A short story collection that functions best as a series of portraits of Iranian life in and out of the country.
In this trio of linked stories inspired by sounds overheard on the streets of Vancouver, a salesman becomes addicted to drugs, a whip-smart car thief comes face to face with the cop who has been chasing him, and two grandfathers inspire their granddaughter with stories of their native Iran.
In the first story, “Sammy and Luci,” a successful car salesman named Sammy grows bored with his perfect life and longs for something more. He begins partying, gambling, and spending all his hard-earned money on serious drugs. Soon, he’s dependent on his dealer, Luci, for his next fix. In “Constable Johnson and Fully Loaded,” a cop finally tracks down a skilled and educated car thief nicknamed FL, short for Fully Loaded. However, when the cop brings FL to home to recuperate from a gunshot wound, his beloved sister falls in love with the criminal. In “Mr. Ahmadi, Mr. Bandar, and Little Homa,” two Iranian expats take very different life paths that both end up in Vancouver. Once they meet again in Canada, the men find their lives entwined forever when their children fall in love and produce a granddaughter who loves hearing them argue about Iran. Debut author Sorkhou is at his best when describing the sights, sounds, and political turmoil of Iran, the homeland of many of his protagonists. These colorful snapshots, such as FL’s memories of the shallow pools filled with goldfish in many Iranian homes, or Mr. Ahmadi seeing a Mercedes-Benz on the streets of Tehran and becoming infatuated with German culture, feel vibrant and full of life. However, many scenes on the streets of Vancouver fall flat, sometimes weighed down by thug life clichés (cops are often “pigs”). Sorkhou also has an awkward penchant for asking readers to fill in the blanks: “My dear reader, you decide what Sahra was studying at the university and what doctorate she wanted to obtain, and let me know.” This tactic ends up feeling uninspired while leaving the reader wanting more.
A short story collection that functions best as a series of portraits of Iranian life in and out of the country.Pub Date: March 20, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4917-6115-1
Page Count: 118
Publisher: iUniverse
Review Posted Online: July 1, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
A newcomer to watch: fresh, funny, and tough.
Seven stories, including a couple of prizewinners, from an exuberantly talented young Thai-American writer.
In the poignant title story, a young man accompanies his mother to Kok Lukmak, the last in the chain of Andaman Islands—where the two can behave like “farangs,” or foreigners, for once. It’s his last summer before college, her last before losing her eyesight. As he adjusts to his unsentimental mother’s acceptance of her fate, they make tentative steps toward the future. “Farangs,” included in Best New American Voices 2005 (p. 711), is about a flirtation between a Thai teenager who keeps a pet pig named Clint Eastwood and an American girl who wanders around in a bikini. His mother, who runs a motel after having been deserted by the boy’s American father, warns him about “bonking” one of the guests. “Draft Day” concerns a relieved but guilty young man whose father has bribed him out of the draft, and in “Don’t Let Me Die in This Place,” a bitter grandfather has moved from the States to Bangkok to live with his son, his Thai daughter-in-law, and two grandchildren. The grandfather’s grudging adjustment to the move and to his loss of autonomy (from a stroke) is accelerated by a visit to a carnival, where he urges the whole family into a game of bumper cars. The longest story, “Cockfighter,” is an astonishing coming-of-ager about feisty Ladda, 15, who watches as her father, once the best cockfighter in town, loses his status, money, and dignity to Little Jui, 16, a meth addict whose father is the local crime boss. Even Ladda is in danger, as Little Jui’s bodyguards try to abduct her. Her mother tells Ladda a family secret about her father’s failure of courage in fighting Big Jui to save his own sister’s honor. By the time Little Jui has had her father beaten and his ear cut off, Ladda has begun to realize how she must fend for herself.
A newcomer to watch: fresh, funny, and tough.Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-8021-1788-0
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Grove
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2004
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