Rational, cool, elegant: A new voice in Luxembourg literature

Reading Anne-Marie Reuter's writing debut, a collection of short stories entitled On the Edge (Black Fountain Press, 2017), is more like being handed a fistful of gumballs than taken into a close friend's confidence. Whereas fiction often speaks a narrative voice showing you how it is, was or ought to be, Reuter has a more removed approach. It appears simple: she gives you something familiar, a character you've seen and met before; she asks that you take him or her or it away, privately, and enjoy a conclusory taste all to yourself – and what seemed simple, methodical, end-to-end, ends up tasting nostalgic, dismal, harmonic.

The gumball metaphor holds up under another light, too. Reading Reuter's pieces of flash fiction is as welcoming as popping sweets. There are few blockades in disconnected ideas, and no pretension. Rather than testing narrative norms or forms, Reuter blazes a line of understanding intended to continue burning after you've finished reading. 'Miss Gina' and 'School for Life' are perhaps best in this regard, two pieces that swerve gently at the end, leaving an intense flavour in the aftertaste, as you understand for the first time what you thought you'd just understood. The stories are mostly two or three pages only, so, like gumballs, are quickly consumed.