With such a wonderfully offbeat title, one can only hope the book will follow through with equally unique stories. Thankfully, they do. Tania Hershman’s fictions are full of quirk and a brilliant use of language that quickly accesses the unusual aspects of human life.
In “Einstein Plays Guitar,” that’s just what he does, as well as the piano, the violin, and the saxophone, in a local bar. People look up at the stage, and the first thing they notice is that it’s Einstein, before deciding whether or not he’s playing very well. Often he isn’t, and yet he awes the audience just because he’s there.
A man plots his suicide in “In Triplicate,” and yet he’s so persnickety about the details, making sure all his papers are in order and that the explanation he leaves behind is clear enough, that he can’t quite go through with it. What if people don’t understand?
“Tiny Unborn Fish,” one of my many favorites, features a woman who has feelings for her lab partner, finds 
herself embarrassed when he brings his girlfriend in to view his research, and then announces the two will be married. The narrator wonders if his fiancé doesn’t see what a moron he is, how he gets everything wrong, which makes us ponder what it means to be attracted to someone if we’re so willing to deem him as such. Even more so when she realizes that the fiancé does know. The end is a zinger with a reflection on the larvae being studied under the microscope.
These are more on the short story than the prose poem end of flash fiction. Even though they’re short even for flash fiction, Hershman manages to tell full tales, uncanny for their insight into the human condition.
Buy My Mother Was an Upright Piano here.
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