Mall Flower by Tina Barry

(Big Table Publishing 2015)

Mall Flower by Tina Barry is a collection of minimalist stories and poems about ordinary characters undergoing extraordinary loss. A child hungry for her father’s attention before her parents’ divorce, rakes the hair on her father’s legs with a doll’s comb; a family in need of saving, prays to a God in a pink negligee; outside a sweetly wallpapered bedroom, a neighbor’s dead deer is trussed to a child’s swing set. Brassy, unbeautiful, but very cool characters. No matter how hard they try, they falter with their “crowns tilted at unflattering angles.”  They are us. And how fortunate we are to have Barry’s amusing voice bringing us these beautiful quirky stories.