“Bingo Bango Boingo:” A Thoughtful Intermeshing of Form and Content https://ift.tt/mydip1U
Bingo Bango Boingo by award-winning author Alan Michael Parker is clever, original and full of yearning thoughtfulness. Each story in Bingo Bango Boingo is a world of its own — you can open the book from anywhere and flip into a new place.
The collection begins with “Change Your Life Bingo,” a piece that is humorous and permeated by a gentle longing, that examines the various reasons, accidents and losses that change the course of a life. The story sets the tone for what follows: 40 Bingo-style stories and flashes of fiction, each with its own texture and tonal distinctions, frequently balancing both play and poignance.
The collection thrives on small, finely drawn moments and reads like a realization of the word sonder — each character an ordinary everyperson with depth, ache and secrets. Parker’s characters think. They meditate, ruminate, watch longingly as life and time pass them by. They pause, resign and reckon: as time changes the world, they, too, are marked by this cruel changing.
But this is not to say that Parker’s stories are dejected, defeatist ones. Rather, they pull back the veil on the truths of the world, with grace and humor. Though the book’s characters are often bystanders even in their own narratives and positions, they carry a depth of emotion that is touching and unmistakable. Bingo Bango Boingo shines at fashioning small moments to stand in for big things — they are snapshots that compel reflection upon one’s selfhood, circumstance and place within the systems of the world.
Perhaps this is why the Bingo form works so well here — in the way that Parker’s writing seems to mourn the randomness of life, that very theme is mirrored by the game-style structure of the Bingo form.
The Bingo form is a versatile tool, allowing you to pick your point of entry, with the central square as a guide towards the meaning that the author may — or may not — have intended. The deceptively simple, and even casual, form allows for stories to unfold with emotional clarity. It is able to hold silly moments and heavy ones alike, while avoiding over-sentimentalization. Each square is a narrative fragment, inviting you to explore, excavate, dwell and make meaning alongside the author. In this way, Parker engages the reader in an experience of co-creation — with the Bingo form, the reader turns into character and writer, as well. The effect created by that becomes something like tarot cards, where meaning emerges not linearly but through resonance and layered intuition. Bingo here also becomes metaphor: for luck, fate and the arbitrary nature of joy and suffering.
One of my favourite stories in the collection was “Feti’s Border Crossing.” It is a sharp and moving piece that draws a picture of the ironies of privilege, race, xenophobia and the dehumanizing challenges faced by the “other” at the border. It does not patronise the condition of the immigrant, yet it is painfully relevant — a kairotic reflection on an era of mass deportation and xenophobia. Another favorite is “Mrs Nikoleides and the Motorcyclist.” In it, a teacher in an American school, who has the power to foresee the future but not prevent it, ponders — “She has a red pen, but how to correct fate? The universe has the real red pen, she thinks.”
“Dreaming, the Pregnant Women,” is surreal and haunting, a tale where pregnant women dream of giving birth to strange objects, like a white bowl of black rice, a square of muddy riverbank, a history book. In their dreams, the women find voice and community. It is one of the most gorgeous pieces of the collection, and meditates on fertility, possibility and the inner lives of women.
The book is chock-full of sentence-level gems, and for those of us who are fans of micro and flash fiction, this is one of the genre’s promises, on which Parker’s pieces deliver.
Take the last line of “Dreaming, the Pregnant Women,” for instance, which closes with: “The air slickens with dreams. The moon lies on its back. The world begins again, a pregnant woman dreaming all of this, the dream a second chance.”
In “Unemployment Benefits,” a man, crushed by economic insecurity, drifts through jobs into a world of regret. The story ends with the unforgettable line: “Sixty-three waves of regret, and standing in place in a moving world, the sparks in me like meteors going the wrong way.”
In “People in Light and Shadow,” a character watches her feelings for different men in her life shift in real time, noting the “the light, the dark, the shadows” of her emotions.
Some pieces, like “Trees,” read like lyrical essays, blurring the lines between form and philosophical abstraction. In others, like “Delilah Hates Chem,” “Ruhi’s Bathroom Bingo” and “Long Marriage Bingo,” the bingo form takes the front seat, building mood and scene through fragmented phrases. For instance, each square in “Delilah Hates Chem” captures the thoughts of a zoned-out high schooler — scattershot and chaotic — as they flicker across her phone and her brain.
As a student of writing, I found Bingo Bango Boingo deeply generative. The book is a study in the intermeshing of form and content, an illustration of how form can shape narrative even when narrative seems to resist shaping. Bingo Bango Boingo is fun, imaginative and ruminative in the way that it excavates and captures the small moments and large yearnings of life. It is a book to read slowly and to return to often, not just for its content but also its cheekily daring form.
FICTION Bingo Bango Boingo By Alan Michael Parker
Dzanc Books
Published February 25, 2025
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