Even more impressive than Russell's critically acclaimed novel.
A consistently arresting, frequently stunning collection of eight stories.
Though Russell enjoyed her breakthrough—both popular and critical—with her debut novel (Swamplandia!, 2011), she had earlier attracted notice with her short stories (St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves, 2006). Here, she returns to that format with startling effect, reinforcing the uniqueness of her fiction, employing situations that are implausible, even outlandish, to illuminate the human condition. Or the vampire condition, as she does in the opening title story, where the ostensibly unthreatening narrator comes to term with immortality, love and loss, and his essential nature. Then there’s “The Seagull Army Descends on Strong Beach, 1979,” about a 14-year-old boy’s sexual initiation during a summer in which he is so acutely self-conscious that he barely notices that his town has been invaded by sea gulls, “gulls grouped so thickly that from a distance they looked like snowbanks.” Perhaps the most ingenious of this inspired lot is “The New Veterans,” with a comparatively realistic setup that finds soldiers who are returning from battle given massages to reduce stress. In one particular relationship, the elaborately tattooed back of a young veteran provides a narrative all its own, one transformed by the narrative process of the massage. The interplay has profound implications for both the masseuse and her initially reluctant patient; both discover that “healing hurts sometimes.” The two shortest stories are also the slightest, though both reflect the seemingly boundless imagination of the author. “The Barn at the End of Our Term” finds a seemingly random group of former presidents in denial (at both their loss of power and the fact that they have somehow become horses), and “Dougbert Shackleton’s Rules for Antarctic Tailgating” presents the “Food Chain Games” as the ultimate spectator sport. With the concluding “The Graveless Doll of Eric Mutis,” about a group of teenage bullies and an urban scarecrow, the fiction blurs all distinction between creative whimsy and moral imperative.
Even more impressive than Russell's critically acclaimed novel.Pub Date: Feb. 12, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-307-95723-8
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Oct. 22, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2012
This grouping of stories, most of which were published previously, confirms Indian novelist and short-story writer Narayan (Under the Banyan Tree and Other Stories, 1985, etc.) as a writer who views narrative as an infinitely superior form of intelligence to mere reason. Says the Talkative Man, the narrator of a story called ``Judge,'' to his dubious audience: ``You demand an explanation! Do you? You won't get it. I will only quote my friend Falstaff in Shakespeare's play. He was asked to explain how or why of certain episodes. His reply was a No sir. `If reasons were as plentiful as blackberries, I would give no man a reason upon compulsion'!'' Narayan, a Talkative Man himself, writes out of a love of the sound of human voices trying to make sense of the world.
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-670-85220-1
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1994
Once again, Kl°ma (Judge on Trial, 1993, etc.) skillfully explores Prague life under the Communist regime in the trying years before the Velvet Revolution. This time around, Kl°ma offers six stories in which a writer (the author's afterword suggests it is the same writer throughout) finds himself working as everything from a courier to an archaeologist to a surveyor. Sometimes the writer finds pleasure in his new employment: In ``The Engine Driver's Story,'' he dreams of driving a locomotive, despite the fact that his ``non-existent psychoanalyst'' insists that the dream is not about trains but about missed opportunities. Sometimes he finds his new job distasteful: In ``The Smuggler's Story,'' he consoles himself with the fact that ``in the conditions prevailing here, it is rare for someone to be doing what he was trained to do, or what he is suited for'' as he struggles to outwit the police with three bags of contraband books. But the beauty of this particular collection (after all, these themes of conscience, oppression, and expression are par for the course with Kl°ma) lies in the sense of liberty and hope it offers when the writer reaps the unexpected benefits of new experiences. A talentless painter-by-default draws his first true likeness when he must identify a young girl he saw just before she committed suicide; an archaeologist interested in human origins finds the courage to admit (at least to himself) to hearing the voices of the home spirits in a 2,500-year-old burial ground. Few writers have the talent or insight to infuse old themes with new life when, according to Kl°ma's narrator, ``we have declared progress to be our idol'' so that ``the furious hunt for novelty [has become] diseased and self-destructive.'' But in this piercing, rich collection, Kl°ma does just that. A master delivers.
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-684-19727-8
Page Count: 284
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1994
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