Sherrie Flick’s marvelous new collection opens in a Budapest train station where two travelers are approached by a bear whose hairy ass is covered by flowered undies. In his paws is his own beating heart, which he holds out as an offering. One of the travelers is horrified, but the narrator feels differently. In her view, “[y]ou grab the fucking heart. No questions asked.” Making such a choice—without considering consequences—is central to Flick’s life-affirming work. 

This collection, Flick’s third, contains thirty-seven stories of varying length: most qualify as flash; a number are short stories; and there are a few micros. About a third of the stories feature a bear—often referred to as the bear—as a character, if not the protagonist. One straddles the fence: Bobby, a human home inspector, enjoys wearing a bear suit. While bears get special attention in these stories, one should keep an eye and an ear out for dogs, cats, fish, woodpeckers, coyotes, chipmunks, crickets, cicadas or opossum. A piano player bending over the keys looks “very much like a squirrel.” This focus is fitting, for animals live in the now, unburdened by any human fixation on the future, the consequences. 

Several stories explore aging. In the charming “In Search of,” Helen, the certain-aged wife of an attorney, befriends a waiter, Derrick, a young grad student specializing in the work of Edith Wharton. They become friends “through a series of spontaneous decisions,” spending fully-clothed time together in bed, “propped side by side against the headboard, ankles crossed, talking about the xenophobic tropes in Ethan Frome.” The reader has as much fun as the characters at the Wharton-themed dinner party where Helen’s husband and Derrick’s date discuss their passions—tennis and Jane Austen scholarship, respectively. The two reach “a mutually satisfying conclusion regarding Judith Butler and new-style tennis rackets.” Helen’s husband serves libations from the drinks cart, whose style is  described as “midcentury Dick Van Dyke Show.” 

None of these intergenerational festivities would have occurred had Helen not pushed back against the frustrating conventions of her aging friends who don’t drive at night. Instead she impulsively walks to a restaurant herself and initiates a friendship with young Derrick. Helen doesn’t feel old: “She had finally gotten on with life, had just figured out how to be that confident and complete person she had envisioned at the start of adulthood.” She enjoys knowing that people no longer see her as a “walking, talking sexual object.”  

In “Bear in a Canoe,” a bear sets a canoe adrift and listens to the night sounds of waterfowl, the honking of geese and herons’ squawks. He notices the “small heat” of the light that reflects off the waves, and wonders how long “any of this” can last. “The bear had been thinking about this lately. Endings.”

He could see the future coming. He imagined all the water gone and him still at the lake’s center in this canoe, slumped on rocks and mud. Someday soon, he knew, he’d be pushed somewhere that didn’t make sense. 

For now, there are fish for him to eat, and he lumbers away after nestling the canoe into a berry bramble. In this piece as in others, Flick packs emotional heft into prose that shines as clear as a mountain stream. It’s good to smile, reading, “tonight, the canoe rocked him into being a thankful bear.”

One of the book’s standouts is its final piece, “Arnie and the Bear Think About Risk.” The story begins with the bear on a city street thinking, “there’s something so sweetly romantic about a paper cup of coffee held nonchalantly by a woman in a conversation on the street corner.” The bear trundles to his third-floor office. He’s a corporate manager, owns a pet dog, has brothers who are fishing in Alaska, and “genuinely enjoys cooking for pretty women.” Arnold, the office’s top salesman, comes into the bear’s office to complain that he’s bored: he “used to be in a band, for Christ’s sake.” He wants to take a leave of absence. The bear tries unsuccessfully to talk him down from his request for six months off:

Soon Arnold shakes the bear’s paw and heads down the hall to his own office. Tomorrow he’ll saunter into the world of his past that doesn’t exist anymore but that he’ll try to recreate so that he feels like he hasn’t really lost himself completely in the corporate world that is, in fact, eating him alive.

The bear begins to think about taking some risks himself, remembering how the sun felt on his young fur, debating whether he should learn to play an instrument, and wondering if anyone will take care of him when he’s old. He believes “these feelings are all Arnold’s fault.” The story’s ending offers a beautiful balance between surprise and inevitability. In this story as in all the rest, Flick reminds us that our lives are made richer by appreciating small moments, instead of overlooking them in our preoccupation with what might happen next, with the consequences. 

Flick’s well-drawn characters—bear and human alike—are easy to care about, to root for and remember. Her humor and light but deft touch infuse this collection with the stuff of life. 

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In addition to I Have Not Considered Consequences, Sherrie Flick is the author of two short story collections, Thank Your Lucky Stars, and Whiskey, Etc., both published by Autumn House Press. She is also the author of a novel, Reconsidering Happiness, and an essay collection, Homing: Instincts of a Rustbelt Feminist, both published by University of Nebraska Press. She is the recipient of a 2023 Creative Development Award from The Heinz Endowments and a Writing Pittsburgh fellowship from The Creative Nonfiction Foundation. She lives in Pittsburgh where she is a senior lecturer at Chatham University and a member of Shiftworks’ Creative Corps.

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Sarah Holloway is a former tax accountant who’s now enjoying the writing life. She lives in Savannah, GA, with her husband, dogs and lots of books. Her work has appeared in  SmokeLong Quarterly’s blog, Roi Fainéant, Emerge Literary Journal, Cowboy Jamboree, Third Street Review and elsewhere.