Review of Bradley Sides’s Crocodile Tears Didn’t Cause the Flood
In Crocodile Tears Didn’t Cause the Flood, a collection of seventeen magical realism stories by Bradley Sides, the author experiments with unconventional narrative structure, multiple points-of-view, and genre-fusing. Sides can break the rules because he knows the rules. The author avidly contributes author interviews and book reviews to journals and magazines, he is the ultimate writer’s writer who gives back to his writing community in spades and has picked up some the tricks of the trade all evident in his stories along the way.
Like the book’s title (also a play on words) “Rising Action” has a clever title. Sides is masterful at semantics; the title is a double entendre. Due to global warming (or the assumption that global warming is the cause), Earth is covered in water. This is the literal meaning behind the title. But rising action also references a plot point in story. Rising action is the build-up of conflict and tension and is the pivoting moment before the climax when it comes to a head. On a plot diagram, Sides’s story starts with the rising action and then moves into exposition. Using a plot point for the title is ingenious because it sets the tone for the rest of the collection by telling the reader to pay attention. Wake up. Wake up before it’s too late, wake up before we hit the crucial point on the scale—the climax—when the aftereffects are even more disastrous and there is no resolution. The message is simple, yet magnanimous.
Several of the stories focus on ecological horror though some are more hopeful than others. “Rising Action” is a cautionary eco-fictional piece. Even though the planet is in peril, abandoned even by the stars, the moon, and the birds. Even though the character of “man” is no longer, washed away when saving Eva and Girl. Even with all this tragedy a glimmer of hope remains. Life is beginning again. The moon and the stars have returned, and the problem or man is gone. With a new Mother Earth, Eva and Girl are taxed with rebuilding the world man destroyed: “Above the graveyard of flickering stars, bright, beautifully glowing ones were shooting back up into the sky. To try again. Perhaps, believing that this time, it might be right.” The religious and Biblical symbolism is poignant—Sides alludes to Adam and Eve and the Great Flood from the book of Genesis. But Eve’s name is altered slightly because she cannot be the same Eve. That Eve coexisted among Adam or “man,” who Sides ironically places in lowercase letters unlike his other gender-named character, Girl. “Rising Action” at its core acts as anti-creation myth by offering a new creation myth, one where its characters are not separate but connected to the world and are charged with spreading light.
That glimmer of hope Sides presents in “Rising Action” begins to fade with “Our Patches,” and “Festival of Kites,” and is entirely extinguished with “To Take, To Leave.” These latter two flash fiction stories are pocket-sized, post-apocalyptic gems packed full of exquisite imagery. In “Our Patches,” though it’s too late for the characters, they find salvation through storytelling: “There on the floor, we began our patches. Talking and laughing as we trimmed and measured, sharing our chosen stories that would outlast us. About the creek in which one of us trapped minnows in Mason jars…And even, we admitted with acceptance, the ash storm that was as big a part of our lives as anything else.” Though the story is bleak, the very act of sewing together what was once good about humanity to be discovered one day suggests that there is at least a future.
In “Festival of Kites,” the characters commit to an annual depopulation not through war or through a worldwide epidemic but by simply attaching themselves to a kite and flying away. The story is reminiscent of Shirley Jackson’s infamous “Lottery” story. Both of them are about human sacrifice, but Sides replaces Jackson’s stones with kites. In both stories, a box—a black box for Jackson and a delivery box for Sides—deals out death. Like the “Lottery” where the reader is given no explanation for the stoning, Sides does not provide an explanation for attaching humans to kites. The characters are simply following tradition and do not question its origins or reasoning: “There are no announcements for when the Festival will begin. No songs or speeches. The wind simply comes, its initial breeze loving—comforting, even—sweeping in so softly, so delicately, as the ceremony is but a dream that lifts the yearly chosen.” Both authors further the creepiness by setting up the reader with idyllic scenes. In the “Lottery” it’s a perfect summer day in a quaint village, whereas, Sides uses the imagery of colorful kites. The contrast between the character’s actions and complicity and these settings and beautiful imagery is what makes their endings so shocking.
With Crocodile Tears Didn’t Cause the Flood, readers will not find traditionally shaped stories, but neither will they find Sides’s choice in narrative structure, like some experimental fiction, to be gimmicky either. “The Guide to King George” is an employee handbook or how to care for a pond monster. Though it’s truly a guide to getting over grief, the whimsical story form and fairytale elements makes a heavy topic come off much lighter. One of Sides’s post-apocalyptic, eco-horror stories, “To Take, To Leave,” is told in as a second-person point-of-view adventure story: “If you want a second chance at preventing the apocalypse, proceed to (4).”Somehow,being able to choose one’s fate makes the apocalypse less apocalyptic and grim. “Nancy R. Melson’s State ELA Exam, Section 1: The Dead-Dead Monster” is told via a multiple-choice test and includes an essay, graphs, and a writing prompt. And again, Sides toys with titles and double meanings; the title of the student essay, “A Good Monster is NOT Hard to Find” is a nod at Flannery O’Connor’s famous villain, the Misfit, and her story “A Good Man is Hard to Find.” “The Browne Transcript” is a story told verbatim and is a recording of a police interview, video, and later transcription. “There Goes Them Ghost Children” is an epistolary story told in the form of a letter written by a very unreliable narrator to his daughter. “Do You Remember?” is a genius of a story composed entirely in the interrogatory, first-person plural from the perspective of a half-shark, half-human child questioning his/her mother’s memory of their family vacation. Sides’s stories may be outside any realm of orthodox storytelling but are by no means a stunt job. In fact, its unfathomable that any other structure would fit as perfectly as the one he chose for these narratives. They carefully crafted and well thought out.
Though small in stature, Sides’s exploration of the human condition—death, grief, jealousy, neglect, and the sins of the parents—packs a punch. In the same thread as Angela Carter and rather than using atypical characters, Sides chose anthropomorphic ones or ones built from fable, fantasy, and horror. Sides is a playful writer, much like George Saunders, who enjoys ribbing the reader with his unique characters, settings, and story structures. Crocodile Tears Didn’t Cause the Flood is an amusement park ride—a carousal times a roller coaster divided by a Ferris wheel—of terrifically fantastical stories where the reader wishes the literary joyride would never end.
Dawn Major’s debut novel, The Bystanders, was named finalist for 2024 Georgia Author of the Year for Best First Novel. The Bystanders was also nominated for the Townsend Prize for Fiction. Major is an associate editor at Southern Literary Review and advocates for southern authors via her blog, Southernread. Her literary awards include: the Dr. Robert Driscoll Award, Reinhardt University’s Faculty Choice Award, and the James Dickey Review Literary Fellowship. She writes a monthly column highlighting literary destinations called “TripLit with D. Major” for WELL READ Magazine. Major is a member the William Gay Archive and has edited and helped publish the works of the late author. She serves on the board for Broadleaf Writers Association and is also a member of M’ville, an Atlanta-based artist salon. Major lives in the Old Fourth Ward in Atlanta, GA and is working on her next novel, The Dandy Chronicles. For publications and more visit: www.dawnmajor.com.
One response to “A LITERARY JOYRIDE: EXPERIMENTAL FICTION MEETS MAGICAL REALISM | a review by Dawn Major”
Thank you for publishing my review and your continued support of Southern authors and the literary arts overall. Reckon Review is a vital part of the literary landscape.