Elinor reviews Down on the Other Street by Jennifer Cie

This short story collection focuses primarily on bisexual characters, and all but one of the stories star a bisexual woman. Bi and pansexual women often get short shrift as characters, and it was great to read about bi women as main characters. The women in Cie’s stories were portrayed as everything from unapologetic to in love to angry to vulnerable, and above all, completely human. Just five stories long, and some of them quite short, this book is a quick read. It’s also affecting. Cie is an excellent writer with a lovely command of language. This self-published book does have a handful of typos, and my copy had a formatting error that put one page in the wrong story, which distracts slightly from the excellent quality of the work.

Four of the stories are written to a “you,” casting the reader in a role important to the narrator. I found this technique confusing in the brief, furious story, “F&F.” The vignette “The Five: Time With Red Freckles” pulled it off better, though I wished the story were a little longer and included more background information. “Intellectuals Are Fools,” a story documenting every person the narrator had ever kissed and retelling the tales to a former caretaker, reminded me a little of a Thought Catalogue article circa 2012. (That can be good or bad depending on your preferences). The technique worked best in the opening story “The Photo.” This moving relationship story makes the reader the beloved, and is the only story with a male narrator. By the end of “The Photo,” I had tears in my eyes. It managed to be touching without being cloying, and to be sweet while still remaining honest.

The final story, “The Blue Bullet,” about an extra marital, interracial relationship in the late 1930s and early 1940s, was the longest and most fully realized. I dare you to read it without having your heartbroken at least a little. Though many of the characters in this collection are searching for acceptance of their whole selves, the protagonist in this tale stands firm in her own identity, refusing to be defined by anyone else. The story was complete, but I found myself wishing it were a novel so I could dive deeper in the story.

I highly recommend this short story collection. It’s beautifully written, emotionally engaging, and puts bisexual women center stage. I’m also going to be on the look out for more from Jennifer Cie. She’s a writer worth reading.