Eating Batteries and Other Stories from the Middle of the Night
By Pamela Griner (Jour'94) and Ginger Collins (Econ'94)
(Diddy Pubs, 102 pages; 2017)
This collection of short stories is a subconscious exploration of the feminine archetype through fiction. Originally inspired by dreams, Eating Batteries and Other Stories from the Middle of the Night touches on everyday themes of travel, motherhood, addiction, friendship, and marriage. Each story is a journey that expresses the insidious suffering and joy that make us all human. Consequently, the characters are both strange and familiar; the stories both resonant and disturbing. Like our dreams, these stories are unpredictable. You'll never know what's coming next.
In a daring blend of genres including comedy, realism, horror, fantasy, and dystopia, Griner and Collins just may have started a genre of their own. The two met at the University of Colorado Boulder in Spanish class. They started a daily exchange of their dreams. 鈥淣ot those about our future, but rather our bizarre, often uninterpretable, subconscious dreams from the night before,鈥 writes Pamela.
鈥淭his early habit of ours continued long distance over 25 years, and after our successful experiment of joint writing, we are happy to have emerged unscathed to share Eating Batteries with other lovers of short fiction,鈥 she said.