A heaped literary plate with something for every taste.
From Southern poet/novelist Chappell (Look Back All the Green Valley, 1999, etc.), a richly varied collection of short fiction.
The stories, most of them previously published, range from contemporary to historical and futuristic, from realism through the supernatural to absurdism. What they mostly have in common is their setting in the North Carolina mountains. “Tradition” provides a good example of Chappell’s robust realism, describing a hunting party ruined by a deeply troubled vet. “Duet” is the pitch-perfect tale of Caney and Kermit, two buddies who sang and played guitar together until Caney’s accidental death; it tracks Kermit’s complicated mourning. One of the most resonant pieces has a supernatural edge. “Ember” takes a country-music story line (jealous lover shoots two-timing sweetheart) and raises it to another level, as he meets other men who have also killed her in a grim mountainside purgatory. Hillbilly Gothic best describes “Alma,” in which captive women are herded like cattle. Chappell artfully blends homespun reality with shimmering fantasy in “The Somewhere Doors” (down-at-heels SF writer finds redemption close to home), while “The Three Boxes” is a powerful fable about racial justice. Peering into the future in the title story, Chappell sees Civil War re-enactment running amok; bio-engineered veterans make disastrous houseguests, he reveals. Looking back in “Moments of Light,” he does Haydn proud, sending the composer via a telescope on a revelatory journey through space. Not everything works. “Crèche” is labored whimsy about barnyard animals allowed to talk once a year. “Bon Ton” builds suspense nicely as we wonder what service mysterious Harris T. Bonforth provides the stream of visitors to his room at the Waltmon Inn, but it comes to a picayune end. Similarly, “The Lodger” has an intriguing premise (dead poet manqué attempts to possess a librarian’s mind) but trails off into a swipe at pretentious literary criticism.
A heaped literary plate with something for every taste.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-312-56167-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2009
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
SEEN & HEARD
Visionary speculative stories that will change the way readers see themselves and the world around them: This book delivers...
Exploring humankind's place in the universe and the nature of humanity, many of the stories in this stellar collection focus on how technological advances can impact humanity’s evolutionary journey.
Chiang's (Stories of Your Life and Others, 2002) second collection begins with an instant classic, “The Merchant and the Alchemist’s Gate,” which won Hugo and Nebula awards for Best Novelette in 2008. A time-travel fantasy set largely in ancient Baghdad, the story follows fabric merchant Fuwaad ibn Abbas after he meets an alchemist who has crafted what is essentially a time portal. After hearing life-changing stories about others who have used the portal, he decides to go back in time to try to right a terrible wrong—and realizes, too late, that nothing can erase the past. Other standout selections include “The Lifecycle of Software Objects,” a story about a software tester who, over the course of a decade, struggles to keep a sentient digital entity alive; “The Great Silence,” which brilliantly questions the theory that humankind is the only intelligent race in the universe; and “Dacey’s Patent Automatic Nanny,” which chronicles the consequences of machines raising human children. But arguably the most profound story is "Exhalation" (which won the 2009 Hugo Award for Best Short Story), a heart-rending message and warning from a scientist of a highly advanced, but now extinct, race of mechanical beings from another universe. Although the being theorizes that all life will die when the universes reach “equilibrium,” its parting advice will resonate with everyone: “Contemplate the marvel that is existence, and rejoice that you are able to do so.”
Visionary speculative stories that will change the way readers see themselves and the world around them: This book delivers in a big way.Pub Date: May 8, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-101-94788-3
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
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