A captivating assemblage of philosophical and meditative tales.
A collection of short stories that revolve around the history of a small town in Kentucky.
Summers’ (Ruadan, 2017, etc.) new collection of 20 tales is bound by a common locale—Lynch’s Corner, Kentucky—and covers its history from 1893 to 1986. The stories all share an artfully crafted atmosphere of austerity as they unblinkingly confront the harsh realities of life. In the first story, “Fair Game,” two close friends, Carson York and Thomas Mason, travel from Lynch’s Corner to Chicago to see the World’s Fair in 1893. After Thomas suddenly vanishes, Carson discovers that he’s not only dead—he’s also been sold to a hospital by a “resurrector,” a collector of corpses. Although it’s likely that Thomas was murdered, the hospital administrator recommends that Carson go home with a story that his friend died of a “sudden illness.” In “Rite of Fire,” set in 1898, Lynch’s Corner deputy sheriff John Reichmuth learns that a local woman, Bernice Caraway, was burned to death for witchcraft—because she simply used herbal remedies to heal the sick. However, it’s revealed that the men who killed her had other motives as well, and they all suffer mysterious accidents in the wake of her death. In these tales, Summers often provides profound meditations on the meaning of history and the lure of the past. For example, in “Blazing Noon,” set in 1904, Donnie greets information about his ancestors with a compelling mix of curiosity and skepticism: “I believe we chase the shadows of youth across the years, throughout our adult lives. And we never quite grasp that the joys belonged to someone else. We all change.” Throughout this collection, the author’s prose is self-assured and free of needless contrivance, and he shows considerable, nuanced skill at plot and character development. Overall, this is an excellent example of regional literature that offers readers a sense of universality, mined from concrete elements of everyday life.
A captivating assemblage of philosophical and meditative tales.Pub Date: Sept. 6, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-72421-410-2
Page Count: 222
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Dec. 10, 2018
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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