Following her successes from All the Ghosts We've Always Had, critically-acclaimed flash fiction writer, Jules Archer, returns to the dinner table with Little Feasts, her debut short story collection. The stories are a table-long buffet of femininity, a lying tree, childhood innocence, toxic masculinity, and a 20-pound cast-iron skillet. Works within have been featured in Five:2: One, SmokeLong Quarterly, Maudlin House, PANK, and more.
Little Feasts uses all of its appendages to do exactly what it was meant to do: chop you up and feed you til you burst. Archer's prose cuts close to home with these tiny tales. Don't sleep on it! Grab one from Thirty West before they're gone.
So thrilled to be working with Jules in an effort to gain this gorgeous little book of hers some publicity. Seeking reviewers and interviewers. Message me directly if you're interested!
Thank you to Thirty West Publishing House for providing me with a copy of this novel for review purposes. Can I sell this to you as the perfect quarantine read?? Because it is!!
If you are anything like me, then you have had some moments this year where you lacked focus and attention span better than a goldfish. You just needed something short and funny that required minimal effort, but you cannot keep scrolling to the end of your social feeds (how is this possible?!)
This short stories collection served me with every bit of delightful crazy I didn’t know I was craving. Bite sized stories that said more in a page than some books say in 300. These stories were delightfully obscure, I highly recommend it but you need a quirky sense of humor or you won’t adore it like I did!⠀Standing ovation to Ms Archer!⠀(My favourite is the ice cream one, I will never look at a pink spoon the same way again! 🥄🍨)⠀
I hope you enjoyed my thoughts on Little Feasts. Have you read this? Tell me what you thought!
Visceral. Slightly askew. These stories are not quite right and that makes them even better. The stories move in one direction - BOOM - you end up in a totally different place coming to the end. Oh, how I smiled throughout. Such enjoyment. It was so worth it. I am now attempting to find another book by Jules Archer's called, All The Ghosts We've Always Had.
Thanks to Lori Hettler (publicity), Thirty West Publishing, and Jules Archer for a digital copy of this book in return for an honest review.
A truly bite-size flash fiction collection that has big eyes, big teeth, and a big stomach.
I was delighted and shocked by this horror collection, and it left me hungry for more. Archer has a perfect sense of timing, consistently giving the reader a twist or catch when they least expect it, even when the story is only two pages long.
The collection is decidedly feminist, reveling in the horror that can only come from or be enacted upon women. From a woman whose monthly cycle is linked up with garbage day to the reincarnation of Anne Boleyn to girls trying to escape their father's cult, these pieces give brief flashes into sad realities, bizarre situations, and the scary people who are definitely out there, waiting.
My thanks to the publisher for my copy of this one to read and review.
"Little Feasts" is weird and delightful. The characters are compulsive and volatile, but they're all so full of idiosyncratic purpose that you must love them; from the girl whose menstrual cycle syncs with trash day, to the sister who lusts for plants. The prose snaps--crisp and fiery--and Jules Archer intentionally leaves enough space between each word for the reader to drift into increasingly bizarre spaces.
This was FANTASTIC!! Just weird and wonderful and I loved it.
Ok! Here we go:
Little Feasts is a delightfully odd and entertaining collection of short stories by Jules Archer. It’s a short book, coming in just under 80 pages with 18 bite-sized stories.
Each story was relentless, grabbing my attention when my nothing else I picked up did.
I’m in awe of Archer’s writing & I can’t wait to read more!
Thank you for the review copy! I am so glad I got to read it!!
Absolutely brilliant and mesmerizing and inimitable!! Jules Archer is a kickass storyteller! LOVE EVERY STORY IN THIS! Read straight through and couldn't put it down! Outstanding! Get a copy!
If feminism is meant to take revenge on men, then the author has a serious misunderstanding of what it is. The stories portray the men as liars and killers. Ironically, these women were promiscuous, cheaters, and predators and the men ended up dead, killed, or devoured by women.
Midway through the collection there was a line that read, “All things should be equal in love and warped visions.” And it resonated the message I was already inferring; fight fire with fire. But being “equal” doesn’t mean getting even. I believe this is the wrong message when trying to empower women. You don’t have to hurt, you don’t have to lie, you don’t have to be violent. It takes strength to crack someone’s skull open with a 20lbs skillet and it takes a lot more strength to just walk away from toxic situations. I’m all for feminism as long as it's with the right intention. This was just the surface.
Deeper, this was a book about women longing for love, craving connection, and wanting to be noticed. It was weird because the women appeared to be helpless victims but were actually the perpetrators. It’s not like the women were pushed to the edge and lost it, this was lashing out. Idk, I’ll leave it at that.
