by Michael Chin ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 3, 2019
A moving collection from a promising talent who has a lot to say.
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A debut volume of short fiction explores the ways that people can hurt and heal one another.
A third grade teacher contemplates the rise of Donald Trump while his girlfriend obsesses about the possibility of a zombie apocalypse. A gay couple keep their love secret while hosting a morning radio show in upstate New York. A woman leaves her husband and goes with her daughter to her mother’s house, where she must contend with her parent’s new habit of yelling at people who aren’t there. In this collection, Chin tackles the difficulties of close human relationships: the sorts of tensions that exist between relatives, friends, and lovers that are rarely discussed but that can come to define the parties involved. In “The End of the World,” a high schooler’s crush on his allegedly straight best friend comes to a head during a Fourth of July party. In the title story, the same two boys deal with the aftermath of the incident, attempting to grapple with feelings of confusion, identity, and betrayal. Between the longer stories, the author includes a number of flash pieces that cut even more directly at these themes, as in “Interrogation,” about a disturbing game played by two siblings: “When we started, you were five, I was seven. Back when two years spelled a difference and I could still tell you what we’d play, and in the absence of Mom or Dad, I might as well have been Mom or Dad, might as well have been God, because who were you to question my instruction?” In its own way, each tale seems to ask: How can the characters continue after all the hurt that they have done to one another? After all the damage they have done to themselves? Chin’s prose is sparse and plainspoken, recalling any number of American fiction’s working-class minimalists. Here he describes the protagonist in “Better”: “Joel wrote bullet point descriptions for a company that sold traffic cones, hard hats, safety glasses, and harnesses. Selling durability. Selling comfort. He never slept enough. Started each day with a Centrum and a cigarette. The combination of the two on an empty stomach made him nauseous.” The writing occasionally flowers into a chatty descriptiveness, particularly when the author discusses the physical environs of Shermantown, New York, the fictional place in which a number of the stories are set: “Tonight, it’s an older crew. Not his friend’s parents’ place, but a house of their own. Out in the Podunk-est outskirts of Shermantown. Rundown as it is, the house is big, I’ll give them that, with flat eaves and segments of roof already set up with lawn chairs.” His characters—mostly dissatisfied young men and older boys groping for meaning—are well drawn and sympathetic, though the pieces vary in terms of their emotional impact. The best are the Shermantown tales, which better access the confusion of youth and the tragedy of small cities, but every story is compelling enough to carry readers through to the gritty end.
A moving collection from a promising talent who has a lot to say.Pub Date: Sept. 3, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-943900-16-9
Page Count: 136
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Aug. 1, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Michael Chin
by Susan Count ‧ RELEASE DATE: N/A
A short, simple, and sweet tale about two friends and a horse.
A novel tells the story of two spirited girls who set out to save a lame foal in 1952.
Mary, age 12, lacks muscle control of her legs and must use a wheelchair. Her life is constantly interrupted by trips with her widower father to assorted doctors, all of whom have failed to help her. Mary tolerates the treatments, hoping to one day walk unassisted, but her true passion involves horses. Possessing a library filled with horse books, she loves watching and drawing the animals at a neighboring farm. She longs to own one herself. But her father, overprotective due to her disability and his own lingering grief over Mary’s dead mother, makes her keep her distance. Mary befriends Laura, the emotionally neglected daughter of the wealthy neighboring farm owners, and the two share secret buggy rides. Both girls are attracted to Illusion, a beautiful red bay filly on the farm. Mary learns that Illusion is to be put down by a veterinarian because of a lame leg. Horrified, she decides to talk to the barn manager about the horse (“Isn’t it okay for her to live even if she’s not perfect? I think she deserves a chance”). Soon, Mary and Laura attempt to raise money to save Illusion. At the same time, Mary begins to gain control of her legs thanks to water therapy and secret therapeutic riding with Laura. There is indeed a great deal of poignancy in a story of a girl with a disability fighting to defend the intrinsic value of a lame animal. But this book, the first installment of the Dream Horse Adventure Series, would be twice as touching if Mary interacted with Illusion more. In the tale’s opening, she watches the foal from afar, but she actually spends very little time with the filly she tries so hard to protect. This turns out to be a strange development given the degree to which the narrative relies on her devotion. Count (Selah’s Sweet Dream, 2015) draws Mary and Laura in broad but believable strokes, defined mainly by their unrelenting pluckiness in the face of adversity. While the work tackles disability, death, and grief, Mary’s and Laura’s environments are so idyllic and their optimism and perseverance so remarkable that the story retains an aura of uncomplicated gentleness throughout.
A short, simple, and sweet tale about two friends and a horse.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Hastings Creations Group
Review Posted Online: Oct. 15, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Susan Count
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by Susan Count
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by Susan Count
by Katie Keridan ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 2, 2018
Therapeutic, moving verse from a promising new talent.
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Keridan’s poetry testifies to the pain of love and loss—and to the possibility of healing in the aftermath.
The literary critic Geoffrey Hartman once wrote that literature—and poetry, in particular—can help us “read the wound” of trauma. That is, it can allow one to express and explain one’s deepest hurts when everyday language fails. Keridan appears to have a similar understanding of poetry. She writes in “Foreword,” the opening work of her debut collection, that “pain frequently uses words as an escape route / (oh, how I know).” Many words—and a great deal of pain—escape in this volume, but the result is healing: “the ending is happy / the beginning was horrific / so let’s start there.” The book, then, tracks the process of recovery in the wake of suffering, and often, this suffering is brought on by romantic relationships gone wrong. An early untitled poem opens, “I die a little / taking pieces of me to feed the fire / that keeps him warm / you don’t notice that it’s a slow death / when you’re disappearing little by little.” The author’s imagery here—of the self fueling the dying fire of love—is simultaneously subtle and wrenching. But the poem’s message, amplified elsewhere in the book, is clear: We go wrong if we destructively give ourselves over to others, and healing comes only when we turn our energies back to our own good. Later poems, therefore, reveal that self-definition often equals strength. The process is painful but salutary; when “you’re left unprotected / surrounded by chaos with nothing you / can depend on / except yourself / and that’s when you gather the pieces / of the life you lost / and use them to build the life you want.” The “life you want” is an elusive goal, and the author knows that the path to self-definition is fraught with peril—but her collection may give strength to those who walk it.
Therapeutic, moving verse from a promising new talent.Pub Date: Nov. 2, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-72770-538-6
Page Count: 196
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Jan. 9, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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