4 out of 5

As ‘One Story’ entries allow to be highlighted, short stories have the boon of being able to pull off some narrative tricks that might feel more sloppy or ruinously manipulative in a full-length tale.  ‘All Lateral’ pulls something of a quick switch in tone in its latter quarter that only works because of the snapshot nature of the story.  The suddenness is effective at underlining the moment’s importance to our lead character – something of a layabout, wandering from menial task to menial task – and could have bolstered the story to perfection had the pacing not hiccuped slightly prior to the shift, and this is where books do have some wiggle room that shorts don’t: a writer often feels their way into a tale, making the opening pages or chapters read slightly differently than the middle or end.  It can be hard to edit this out if the writer is an entertaining one – as Sumell is – and ‘entertaining’ here simply means having the ability to move you from page to page, regardless of the emotions involved – but the between-the-lines effect can be to undermine certain elements of the text.  At a couple hundred or more pages, an author has time to let the reader settle into the changes in voice; ‘All Lateral’ has 24 pages, so as we transition from the more caustic, rapid-fire wit of the first half of the tale to longer, more contemplative paragraphs – including a section that belies an intelligence to the narrator that wasn’t so previously apparent – we notice the change and are thinking about that when this tonal switch occurs.  Seeds for this device are fed in, so it by no means is overly abrupt, I’m just examining for myself (in this here review) why it didn’t hit me as much as I feel it should’ve.

But anyhow.  Sumell has a very strong and emotive narrative voice, and has the special skill of slinging around abrasive language without it feeling childish.  In telling us about this layabout, he even manages to make us smile and feel the pangs of lack of meaning many of struggle with all at the same time, within the same sentence, and without trying to hide it.  It’s a very natural, humanistic style, and when the intent of the story’s title is spoken to, it resonates immediately – like almost every aspect of ‘All Lateral’ – because of Sumell’s strength with this style.