Much like his contemporaries Kevin Wilson or Wells Tower, Lennon is one of those writers who defies categorization and is as...
Fourteen short stories about the quiet desperation and weary pessimism of a disparate collection of travelers.
One sometimes wonders if Lennon (Familiar, 2012, etc.) published his recent Salon essay, “How to Write a Bad Review,” in hopes of catching a break. Fortunately, the gifted novelist doesn’t need the help, especially if he continues to produce short fiction such as the unconventional yet emotionally resonant stories on display here. Culled from the past 15 years, the stories tend to drift toward two categories. The more exotic and eye-catching are those that insert some magical or paranormal element into a drab suburban landscape. In “Portal,” an otherworldly doorway to alternate universes becomes as boring as an old gaming console with time. In “Zombie Dan,” a couple finds that their recently resurrected pal is even more irritating when he comes back with an omniscient knowledge of their sins. In “The Wraith,” a wife’s depression cleaves from her to become a golemlike ghoul that haunts her husband. Then there’s “Weber’s Head,” an old-fashioned horror story whose narrator wouldn’t be amiss in the other category of stories of disaffected people on the edge of despair. “I was thoroughly debased, and at thirty-two felt like I’d been an old man for a long time,” says Weber’s roommate. “I saw no way of escaping the life I’d made for myself, save for the mountain falling down and crushing me.” This theme of characters with their songs stuck in their throats runs throughout the book in stories like “No Life,” in which a couple struggles with adoption; “Total Humiliation in 1987,” about a marriage on the rocks; and “Hibachi,” a Carver-esque tale of the liberating power of home appliances. Perhaps best to end with “The Accursed Items,” an interesting diversion originally broadcast on This American Life.
Much like his contemporaries Kevin Wilson or Wells Tower, Lennon is one of those writers who defies categorization and is as likely to fit comfortably into Weird Tales as he is into Granta.Pub Date: Nov. 4, 2014
ISBN: 9781555976934
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Graywolf
Review Posted Online: July 22, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2014
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
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
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