Elegant, impactful writing in a deliciously unnerving collection.
This volume of short stories teeters on the edge of plausibility, exploring everything from sinister cults to the coteries of academia.
Seventeen tales are offered in this collection of extremes written by an author who is equally comfortable examining the grisly as he is the demure. The opening story, “Shoot Me,” is one of strange coincidence—a young man accidentally shoots a fellow hunter in the forest only to learn that chance brought them together before. The following story, “Ball,” is a bizarrely intriguing tale about a man who inherits a mysterious sphere from an aging colleague and discovers that it holds wildly entertaining and destructive powers. Meanwhile, “Poet to Poet” is a cautionary tale about the predatory nature of academia. “The Metametamorphosis,” in which a fashion designer awakes to find he has transformed into a beetle, is a thought-provoking rewrite of Kafka’s masterpiece. The collection closes with the title story, which tells of a seemingly ordinary man who comes to the realization that “I murdered someone I didn’t even know.” When approaching Guerin’s writing, it is important for readers to expect the unexpected. Even then, nothing can prepare them for the knockout final sentence the author delivers in “Red,” the tale of a man who stumbles on a cult performing a ritual on a beach. Full of surprises, Guerin’s descriptive approach is refreshingly unconventional: “From this grassy bank wishbone-shaped twigs stuck up like fetishes.” Yet he also has the power to suddenly flip to the remorselessly brutal: “There didn’t seem to be any blood, though my fingers sank in slightly as if the skull had shattered.” The author’s stories are founded on a breadth of literary knowledge. In addition to Kafka, Gogol is a clear influence, even making an appearance as a supposed thief in “Gogol in Paris.” A naïvely pretentious conversation between two students in “Philosophy 000,” the weakest tale here, fails to bestow each character with a satisfyingly unique voice; on occasion, it is difficult to discern who is saying what. But this is a minor distraction in a strong and compelling assemblage that is sure to perturb and astonish in equal measure.
Elegant, impactful writing in a deliciously unnerving collection.Pub Date: July 26, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-937484-81-1
Page Count: 263
Publisher: Amika Press
Review Posted Online: Dec. 19, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
Readers who limit themselves to one story a night are in for a lot of sleepless nights.
Ardai celebrates the 20th anniversary of his publishing imprint, Hard Case Crime, by reprinting 20 of his own noir tales from 1990 to 2023.
Any collection this big is bound to be a mixed bag, but even the lesser stories here illuminate the formulas they depart from. “The Investigation of Things,” in which two Chinese brothers compete to solve the murder of a Buddhist monk, shows that Ardai’s gifts aren’t best suited to whodunits. The cancellation of a boy’s promised trip to see the circus in “The Day After Tomorrow” pushes Ardai’s ability to plot a short-short story to the limit. And “Nobody Wins,” which chronicles the gratuitously calamitous effects of a private eye’s search for his missing fiancee, has a title that would have been perfect for this whole volume. Ardai’s best stories walk a tightrope between noir fatalism and surprising invention. Some of them boast unsettlingly original premises. A fed pursues a doomed relationship with the grieving mother of a boy he arrested and got killed in “The Home Front”; “Game Over” follows a roll of quarters intended as a birthday gift; “My Husband’s Wife” showcases the coolly amoral voice of a conference attendee’s wife as she commits an escalating series of infractions. Other stories present endings bound to startle the most hard-bitten fans. “The Case” follows the adventures of a suitcase bomb that hasn’t (yet) exploded; a bodyguard’s search for a lubricious charge who’s disappeared from under his nose leads to a bloodbath in “Jonas and the Frail”; the man who hires a trio of contract killers in “Masks” turns out to have a shocking motive; and the ending of “A Free Man,” neatly balancing disillusionment and sentiment, provides a fitting close to the volume.
Readers who limit themselves to one story a night are in for a lot of sleepless nights.Pub Date: March 12, 2024
ISBN: 9781803366265
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Hard Case Crime
Review Posted Online: Jan. 5, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2024
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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