’Shaughnessy, Baby is a Thing Best Whispered
One reason why I’m drawn to reading and writing flash fiction is the limited real estate a writer has to make us fall in love with their stories. These tiny, yet impactful, moments in a character’s life.
When I first opened the ARC copy, I figured I would sit and read just a few stories, but instead, I found myself drawn in and I couldn’t stop reading until the last story. Each story leads to the next, pulling me along the emotional journey (with some 90’s pop culture references, which is always a good thing)
Keely’s use of language in this collection makes me want to reread each story to see how she moved me in such a small amount of space. She is masterful at bringing you inside the mind space of the characters, creating a rich setting, and making you care about what is happening in these worlds, which is not an effortless task, especially with flash fiction.
Blog Tour Reviews
Read more about Keely and her collection in this interview at Master’s Review with author Austin Ross.
Read Mandira Pattnaik’s spotlight on Keely’s collection and a craft article on how to write circular stories.
Read the review by Briefly Write.
Read the review by Emma McEvoy.
Where to Purchase
Want to purchase your own copy? (well yes, of course, you do!).
To order your own copy in the US, click here.
To order your own copy in the UK, click here.
More Raving Reviews
“In Baby is a Thing Best Whispered, Keely O’Shaughnessy brilliantly charts adolescence, trauma, the causal links between actions and generations, motherhood, and mending parental wounds, all with sublime wordcraft and control. Reframing adverse experiences with fabulism, the ethereal and painfully true, this book finds nostalgia without the rose tint, and its thematic arc builds to a masterful crescendo. This is a book I will never forget.”
-Liza Olson, author of Here’s Waldo, The Brother We Share, and Afterglow, EIC of (mac)ro(mic)
“There’s something circular and satisfying about Keely O’Shaughnessy’s debut collection Baby is a Thing Best Whispered — a body of literary work about the body, a body, bodies. In twenty-two tiny stories, O’Shaughnessy whispers and shouts and muses about spider crabs, flotation therapy, the cinema, cookies, biology, teeth, sinners, manicures, mazes, plants and — babies. The language and descriptions are rich and lyrical in these memorable flashes as her writer’s voice draws the reader in close with whispers and truths about linked lives, from baby to adulthood.”
-Amy Cipolla Barnes, author of Mother Figures, and Ambrotypes
“The words in Keely O’Shaughnessy’s debut flash fiction collection, Baby is a Thing Best Whispered shoot off the page, sharp and painful, like a poisoned cupid’s arrow, aimed straight at the heart, where they cut short, but deep, and linger like an open wound. This collection, in its startling beauty and shimmering precision, explores loss and leaving, love and lust, all within the remit of complicated and intimate relationships. An absolute must-read.”
-Laura Besley, author of The Almost Mothers, 100neHundred and (Un)Natural Elements
“Most of these stories are small enough to slip into your pocket and keep there, and you’ll want to do so. There is so much texture and energy contained in a small amount of space; the writing dark-edged, nimble, surprising, full of empathy but never sentimental. Fans of Lydia Davis, Roxane Gay and Laura Lampton Scott will love this collection.”
-Sam Szanto, author of If No One Speaks
About the Author
Keely O’Shaughnessy is a fiction writer with Cerebral Palsy, who lives in Gloucestershire, U.K. with her husband and two cats. She has been shortlisted for the Bath Flash Fiction Award and won Retreat West’s Monthly Micro contest. Her micro-chapbook, The Swell of Seafoam, was published as part of Ghost City Press’ Summer Series 2022. Her writing has been published by Ellipsis Zine, Complete Sentence, Reflex Fiction and Emerge Literary Journal and (mac)ro(mic), and more. Her short fiction has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Best Small Fictions as well as being selected for the Wigleaf Top 50. She is the Managing Editor at Flash Fiction Magazine. Find her at keelyoshaughnessy.com and on Twitter.
✍ Written by Ellie Jacobson, ©2022 all rights reserved.
Ellie is a freelance writer and editor from Minnesota. She is writing her first novel, a psychological suspense novel, while finishing her MFA at SNHU.
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