Bleak stories of uneasy personalities, told with one foot in the surreal.
German author Meyer’s stories trace a handful of troubled lives.
This collection abounds with bad decisions, traumatic events, and ominous conclusions. In an introduction, British writer Stuart Evers observes that “the lives Meyer depicts are small ones; ones lived in the margins of society.” The story “I’m Still Here!” follows a boxer—“a Black Dutchman from Rotterdam with a mashed-up face”—as he endures existential doubt and racist abuse. It’s a vision of the sport stripped of all glamour: “He was what they called a ‘journeyman’—they brought him in so that he’d lose.” The protagonist of “Carriage 29,” meanwhile, wakes up on board a train with little sense of what he’s doing there. Some of his own actions leave him baffled; at one point he wonders, “Why would a veteran wine rep like me ever drink this plonk?” Humans aren’t the only creatures in trouble in these stories; two of the most memorable—“Of Dogs and Horses” and “The Old Man Buries His Beasts”—focus on the fraught relationship between humans and their pets. The former is particularly unnerving, as it begins with the protagonist being reminded of his dog’s mortality only for Meyer to reveal more about the depth of the bond between man and beast, laying the groundwork for a truly haunting final image. Meyer isn’t working in a wholly realistic mode throughout; there’s also the grim delirium of “The Short Happy Life of Johannes Vettermann,” which opens with a vision of a man with the head of a dog. And a reference early in the book to “one of those disturbing street lamps, one of those lamps that never stop annoying you” hints at an absurdist edge.
Bleak stories of uneasy personalities, told with one foot in the surreal.Pub Date: July 1, 2025
ISBN: 9781916751309
Page Count: 256
Publisher: And Other Stories
Review Posted Online: May 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2025
Uneven but fitfully amusing.
Betrayed by her husband, a severely depressed young woman gets drawn into the over-the-top festivities at a lavish wedding.
Phoebe Stone, who teaches English literature at a St. Louis college, is plotting her own demise. Her husband, Matt, has left her for another woman, and Phoebe is taking it hard. Indeed, she's determined just where and how she will end it all: at an oceanfront hotel in Newport, where she will lie on a king-sized canopy bed and take a bottle of her cat’s painkillers. At the hotel, Phoebe meets bride-to-be Lila, a headstrong rich girl presiding over her own extravagant six-day wedding celebration. Lila thought she had booked every room in the hotel, and learning of Phoebe's suicidal intentions, she forbids this stray guest from disrupting the nuptials: “No. You definitely can’t kill yourself. This is my wedding week.” After the punchy opening, a grim flashback to the meltdown of Phoebe's marriage temporarily darkens the mood, but things pick up when spoiled Lila interrupts Phoebe's preparations and sweeps her up in the wedding juggernaut. The slide from earnest drama to broad farce is somewhat jarring, but from this point on, Espach crafts an enjoyable—if overstuffed—comedy of manners. When the original maid of honor drops out, Phoebe is persuaded, against her better judgment, to take her place. There’s some fun to be had here: The wedding party—including groom-to-be Gary, a widower, and his 11-year-old daughter—takes surfing lessons; the women in the group have a session with a Sex Woman. But it all goes on too long, and the humor can seem forced, reaching a low point when someone has sex with the vintage wedding car (you don’t want to know the details). Later, when two characters have a meet-cute in a hot tub, readers will guess exactly how the marriage plot resolves.
Uneven but fitfully amusing.Pub Date: July 30, 2024
ISBN: 9781250899576
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
I Who Have Never Known Men ($22.00; May 1997; 224 pp.; 1-888363-43-6): In this futuristic fantasy (which is immediately reminiscent of Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale), the nameless narrator passes from her adolescent captivity among women who are kept in underground cages following some unspecified global catastrophe, to a life as, apparently, the last woman on earth. The material is stretched thin, but Harpman's eye for detail and command of tone (effectively translated from the French original) give powerful credibility to her portrayal of a human tabula rasa gradually acquiring a fragmentary comprehension of the phenomena of life and loving, and a moving plangency to her muted cri de coeur (``I am the sterile offspring of a race about which I know nothing, not even whether it has become extinct'').
Pub Date: May 1, 1997
ISBN: 1-888363-43-6
Page Count: 224
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1997
BOOK REVIEW
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