Flash Fiction
The Ice Cream Vendor’s Song
A richly nuanced collection of very short fiction.
Arresting and original, The Ice Cream Vendor’s Song introduces the edgy side of Laura McHale Holland, whose coming-of-age memoir, Resilient Ruin, won a gold medal in the 2015 National Indie Excellence book awards, New Adult category.
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In this arresting collection of micro fiction, the author tilts the everyday and spins characters in unexpected directions. From an online purchase that takes over a woman’s life to a plain box that brings a tired clerk a magical gift, from a spurned woman hiding in her ex-husband’s closet to a doting wife coaxing her ailing husband to eat, The Ice Cream Vendor’s Song reveals worlds familiar yet strange, haunting yet tender, all rendered with emotional clarity and exquisite prose.
A story from The Ice Cream Vendor's Song
"Still There"
He told her he was done. No more. The shrill voice, the cantaloupes rotting on the counter, rows of yellowed newspapers stacked to the ceiling, the ivy encroaching, blocking out the sun. The years filled with promises broken. He’d had enough.
She sat in her recliner as usual. The TV blared another episode of “The Real Housewives of New Jersey.” Southern Comfort bottles rattled on the floor as trucks zoomed along the nearby freeway.
“I’m not coming back, Mom,” he said. “Not until you do something for yourself, make some kind of effort.” Her skeletal tabby meowed and rubbed against his legs. “I’m taking Daisy with me,” he said. “You don’t even care about her anymore.”
He lifted the cat in his arms and stomped out the door, slamming it closed with his foot. The home creaked. A condolence card fell from the mantle and landed in her lap.
The card was still there two weeks later when her landlord stopped in. Newspapers had piled up on her front porch, and she wasn’t answering the phone.
The coroner estimated she’d been dead at least a month.
Praise for The Ice Cream Vendor’s Song
The Ice Cream Vendor’s Song, Laura McHale Holland’s most recent collection of mystical flash fiction, seduces with a voice more compelling than the mythical siren’s call. But this is an enticement that you don’t want to resist. Holland’s superbly imaginative prose probes a deeper understanding of the human condition and touches tender, guarded places in our hearts.
— Nancy Pogue LaTurner, author of Voluntary Nomads
Laura McHale Holland’s stories are elegant, eeriely haunting and often beautiful.
— Sunny Lockwood, author of Shades of Love
This is a book for writers who want to see the craft at its best and for readers who want to be titillated and thoroughly amazed. I know I was.
— Linda Loveland Reid, author of Touch of Magenta
Honorable mention, Readers Favorite Book Awards, 2015