A flash fiction is like a snow globe. A writer creates a miniature world and gives it a good shake, setting glittering bits into motion. These flakes of action whirl and settle, inspiring a jolt of wonderment in the reader, who eagerly awaits the next surprising inversion.

For most of us, the world shrank drastically during the pandemic. Judy Darley has harnessed the potential energy created by that compressed radius of experience to create The Stairs Are A Snowcapped Mountain, a collection of flash fiction that fizzes with invention and verve. Darley has specialized in short stories, and this is her third collection. An earlier volume, Remember Me to the Bees, was shortlisted for the Edge Hill Prize (UK) for short fiction.

The Stairs begins with a rollicking callout to Greek mythology, as Darley imagines the goddess Hera providing a kind of emergency empowerment service for young women being pursued by aggressive gods in animal form.

‘Can’t you call him an Uber?’ I ask. Part of my role is to help the girls become self-sufficient. ‘Is he really that legless?’

She shakes her head. ‘The problem’s the opposite, Hera.’ She points to the bathroom door. ‘In there.’

The tale unfolds over another two pages that leave the reader both smiling and puzzling over the dangers of toxic masculinity and the available defenses against it. Fantastical encounters between humans and the animal world are a frequent delight. One of the strongest stories in this collection, “What We Talk About When We Talk About Owls,” creates a magical setup for exploring the ways in which siblings support each other as they rear their children: A woman provides timely guidance and comfort to her sister, who is facing an extremely surprising pregnancy.

The collection’s title comes from the story “Family Psychology,” which speaks to the power of a child’s imagination. For the young person at the center of the story, the confines of the family home transform into imaginary worlds filled with companionship and adventure. The stairs become an alpine peak, and “the uncharted territory of the roof” becomes the moon. Suffering limitations, isolation, and loss, Darling’s characters find comfort and connection where they can — on lockdown zooms, in a dumpster, and while milking an alpaca. Whether the threat comes from cancer, lockdown, or climate change, creativity, and empathy are usually the active ingredients in the medicine for what ails.

As Vivian Gornick observed in The Situation and the Story, “Penetrating the familiar is by no means a given. On the contrary, it is hard work.” Darley penetrates the familiar shapes of middle-class life to reveal the strange, the difficult, and the fantastical, often by playing with point of view. One story is told from the perspective of a woman’s ashes; another is related by a dolphin; a third, by a river. A woman finds a portal to a new perspective on life in the playful promise of a graffiti door painted on an urban wall, in the very place where a real door had been bricked up.

I concentrated on the sensation of the door’s juddering and pushed until I felt a gentle pop. The sensation didn’t hurt — it was more akin to that moment when you’re trying to unscrew a bottle cap, and it finally surrenders.

That “gentle pop” enlivens many of these stories, and while some readers might be partial to tales with sharper edges and harsher takes on humanity, the vision that Darley offers is one well worth our consideration: As fate closes in, we have within us the capacity to let loose, to shake things up, and to make our world shine anew.

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