Sorry I Ruined Your Orgy, Bradley Sands’ third book, and second fiction collection of 2010, offers leaner, tinier morsels of the twisted fiction we’ve come to love and expect from The Sands. Cramming 52 flash fiction and prose poetry pieces (31 of which are previous published) into a scant 128 pages can be successful only when the author is cognizant of the capabilities and expectations of the short short form. Sands definitely is. He understands that single-page bizarro fiction is meant to be clever. He understands that when titles are almost as long as the tales they name, that the reader expects irony. Sands knows that a collection called Sorry I Ruined Your Orgy is not one meant for the Oprah couch, but perhaps instead for the Oprah toilet.
Sands prioritizes concept over plot, over language, and over characterization. The plots move with the matter-of-fact sensibility of an oral parable (“He has been looking for his lost remote for the last ten years. His remote is not underneath the couch cushions. His remote is not in the refrigerator. His remote is not floating in the clouds” pg 19); an equaled simplicity of language; and the characters maintain a moral indifference that only occasionally breaks down to reveal lessons learned. In one example of the latter, a story called “Braven Contestant of Faith,” the Catholic concept of Limbo is treated as a game show, with the ultimate lesson being that God designed it that way on purpose.
Despite Bradley Sands’ impending graduation from the Naropa University MFA program, his skewed sensibilities toward the very concept of story have thankfully not dampened. Here’s hoping that despite any forced intellectualizing, Sands continues to treat his rendering of the human condition as an amoral and contagious one.
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