4 stories out 19 I really enjoyed. Alone, they can be entertaining, but as a collection, no. The more I think about this, the more conflicted I am. I know men can be terrible and in these stories they are. Idk, maybe that’s the point. We’re all preying on each other, hoping to fill our stomachs with the needs that we crave from others. If that's the case, delivery was fine, just served cold.
Children are marched, or forced to crawl, over dead leaves and prairie dog holes, whispering lies to the pecan tree Daddy promised one day to fell. Strip of bark—revealing words etched and glowing underneath. WE are the Lie Tree. Little Feasts is Jules Archer stripping our bark. This debut smorgasbord of stories feels connected, though the cast is ever-changing, bodies haunting these pages, pages brimming with lies, spanning decades, lifetimes. Lies that rule thoughts and actions. There’s something familiar in their consequences. If truth scares you, don’t read it. Archer refuses to whisper. Little Feasts is a megaphone exposing grotesque social-constructs, the radio of Western Culture dialed up to 11 before walking away from the scene of the crime. These stories smash cells, exploiting weakness where they land, merged with blood and pus, invoking a new movement, with hopes the collective feedback can drown out the bullshit. The town criers revolt. Their jobs gone, families gone. Archer abandons the megaphone. Dramatic pause. The megaphone is tossed out. The hopeless mob breaks it into little pieces. The message remains, Archer spitting at the top of her lungs, swatting rivals down with both hands free. She tattoos their foreheads with bad magic. Her stories creep across our idle tongues like secret folklore. “After-the-Baby-Boomers” presents a fatigue and helplessness in the recurring key of inheritance. This is a message encoded for packed stadiums of followers: As she and I wait for pig skins to crackle, (grandmother) tells me about our lineage. Eight generations of women who have learned to love wrong and swing high … A crooked smile unfurls across her face. “It’s inherited,” she whispers. I try not to agree with her. This, too, from “Skillet,” one of the longest of Little Feasts’ nineteen narratives. Mostly flash fiction. A few micros thrown in. Only five clock-in over six pages and might be considered “short stories.” But, as the title implies and characters make crystal-clear, size doesn’t matter; even the one- and two-pagers have you satiated. The longer pieces don’t make the unpredictable characters any less weird, but allow you to bake in the magic of uncertainty a little longer. Fans of lyrical prose should instantly fall in love. There’s situational-mousetrap-comedy, as in “In-N-Out Doesn’t Have Bacon,” where Catherine sets up her younger sister Maria with a handsome coworker, not to help her, but more to seethe and broil at the youthful lust-dance. The coworker sleeps with both of them. After Catherine’s sloppy-seconds, he asks: “So, your sister . . . You don’t think she’s interested or . . .” “My sister fucks plants.” Tom flops on his back, his eyes wide and unblinking. “Fascinating.” I watch his erection throb against the sheet. Readers tired of tropes will find comfort in Little Feasts’ all-female lead-roles. Those sick of literature’s saturation of fucked up characters will find newness. Archer’s care for the compromised, the lot of us wandering lost through life. What Archer has them do demands attention; her charm—muscles flexed that make other writers reading swoon with jealousy—is her characters getting even: All things should be even in love and warped visions. Little Feasts is a rollercoaster—and love is just a word repeated when heard. Fantasies of murder, or being shoved in a trunk, to be murdered, as in “Hard to Carry and Fit in a Trunk,” abound. Folks mislead. The mother in “Backseat Blues” drives her car into a lake to drown herself and abandon her child. Wives poison husbands. Reading Little Feasts is like marathon-watching Investigation Discovery in quarantine, binge-eating ice cream in your underwear. If this scene doesn’t appeal to you, then we’re too different to share this couch. Get up. First lines haunt, gallop fearlessly like headless horsemen into battle. “Everlasting Full” opens: Cold, only cold; hungry, always hungry. Only after she met and ate Eddie did Elizabeth begin to warm up. It delivers. Archer says what needs to be said, in clear, pinging prose. 84 pages that took as long to read as any novel. A series of novels. Whole libraries. And I’m sure—if the experience tells us one thing—as long to write. These stories provide a feast and also feast on you, long after the book is put down. Shock-value isn’t her aim. Town criers fleeing from her dagger-sharp prose. Keep the couch for yourself. I’m gone. These are sentences to be rolled about the tongue, savored: And because she throws no man a bone, she turns on her heel, lifts her skirts, and leaves him and his mouth in a kind of gonzo-gawp. “Bye, boy,” she says. With frantic, page-turning energy, Archer invites us to follow as she steers into realms unfamiliar but resonant, takes us by the hand before bashing our head against a wall of sound. She’s written something great. Buy the book. Taste it. Let it destroy you. Join me on my tricycle. We can try to keep up as she throttles her hog into Darkness.
