Multiple Perspectives in Matthew Pitt’s “These Are Our Demands”

What would you do if you could see three seconds into the future?

Matthew Pitt’s “These Are Our Demands” (Engine/Ferry Street Books, 2017) provides an answer. In one short story, Paul is a Polish “minute oracle,” and Maddy knows it. As his English tutor, she does her best to teach him the language, but of course there are always going to be certain things lost in translation. He knows she is pregnant, but does her man know she is carrying a baby boy?

Justine, Brad, and Coey are kidnapped, but is it all for show? They’ll need Imogene the psychic to help figure out the truth.

A man has been blinded with lye because he could not stay true to his wife, even on their wedding day. Truth be told, he isn’t the only one to suffer this fate. But does he know that?

The very last story is morbidly intriguing, as it describes a specific type of taxidermist. Is she trying to preserve life, or something even more disturbing?

“These Are Our Demands” weaves multiple tales with a variety of perspectives. Each story creates a world of its own, independent of every other entry in the collection. Quotable sentences abound throughout the work, including: “To wash demons, I need to take deep dives, not rely on cold-water-shack showerheads,” and, “Each morning, it took me an hour to look like myself. The myself expected by others. Certainly not the self that I have become now.”

The structure of this work could make it confusing for some readers. Each section is a stand-alone story so it can be jarring to read about so many different worlds that do not relate in any discernible way for such a short period of time. While Pitt does a great job developing characters within a small space, it feels as if you just get to know one character before having to move on to another. Perhaps each section requires a more careful reading in order to discern the links between different stories.   

A few memorable characters stand out. In one of the latter chapters, a woman spends her time bouncing back and forth between men, not really satisfied with any of them, but unable to grab the attention of the one she wants. Though she tries to persuade her friend to be more than just that, she finds it a harder task than she is willing to tackle. As she makes her way to what might be considered her consolation prize, she instead finds a rather shocking surprise. What will she do with her photograph of evidence?

I also liked the idea of the man who could see three seconds into the future. It really made me think, What could be possible with an ability like that? Would you be able to see far enough into the future that you could do something about it, or would it just be like knowing what is going to happen, as it happens?

In each piece in this collection, stories began right in the middle of the action. This can be disorienting; I had just been getting into the previous story! Jumping into another scene felt a bit like launching oneself out of a driving car into a nearby lake and treading water as soon as you cleared the surface. I was left wanting more every time.

Creative storylines and memorable quotations aside, this work is not something I’ll remember in a few months. To be fair, my tastes run towards science fiction and fantasy more than character sketches, but every storyteller operates under nearly the same set of requirements: characters that are memorable and narration that draws the reader in.

Please check out “These Are Our Demands” by Matthew Pitt and decide for yourself if it’s a book you’d recommend to others. In reading this book, I’ve learned a lot of things about writing, life, and probably a great many other things I don’t even realize. Because any good book is about bringing new perspective to the reader’s life, and I know for sure that Matthew Pitt’s “These Are Our Demands” has brought new viewpoints to my attention.

 

Rebecca Henderson holds a Master’s in German and a Bachelor’s in Creative Writing. Best expressing herself through the written word, she enjoys the smell of burning rubber and can recite the ABC’s of the automotive world upon command. Rebecca hopes to shift your world perspective through her words, because looking out the same window every day hardly makes for an interesting life.