by Daniel Orozco ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 2011
Precisely written, deeply human stories.
A debut collection of stories that are both challenging and compelling, with narrative perspectives that suggest how difficult it is to know oneself (let alone anyone else).
Though the protagonists of some of these stories go unnamed and some narratives address the reader directly (as “you”), Orozco isn’t indulging in postmodern wordplay or academic exercises. A creative-writing teacher (formerly at Stanford, now at the University of Idaho) and much-anthologized writer, he shows a keen sense of the processes and limits of social interaction, particularly in the workplace. The short title story that opens the collection takes the reader on a new hire’s tour of the office, as the supervisor’s account makes various employees’ relationships seem increasingly pathological. “Officers Weep” relates a romance in the form of a police blotter, as entries detailing the beat of a male and female partner become amplified, surreal and/or absurd. In “Only Connect,” robbery, murder and their complications take E.M. Forster’s aphorism into territory he never anticipated. The weakest and longest story, “Somoza’s Dream,” doesn’t seem to fit with the rest, as it relates the life, fate and offhand brutality of a deposed Latin American dictator and his “chain of disappointment in this life of exile.” “The Bridge” gives the perspective of bridge painters on suicidal “jumpers.” “Hunger Tales” offers four vignettes with unnamed characters whose very specific hungers will never be satisfied. A workout fanatic in “I Run Every Day” has the illusion that he has transformed himself into “another person,” yet it’s plain that he lacks any reflective understanding of who he was or is. Perhaps the most moving is “Temporary Stories,” about an in-demand temp who is both part of the office and apart from it, who knows less and more than her fellow workers, and who loves her trip home because “no one is alone on a bus.”
Precisely written, deeply human stories.Pub Date: June 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-86547-853-4
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Faber & Faber/Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Feb. 20, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2011
Share your opinion of this book
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
Share your opinion of this book
More by Russell Banks
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
Share your opinion of this book
More by Louis L’Amour
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Hey there, book lover.
We’re glad you found a book that interests you!
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Don’t fret. We’ll find you.