THE BURNING GROUND

Name: THE BURNING GROUND
Author: Adam O'Riordan
ISBN: 978-0-393-23955-3

by Adam O'Riordan ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 18, 2017

O’Riordan’s attention to precise details helps make these stories memorable; at their best, they put familiar scenarios in a...

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British poet O'Riordan (A Herring Famine, 2017, etc.) makes his fiction debut with a collection of stories set in the U.S.

Whether he’s writing about travelers arriving there after a long journey or the complex lives of longtime residents, O'Riordan's stories largely center on Los Angeles. By and large, these are subtle fictions, works in which mannerisms and casual gestures count for a lot. The first tale, “A Thunderstorm in Santa Monica,” sets the tone for the rest of the book: it’s about the connections made by lovers and the connections made by strangers, and absent figures and physical spaces play a significant part in how the story unfolds. There are a few horrific moments in the book: a hate crime referred to in passing in “Rambla Pacifico” and a sense of wrongness woven through with memory that leads “’98 Mercury Sable” to a haunting climax. A number of the stories involve characters struggling with the passage of time. The artist at the center of the title story notes that “the years in California had temporarily abated the agonies of ageing,” while the protagonist of “Wave-Riding Giants” recalls a weekly meal at the senior housing in which he lives: “uniform slices of ice-cream-pink meat marbled with white fat laid out on trestle tables.” The collection’s high point is “The El Segundo Blue Butterfly,” which traces the overlapping lives and shifting fortunes of a journalist and the businessman he interviews repeatedly over the course of his career. It’s a work that feels fully lived-in.

O’Riordan’s attention to precise details helps make these stories memorable; at their best, they put familiar scenarios in a new light.

Pub Date: July 18, 2017

ISBN: 978-0-393-23955-3

Page Count: 224

Publisher: Norton

Review Posted Online: May 1, 2017

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2017

Categories:

SHORT STORIES

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A PERMANENT MEMBER OF THE FAMILY

by Russell Banks ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 12, 2013

Old-fashioned short fiction: honest, probing and moving.

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One of America’s great novelists (Lost Memory of Skin, 2011, etc.) also writes excellent stories, as his sixth collection reminds readers.

Don’t expect atmospheric mood poems or avant-garde stylistic games in these dozen tales. Banks is a traditionalist, interested in narrative and character development; his simple, flexible prose doesn’t call attention to itself as it serves those aims. The intricate, not necessarily permanent bonds of family are a central concern. The bleak, stoic “Former Marine” depicts an aging father driven to extremes because he’s too proud to admit to his adult sons that he can no longer take care of himself. In the heartbreaking title story, the death of a beloved dog signals the final rupture in a family already rent by divorce. Fraught marriages in all their variety are unsparingly scrutinized in “Christmas Party,” Big Dog” and “The Outer Banks." But as the collection moves along, interactions with strangers begin to occupy center stage. The protagonist of “The Invisible Parrot” transcends the anxieties of his hard-pressed life through an impromptu act of generosity to a junkie. A man waiting in an airport bar is the uneasy recipient of confidences about “Searching for Veronica” from a woman whose truthfulness and motives he begins to suspect, until he flees since “the only safe response is to quarantine yourself.” Lurking menace that erupts into violence features in many Banks novels, and here, it provides jarring climaxes to two otherwise solid stories, “Blue” and “The Green Door.” Yet Banks quietly conveys compassion for even the darkest of his characters. Many of them (like their author) are older, at a point in life where options narrow and the future is uncomfortably close at hand—which is why widowed Isabel’s fearless shucking of her confining past is so exhilarating in “SnowBirds,” albeit counterbalanced by her friend Jane’s bleak acceptance of her own limited prospects.

Old-fashioned short fiction: honest, probing and moving.

Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2013

ISBN: 978-0-06-185765-2

Page Count: 304

Publisher: Ecco/HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: Aug. 31, 2013

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2013

Categories:

LITERARY FICTION | SHORT STORIES

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BEYOND THE GREAT SNOW MOUNTAINS

by Louis L’Amour ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 11, 1999

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Superb stylist L’Amour returns (End of the Drive, 1997, etc.), albeit posthumously, with ten stories never seen before in book form—and narrated in his usual hard-edged, close-cropped sentences, jutting up from under fierce blue skies. This is the first of four collections of L’Amour material expected from Bantam, edited by his daughter Angelique, featuring an eclectic mix of early historicals and adventure stories set in China, on the high seas, and in the boxing ring, all drawing from the author’s exploits as a carnival barker and from his mysterious and sundry travels. During this period, L’Amour was trying to break away from being a writer only of westerns. Also included is something of an update on Angelique’s progress with her father’s biography: i.e., a stunningly varied list of her father’s acquaintances from around the world whom she’d like to contact for her research. Meanwhile, in the title story here, a missionary’s daughter who crashes in northern Asia during the early years of the Sino-Japanese War is taken captive by a nomadic leader and kept as his wife for 15 years, until his death. When a plane lands, she must choose between taking her teenaged son back to civilization or leaving him alone with the nomads. In “By the Waters of San Tadeo,” set on the southern coast of Chile, Julie Marrat, whose father has just perished, is trapped in San Esteban, a gold field surrounded by impassable mountains, with only one inlet available for anyone’s escape. “Meeting at Falmouth,” a historical, takes place in January 1794 during a dreadful Atlantic storm: “Volleys of rain rattled along the cobblestones like a scattering of broken teeth.” In this a notorious American, unnamed until the last paragraph, helps Talleyrand flee to America. A master storyteller only whets the appetite for his next three volumes.