A collection of 17 horror, sci-fi and paranormal tales that, at their best, recall The Twilight Zone and Tales from the Crypt.
Hofmann (Helena, 2012) calls this book “a showcase of how my writing has evolved.” It ranges from early stories, which are almost completely devoid of character development, to more mature work. The best tales include “Snow,” a short winter’s tale filled with nice imagery (“The snow covered swing set and slide made Anna think of a sinking ship’s masts, and the color of the red-orange sun on the ground was the fire consuming it”) and a natural, yet horrifying ending; “The Forest,” written in a fairy-tale style; “Gray,” which features nicely developed characters who meet disaster on their way to a meeting in a future dystopian America; “The Wicked,” a crisp, unpredictable story about a deputy as he makes his rounds through a town disintegrating due to an unknown, evil force; and “The Park,” certainly one of the most original tales, about a young writer learning the hard way he does not, in fact, know everything. Many of the other stories, however, are essentially good ideas that might have been improved through tighter prose and better character and plot development. Often, they’re more vignettes than stories, with the twisted, surprise outcomes rendered lackluster and predictable simply because readers never have the opportunity to care about the protagonists. In “Crew MJOP420,” for instance, six stereotypical space characters die trying to betray an intergalactic court; the complex situation and interplay of their motivations are more suited to a novel or novella, and are far too complicated for the five pages Hofmann affords them. Still, budding writers may find observing the evolution of the author’s writing style helpful on their own literary journeys.
Hard-core horror and sci-fi readers will likely enjoy the more original tales in this story collection.
Pub Date: July 7, 2014
ISBN: 978-1499379587
Page Count: 170
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: July 12, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
It's being called a novel, but it is more a hybrid: short-stories/essays/confessions about the Vietnam War—the subject that O'Brien reasonably comes back to with every book. Some of these stories/memoirs are very good in their starkness and factualness: the title piece, about what a foot soldier actually has on him (weights included) at any given time, lends a palpability that makes the emotional freight (fear, horror, guilt) correspond superbly. Maybe the most moving piece here is "On The Rainy River," about a draftee's ambivalence about going, and how he decided to go: "I would go to war—I would kill and maybe die—because I was embarrassed not to." But so much else is so structurally coy that real effects are muted and disadvantaged: O'Brien is writing a book more about earnestness than about war, and the peekaboos of this isn't really me but of course it truly is serve no true purpose. They make this an annoyingly arty book, hiding more than not behind Hemingwayesque time-signatures and puerile repetitions about war (and memory and everything else, for that matter) being hell and heaven both. A disappointment.
Pub Date: March 28, 1990
ISBN: 0618706410
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: Oct. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1990
SEEN & HEARD
IN THE NEWS
A newcomer to watch: fresh, funny, and tough.
Seven stories, including a couple of prizewinners, from an exuberantly talented young Thai-American writer.
In the poignant title story, a young man accompanies his mother to Kok Lukmak, the last in the chain of Andaman Islands—where the two can behave like “farangs,” or foreigners, for once. It’s his last summer before college, her last before losing her eyesight. As he adjusts to his unsentimental mother’s acceptance of her fate, they make tentative steps toward the future. “Farangs,” included in Best New American Voices 2005 (p. 711), is about a flirtation between a Thai teenager who keeps a pet pig named Clint Eastwood and an American girl who wanders around in a bikini. His mother, who runs a motel after having been deserted by the boy’s American father, warns him about “bonking” one of the guests. “Draft Day” concerns a relieved but guilty young man whose father has bribed him out of the draft, and in “Don’t Let Me Die in This Place,” a bitter grandfather has moved from the States to Bangkok to live with his son, his Thai daughter-in-law, and two grandchildren. The grandfather’s grudging adjustment to the move and to his loss of autonomy (from a stroke) is accelerated by a visit to a carnival, where he urges the whole family into a game of bumper cars. The longest story, “Cockfighter,” is an astonishing coming-of-ager about feisty Ladda, 15, who watches as her father, once the best cockfighter in town, loses his status, money, and dignity to Little Jui, 16, a meth addict whose father is the local crime boss. Even Ladda is in danger, as Little Jui’s bodyguards try to abduct her. Her mother tells Ladda a family secret about her father’s failure of courage in fighting Big Jui to save his own sister’s honor. By the time Little Jui has had her father beaten and his ear cut off, Ladda has begun to realize how she must fend for herself.
A newcomer to watch: fresh, funny, and tough.Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-8021-1788-0
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Grove
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2004
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