This slim volume offers quirky, quick stories that should appeal to those looking for a spiritual guide.
A collection delivers short stories with a Christian bent.
Mitchley (Breaking Through, 2008) describes the volume’s offerings, mostly biblical allegories and parables, as “shock stories,” and they usually end with an ironic twist or a lesson. The collection is slim; the longest of the 10 stories comes in at 13 pages. The opener, “Having it Out With Myself,” enacts an angry encounter between a man and his neighbor. “Old Abe” leads to a sort of spiritual reconciliation; “Pride” is a parable about a proud man trying to get into heaven with a proverbial ending. “Paranoid Master” imagines the next 50 years of American life with nature upturned by scientific meddling run rampant. The title story relates a prison interview and the confessions of an envious man, while “Counterfeit Salvation” tells of a preacher working undercover at a dive bar in order to save the clientele. The penultimate story, “Destiny,” tells of “a surreal way of producing honey” that comes out of a son’s death. “The Strap,” “Mailboxes,” “ ’66 Dodge Coronet,” and “Gravity of Life” are all shorter sketches of a more personal nature, each ending with its own edifying message. These stories have a feeling of surrealism that is common in parables, using the difference between the expected and the reality of the tale to explain the contemporary world and its spiritual problems. Without the tether of realism, though, the writing is often didactic and simple, and the plotting can feel rushed—many of the stories end with the narrator telling the reader exactly what to take from the tale. Mitchley’s framing in some of the works is unique, such as “Destiny,” which is narrated by a reporter recording a podcast. But it can sometimes be hard to know who is telling a story at any one time, especially in “Paranoid Master.” The morals of Mitchley’s tales will likely land differently for readers, depending on their faith—for some, they will be reassuring and enlightening, but for many secular readers, the lessons will seem overly familiar.
This slim volume offers quirky, quick stories that should appeal to those looking for a spiritual guide.Pub Date: May 22, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-61862-263-1
Page Count: 76
Publisher: Tate
Review Posted Online: July 11, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Old-fashioned short fiction: honest, probing and moving.
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
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.
Pub Date: May 11, 1999
ISBN: 0-553-10963-4
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Bantam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1999
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