by Howard Cincotta ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 2, 2020
Keenly written, relatable, and compelling tales.
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Cincotta’s collection offers stories of complicated relationships, fragmented families, and people in compromising situations.
In “The Water Bearer,” traveling salesman Alexenjoys a breezy “summer affair” with Pennsylvania waitress Mary Anne Womack. The two spend nights together only when he’s passing through; Alex calls it “a series of one-night stands.” But when Alex can’t get Mary Anne off his mind, he realizes that he truly values their relationship and that she may not feel the same way. Other characters in this book experience romantic hurdles, as well, such as Stephen in “The Daughter of My Former Lover.” He thinks back to his relationship with Natalie and how her 6-year-old daughter, Emily, used to express herself with kicks and the occasional punch. Family is also a recurring theme; in “Body Slam,” for instance, retired wrestler The Kid wants to even the score with his father, who abandoned him and his mother. He does so in the ring, as his dad is none other than the world wrestling champion, El Cid. Although these stories are sometimes droll, they’re also unnerving, and the humor’s tone can be dark. A figure who calls himself “Lucifer” appears in “The Flow,” offering to help Lawrence Brick overcome his writer’s block in exchange for his soul; however, Lawrence may be able to change the terms of the deal by striking his own bargain. Similarly, “Bethesda, Exit Only,” in which a father gets lost while driving his kid to a Maryland school, is initially funny—but as his need for directions increases, so does his ire, and road rage becomes a distinct possibility.
The vibrant characters effectively ground these stories in reality and make the otherworldly elements feel less fantastical than they might have otherwise. The man who calls himself “Lucifer,” for example, comes across as an arrogant, pretentious man whom the narration takes to calling by his other moniker “Scratch.” The narrator of “How I Made My First $200 Million” details the genesis of his widely popular online game, AfterLife, which involves his mentally illfather, who heard what he thought were voices of demigods; ultimately, it’s a story about a boy who found inspiration in his loving dad. Characters’ flaws often make them more believable; in “Lithics,” William fondly recalls Rebecca, a girl from his only year at a New Mexico high school; one of their last moments together included a humiliating incident that he’d rather forget. Readers aren’t likely to forget Cincotta’s prose, though, which beautifies not only the characters’ environments, but also remnants of the days gone by: “Art Deco shapes and neon lights shone over a landscape of stone fences and empty fields that turned yellow and brittle in the winter cold. Now it was a relic of a bulldozed past, sitting on a frontage road, squeezed between a tire outlet and a strip mall.” Readers will find these people and places familiar, and they’ll become invested in their fates when they stumble or take a wrong turn.
Keenly written, relatable, and compelling tales.Pub Date: April 2, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-69302-035-3
Page Count: 193
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: May 27, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Tim O’Brien ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 28, 1990
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
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by Walter Mosley ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 15, 2020
The range and virtuosity of these stories make this Mosley’s most adventurous and, maybe, best book.
A grandmaster of the hard-boiled crime genre shifts gears to spin bittersweet and, at times, bizarre tales about bruised, sensitive souls in love and trouble.
In one of the 17 stories that make up this collection, a supporting character says: “People are so afraid of dying that they don’t even live the little bit of life they have.” She casually drops this gnomic observation as a way of breaking down a lead character’s resistance to smoking a cigarette. But her aphorism could apply to almost all the eponymous awkward Black men examined with dry wit and deep empathy by the versatile and prolific Mosley, who takes one of his occasional departures from detective fiction to illuminate the many ways Black men confound society’s expectations and even perplex themselves. There is, for instance, Rufus Coombs, the mailroom messenger in “Pet Fly,” who connects more easily with household pests than he does with the women who work in his building. Or Albert Roundhouse, of “Almost Alyce,” who loses the love of his life and falls into a welter of alcohol, vagrancy, and, ultimately, enlightenment. Perhaps most alienated of all is Michael Trey in “Between Storms,” who locks himself in his New York City apartment after being traumatized by a major storm and finds himself taken by the outside world as a prophet—not of doom, but, maybe, peace? Not all these awkward types are hapless or benign: The short, shy surgeon in “Cut, Cut, Cut” turns out to be something like a mad scientist out of H.G. Wells while “Showdown on the Hudson” is a saga about an authentic Black cowboy from Texas who’s not exactly a perfect fit for New York City but is soon compelled to do the right thing, Western-style. The tough-minded and tenderly observant Mosley style remains constant throughout these stories even as they display varied approaches from the gothic to the surreal.
The range and virtuosity of these stories make this Mosley’s most adventurous and, maybe, best book.Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-8021-4956-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Grove
Review Posted Online: Sept. 1, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
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