The pieces compiled within the journal engage with issues such as photography, coffee drinking, the Adelaide Fringe Festival, and buying Carly Simon albums during a spot of ‘retail therapy’. The strongest contribution is Jane Downing’s short story entitled ‘The ATM Machine’. This piece focuses on what happens when two middle-aged and seemingly respectable women find a keycard protruding from an ATM. Downing’s story provides a sly commentary on honesty, dishonesty, greed, and friendship. Matt Hetherington’s poem nicely describes states of confusion and outright disorientation. Witness lines such as ‘she can’t remember what she forgot / she has a different voice for everyone she knows’.

Not all contributions are commendable. Michael Crane’s story entitled ‘Apocalyptic Love’ is an unsubtle paean to the joys of oral sex. The story celebrates male sexual arousal, and the female protagonist only really pleases her boyfriend when she (eventually) performs fellatio on him. I enjoyed Belinda Campbell’s story about a woman who ventures to her local pub for ‘one quiet beer’ and encounters an enigmatic stranger. But Campbell could have made more of the painting that this stranger gives to her protagonist. The stranger advises that the painting is actually a ‘dream’, and this reader expected an exploration of the unconscious that Campbell never really provides.

The current edition of fourW twenty-two is a pleasant, if hardly groundbreaking, read. There are some finely written contributions, along with some ordinary ones. This reviewer is at least pleased that there are journals such as fourW twenty-two that showcase the work of local wordsmiths.