I just have to start out by saying WOW guys is this short story collection amazing! It’s like nothing I’ve ever read before. The stories in here are sick and twisted in the most beautiful way. I devoured this book in a day. Each story grabbed my attention from the start taking me on one hell of a ride. If you are into weird and twisted things then this short story collection is for you. I just loved this so much. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️/5 stars
Thank you to Lori for reaching out to me about Little Feasts and to the publisher for sending me a gifted copy for my honest review!
This darkly intriguing collection of flash fiction explores the kinds of appetites that few people would discuss over dinner. The stories say much about the scope and strangeness of desire, and in inventive and unexpected ways, they explore the appetite for vengeance–particularly against men who prey upon women. For my full review, see: https://smallpresspicks.com/little-fe....
Voice is strong, technical skill is present. Maybe it's just because I can't relate much to the narratives and themes, so they felt redundant and like the author was rehashing the same story a bunch of different ways. Entertaining and unique, but not for me. Felt overly self-pitying, not the type of "feminine" storylines I'd gravitate toward. I adore evil and cruel women, but I've always disliked it when their awfulness comes from some sort of trauma or is padded by a weakness or insecurity. As bold as these protagonists were, they were not the villainesses or anti-heroines I relate to. Also: waaaayyy too heterosexual for me. Cover is gorgeous though.
Little Feasts is the perfect title for this collection, because every single story is a delicious bite-sized meal. I couldn't get enough of this book and devoured every dish Archer served up. This is feminist horror at its finest, and I cannot recommend it enough.
I can't pick a favorite story, they're all so wonderful. In "Prettier Things" a woman watches her mysterious neighbor and the blondes who enter his home, but never leave. In "Skillet," the title item makes quick work of awful or abusive partners. "Anne Boleyn Could Drink You Under the Table" features the reincarnated English queen's new life and search for revenge. "Far Away from Everywhere" concerns an apocalypse cult, and in "Garbage Girl," a girl's period serves as a warning.
Each story in this collection is delectable, often both bitter and sweet. I'm officially a fan of Archer and will eat up anything she writes.
I devoured “Little Feasts.” This book was exactly as the title states. The author provides you with little horror feasts to devour as you move through the book. It was fantastic The stories were horrific and twisted.
I am a sucker for good opening lines. The book opens with “I know she fucked a tree.” Then the story of Catherine, a woman who continues to mourn her dead husband. Each story highlighted a female character that might not be likable and turns them into these strong women. “An Ice Cream Cone” and “Cyber Soup” are perfect examples of these women becoming strong.
My only complaint is that the book was too short. I might have to re-visit this one again next Thanksgiving. Everyone should pick up a copy of “Little Feasts.”
Re-read October 2023: I originally read this in early 2021 and recently re-read it a handful of times in preparation for the Shorter is Better book club meeting. I love all the spooky stories and how the female characters are so empowering, even if they want to get murdered - the heart wants what the heart wants, and they’re chasing their dreams! In all seriousness, this collection is fantastic and it was so cool to hear more from the author re: her inspiration and writing process.
Originally read 3/2021: This collection blew me away. From the cover alone I knew I was in for a treat (no pun intended), but the actual writing far exceeded my expectations. Each piece was so weird and delightful, like peeking into an entirely different world. Bought at SMOL Fair 2021.
What a fantastic collection! So strange, well written. I look forward to reading more from this author. I only wish that she finds a better publisher. $17 for an 80-page book whose text is very poorly formatted ... would have put me off of the book if the stories themselves didn't shine through so spectacularly.
Jules Archers små historier er netop det, titlen antyder: Little Feasts, små festmåltider, der kun tager et par minutter af gnuffe i sig, men som man kan være noget længere om at fordøje. Og nogle af dem kræver en stærk mave, der er tilvænnet det groteske, så er du advaret. Læs hele anmeldelsen på K's bognoter: https://bognoter.dk/2021/02/02/jules-...
horniest short story collection i’ve ever read. one of these stories is literally just a toe sucking fetish and another was about a girl who had sex with trees. the author clearly has a talent, but the content wasn’t something i enjoyed. i would probably recommend this collection to quentin tarantino.
The prose here was nice, but ultimately I found only two of these pieces — "Everlasting Full" and "Backseat Blues" — memorable. Many of these flash stories didn't have that final oomph moment that would have solidified it in my mind.
This is a devilishly fun flash collection where the stories revolve around the goings on of boys and girls in small towns doing the things boys and girls do to and with each other. It's a collection with a wicked side and a timeless quality to the tales as most could've happened during any time in the last 75 years.
5 ⭐️. A stunningly heart-breaking set of short stories. I could read these stories of vulnerability, revenge, resilience and emotion over and over again.
This small anthology of stories is modern and innovative. Archer writes about the innocence of childhood, femininity, and toxic masculinity.
The originality of Archer’s writing is compelling. Her stories include symbols like a lying tree or a 20-pound skillet and expose humanity in a heartbreaking and distorted manner.