A choppy but often effective group of far-flung war stories.
A debut short story collection examines the many faces of war.
Bauder sets these nine stories in a variety of wartime settings, from Korea to Afghanistan to imaginary realms, but the core narrative of the collection is born out of what’s referred to here as the Global War on Terror, spanning roughly from 2001 to 2021. “Appealing to emotion or ethics may be a less-than-perfect medium for communicating the nature of an entire era,” he writes. “Even so, it remains a sufficient platform from which to announce a call to action.” The various stories underscore the surrealism of war from the viewpoints of the ordinary people caught up in it—the author states that, among his other reasons for publishing this collection, he intends it to be “an attack on the pious fetishization of sacrifice.” There are SF elements running through the most effective stories in this collection, as in “That It Was Good,” in which a tech developer in Korea is on the brink of implementing an all-encompassing AI called the Ninth Column—it’s prone to creepy AI supervillain pronouncements like “We are best suited to the creation and employment of simulacra, of which we regulate a distinct collection numbering in the billions.” Bauder is present in his own voice throughout, providing endnotes to the stories for which explanations or clarifications can be offered (“It should be noted that veteran status does not confer immunity from a basic tenet of analysis: Consider the source”). These annotations interrupt the flow of the collection, as does the author’s decision to include very rough first-draft material as part of the book’s “journey.” But in his finished work, Bauder’s talent for pacing and ear for sharp twists in dialogue will carry the reader into the weird realities of conflict, particularly the uncertainty, as voiced by a character in “Private Passenger”: “Sometimes I wonder if we send the wrong people to war.”
A choppy but often effective group of far-flung war stories.Pub Date: Feb. 28, 2025
ISBN: 9798991841504
Page Count: 241
Publisher: Meconopsis Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 21, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The range and virtuosity of these stories make this Mosley’s most adventurous and, maybe, best book.
A grandmaster of the hard-boiled crime genre shifts gears to spin bittersweet and, at times, bizarre tales about bruised, sensitive souls in love and trouble.
In one of the 17 stories that make up this collection, a supporting character says: “People are so afraid of dying that they don’t even live the little bit of life they have.” She casually drops this gnomic observation as a way of breaking down a lead character’s resistance to smoking a cigarette. But her aphorism could apply to almost all the eponymous awkward Black men examined with dry wit and deep empathy by the versatile and prolific Mosley, who takes one of his occasional departures from detective fiction to illuminate the many ways Black men confound society’s expectations and even perplex themselves. There is, for instance, Rufus Coombs, the mailroom messenger in “Pet Fly,” who connects more easily with household pests than he does with the women who work in his building. Or Albert Roundhouse, of “Almost Alyce,” who loses the love of his life and falls into a welter of alcohol, vagrancy, and, ultimately, enlightenment. Perhaps most alienated of all is Michael Trey in “Between Storms,” who locks himself in his New York City apartment after being traumatized by a major storm and finds himself taken by the outside world as a prophet—not of doom, but, maybe, peace? Not all these awkward types are hapless or benign: The short, shy surgeon in “Cut, Cut, Cut” turns out to be something like a mad scientist out of H.G. Wells while “Showdown on the Hudson” is a saga about an authentic Black cowboy from Texas who’s not exactly a perfect fit for New York City but is soon compelled to do the right thing, Western-style. The tough-minded and tenderly observant Mosley style remains constant throughout these stories even as they display varied approaches from the gothic to the surreal.
The range and virtuosity of these stories make this Mosley’s most adventurous and, maybe, best book.Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-8021-4956-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Grove
Review Posted Online: Sept. 1, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
Oddly exquisite.
Part essay, part story, part diatribe, part diary—even part dictionary—this book defies definition.
The narrators of this collection—a loose compilation of short works cut from Gen Z angst and internet gobbledygook—share more than a milieu. In “Love Story,” the fairytales of our youth are supplanted, “Once upon a time” replaced with “He was giving knight errant, organ-meat eater, Byronic hero....She was giving damsel in distress, pill-popper pixie dream girl.” Later on, “Halloween Forever” showcases another form of affection, that between an internet rabbit-hole denizen and “her” FBI agent, the one the meme says must be watching her. “Internet Girl” catalogs the protagonist’s descent into the digital, from Neopets to naked chat rooms. Managing to reference 2 Girls 1 Cup and 9/11 in a single sentence, the narrator continues apace, jumping from cultural touchstone to cultural touchstone without stopping for breath. The collection does take the occasional detour across a more traditional narrative arc, as in “Cancel Me,” in which the main character is locked out of a party. Standing in the rain with two dimwitted stand-ins for male mediocrity, she contemplates cancel culture, absolution, and, not for the last time, edgelords. The first-person narrators of these stories, only one of whom is named, share a hodgepodge of leftist beliefs not quite coherent enough to serve as evidence in the debate over whether they are in fact the same person. This book is billed as fiction, a truth that may recurrently shock the reader. The fictionality here is another layer to be parsed, along with thick films of irony and sincerity that demand to be scrubbed through by hand. If you text with a single index finger, steer clear. The girls who inhabit this world are only occasionally wise, but always clever.
Oddly exquisite.Pub Date: May 14, 2024
ISBN: 9780593656532
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Penguin Press
Review Posted Online: March 23, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2024
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