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NO LIE LIKE LOVE

STORIES

The newest Flannery O'Connor Award winner consists of 11 mostly compelling stories, many of which appeared previously in literary magazines. Comfortable with a variety of voices, Rawlins unifies his debut collection thematically: Men facing change is the larger subject, handled here with great subtlety. Farthest afield are two stories set in South Africa: ``The Matter of These Hours'' is a haunting tale of two teens who seek out a faith healer because one of them is HIV-positive; in ``Slangfontein,'' a young man of Afrikaner descent decides to revive the family farm after his father's rejection of life on the veldt. The title piece also involves rejection of one type of life for another—a college-bound kid in Washington State has no plans to return to the family farm (as his father hopes), to his podunk town, or to his childhood girlfriend. Rawlins's middle-aged men are on the downside of their dreams. The self-important financier in the hyperbolic ``Big Where I Come From'' condescends to the local Iowans in his hometown until he finds himself suddenly bankrupt. ``Big Texas,'' a fine story reminiscent of the novels of Dan Jenkins, concerns two buddies recovering from their vanished glories, one a former pro football player with a blown-out knee, the other his college drinking pal crippled in a ski accident. The search for psychic and spiritual renewal takes two friends out into the Utah desert after they are fired from their jobs as machinists (``Good for What Ails You''). In ``Kokopelli,'' a Stanford prof, suffering from a debilitating and mysterious illness, is comforted by his former student who steers him towards Native American spirits. The most dramatic, visceral piece is ``August—Staying Cool,'' a junkie's memoir of kicking his habit during a long, hot summer. A strong debut, but with plenty of room to grow.

Pub Date: Dec. 2, 1996

ISBN: 0-8203-1868-X

Page Count: 192

Publisher: Univ. of Georgia

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1996

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THE THINGS THEY CARRIED

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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SIGHTSEEING

STORIES

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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