new in 2009
Red Hen Press
Trickle-Down Timeline
In the era just before computers, at the dawn of "safe sex," for a sub-generation of people who came of age without a war in Vietnam to unite them, the stories in Trickle-Down Timeline are glimpses into individual lives subtly influenced by the political and social milieu of the 1980s. For some people, the surplus and glut of the 80's were part of some other world, not theirs; and it couldn't be a "me-generation" if they didn't know who they were or where they were going. They were often just finding out what they were going to want; or they were, in starting out, already where they were going to end up.
"Cris Mazza chronicles the 80s as the media would like us to forget them, a decade not dictated by yuppies driving Porsches and dining on nouveau cuisine, but by financially struggling young couples and allegedly liberated women whom the myth of "having it all" has left with little. Trickle-Down Timeline encapsulates the Reagan era with more ingenuity and genuineness than a dozen Bright Lights, Big Cities and Less Than Zeros, and proves that Mazza's reputation as a formal innovator is still going strong, and is coupled here with the emotional wisdom that comes with hard-won experience."
Gina Frangello
Author of My Sister's Continent
These are amazing stories. Nonlinear and impressionistic, they burrow beneath the surface of Ronald Reagan's America to explore the moody underside of the cold war and conspicuous consumption, finding their inspiration in the lives of characters who can neither manage the yuppie lifestyle, nor find their own way to live life in the 'eighties. There's a sure-handed subtle intelligence at work in these stories. Pinned down by historical facts, they circle, they scheme and brood, trying to escape their own dimensions. In the end they often seem to return to the place where they started, still arguing with themselves: The 'eighties were this way; the 'eighties were that way--scary, sad, ironic, absurd. And, each story reminds you that you were there. A totally fresh slant on historical fiction, Trickle-Down Timeline is one terrific read.
Barbara Croft
Author of Moon's Crossing and Necessary Fictions
"Cris Mazza's considerable genius is that she sees what the rest of us are unwilling to see and says what we are unable to say. The stories in Trickle-Down Timeline are bold, risky, and exhilarating. Mazza explores the brave new world of the eighties with unflinching honesty and with a narrative virtuosity that both entrances and unsettles. What talent, what nerve, what an achingly beautiful collection."
John Dufresne
Author of Requiem, Mass