by Christopher Guerin ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 26, 2020
Elegant, impactful writing in a deliciously unnerving collection.
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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
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by Russell Banks ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 12, 2013
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
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by Louis L’Amour ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 11, 1999
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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