A gem of a second collection from an immensely promising writer of unmistakably original—and distinctively...
Twelve new fictions, notable for their stylistic grace and captivating selection of incident, by the author of Fitting Ends (stories: 1995).
In imagining other lives we discover the gift of empathy, these tales suggest, yet dwelling too hard or too long on other people’s experiences may lead to erasure of the self. Indeed, Chaon’s characters often seem to be renewable variations of a single personality, inevitably egocentric and selfish, but he presents these traits as the curse of the hapless dreamer. Here, dreams do not waft up out of idle enchantments and lazy afternoons; they struggle forth, life rafts offering rescue to mauled and sinking adults, usually in their 30s, who recall the genesis of their dreaming in troubled childhoods. In the title story, a car bearing an entire family disappears near a lakeside summer cabin occupied by a boy and his mother; months later, the vehicle is discovered mysteriously intact at the bottom of the lake. This eerie incident teaches the boy about the final ineffability of his world and of his own family. In another fine piece, “I Demand to Know Where You Are Taking Me,” a woman’s brother-in-law, Wendell, is convicted of rape after her lawyer husband fails to successfully defend him. The couple agrees to store Wendell’s belongings until an appeal can be made, and the foul language of his parakeet, Wild Bill, prompts the wife’s doubt about Wendell’s innocence. The volume’s brilliant centerpiece, “Big Me,” involves Andy’s childhood spying on his neighbor, a man the child is convinced represents his future self. Andy makes notes on how to avoid becoming this distasteful man and is eventually caught snooping; the moment when the neighbor reads his life, inscribed in Andy’s notebook, as a foretelling of the boy’s is a breathtaking arrangement, a renewal of fiction’s special power. Chaon’s work is especially notable for his casually precise prose and deep intelligence for the resonant scene.
A gem of a second collection from an immensely promising writer of unmistakably original—and distinctively rewarding—literary gifts.Pub Date: July 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-345-44162-1
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2001
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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