A nimble and very funny collection of stories from a writer who clearly values the human condition in all its myriad forms.
A collection of 31 delightful short stories from Doyle (Chicago, 2016, etc.), a prolific writer and editor of Portland Magazine.
It’s obvious that the writer loves this medium, and it’s remarkable how much stylistic alchemy and diversity he’s able to invest in a rather slim book. It opens with “A Surf Story,” a terrific little slice-of-life tale about a wealthy retiree who adopts a troubled kid in Hawaii, detailed in the most unromantic prose ever. “This Is the Part Where You Say Something Real” is about an argument between a long-married couple, no more, no less. A number of the stories address matters of faith, as happens with “The Archbishop Loses His Faith,” “The Lutheran Minister’s Daughter,” and “The New Bishop.” The stories are often compassionate toward their subjects, but Doyle also has a sweet sense of humor that can be disarming. In “Dear Mum,” the author achieves a laugh-out-loud moment in the opening sentences: “Good news: all charges were dropped. Bad news: we have to return both police cars.” Others are subtler but still funny, as with the opener, “It began, as many brilliant and complex things begin, in a pub,” from “A Note on Countification.” Doyle offers a pair of brilliant bookends in the companion stories about a young chess player named Elson Habib. Another duet happens in the pages of “The Detours” and “The Lucid Moments,” two stories about being in a band that capture the once-in-a-lifetime thrill of being young and cool. Stories about a tailor who specializes in holes, the title story about an all-Chinese Australian Rules football club in Box Hill, and a pair of very funny Christmas-themed stories round out the collection.
A nimble and very funny collection of stories from a writer who clearly values the human condition in all its myriad forms.Pub Date: Sept. 26, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-597-09052-0
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Red Hen Press
Review Posted Online: June 29, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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