Jerusalem Ablaze: Stories Of Love And Other Obsessions

Orlando Ortega-Medina Orlando Ortega-Medina’s debut short story collection is full of literary promise, each story a vignette of troubled characters that leaves the reader yearning for the next chapter in their lives. Some of the stories don’t quite capture the imagination – Star Party reading like an exercise in dialogue writing and perhaps a freshman tale – but when they work, they’re beautifully wrought, deeply unnerving and will stay with you. After The Storm tells of the wife of a lighthouse keeper who finds a dead body washed up on the sand and, in her loneliness, looks after it with a fierce passion. Torture By Roses, a homage to Japanese author Mishima Yukio, tells of a young student who becomes fearfully indentured to an elderly and tortured patron of the arts, while the titular story, Jerusalem Ablaze, is about a young priest going to visit a prostitute. Ortega-Medina holds a mirror up to our darkest thoughts and urges – while showing the oneness of the human condition. 7/10