DREAM OF CHAOS IN SILENCE

Name: DREAM OF CHAOS IN SILENCE
Author: Rex Owen Waide Jr.
ISBN: 978-1-5427-4561-1

by Rex Owen Waide Jr. ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 1, 2017

A consistent theme and strong voice carry this collection but some tales need greater complexity in plot and characters.

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Five short stories explore the borderlands between life and death.

Waide’s (Where Do We Go From Here?, 2016, etc.) collection focuses on “making sense of the Self while drowning in chaos”—in essence, a theme in all literature. But the author chooses a particular style and tone to examine these ideas. In his first and most developed story, “Weightless,” Foster grieves for Andrea by pulling himself and others into the space between life and death. He’s a psychiatrist who pushes people off building tops, believing that in those deadly moments “they became absolutely connected with life, more than they had ever been.” As Foster struggles with the “dark matter”—the balance between everything and nothing—the story shifts between first- and third-person point of view. “Weightless” is intense, philosophically and stylistically. Waide maintains a fast pace while raising existential questions. “Cold Sore” employs similar techniques. Max tells his partner, Martha, that he won’t join her on a road trip because he doesn’t want “to be around people right now.” He knows he’s egotistical and briefly “started to feel something” but stays home. Soon a cold sore on his lip grows into a surreal, flesh-eating monster and Max must face “i,” himself and his selfishness. Waide again plays with point of view to show his characters’ inner demons: “i punches me in the face,” says Max. But as the cold sore and the story grow more grotesque, readers may wish for a reprieve through deeper character and plot development. Three shorter stories also deal with life through death. “The Pit,” just one page, involves a child who lives and dies in a literal pit with “a tiny yellow circle overhead.” “Man with a Knife” describes a household on a rolling platform with no walls; the family is confronted by a vagabond wielding a butter knife. Both tales are intriguing and dreamlike but underdeveloped. In the final story, “Sagacity,” stock characters debate whether a heart transplant should go to Einstein or a rabid cat—a conversation Waide makes surprisingly intricate.

A consistent theme and strong voice carry this collection but some tales need greater complexity in plot and characters.

Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2017

ISBN: 978-1-5427-4561-1

Page Count: 126

Publisher: CreateSpace

Review Posted Online: May 10, 2017

Review Program: Kirkus Indie

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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SUMMER ISLAND

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2001

The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...

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Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.

Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.

The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.

Pub Date: March 1, 2001

ISBN: 0-609-60737-5

Page Count: 336

Publisher: Crown

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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LAST ORDERS

by Graham Swift ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 5, 1996

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Britisher Swift's sixth novel (Ever After, 1992 etc.) and fourth to appear here is a slow-to-start but then captivating tale of English working-class families in the four decades following WW II. When Jack Dodds dies suddenly of cancer after years of running a butcher shop in London, he leaves a strange request—namely, that his ashes be scattered off Margate pier into the sea. And who could better be suited to fulfill this wish than his three oldest drinking buddies—insurance man Ray, vegetable seller Lenny, and undertaker Vic, all of whom, like Jack himself, fought also as soldiers or sailors in the long-ago world war. Swift's narrative start, with its potential for the melodramatic, is developed instead with an economy, heart, and eye that release (through the characters' own voices, one after another) the story's humanity and depth instead of its schmaltz. The jokes may be weak and self- conscious when the three old friends meet at their local pub in the company of the urn holding Jack's ashes; but once the group gets on the road, in an expensive car driven by Jack's adoptive son, Vince, the story starts gradually to move forward, cohere, and deepen. The reader learns in time why it is that no wife comes along, why three marriages out of three broke apart, and why Vince always hated his stepfather Jack and still does—or so he thinks. There will be stories of innocent youth, suffering wives, early loves, lost daughters, secret affairs, and old antagonisms—including a fistfight over the dead on an English hilltop, and a strewing of Jack's ashes into roiling seawaves that will draw up feelings perhaps unexpectedly strong. Without affectation, Swift listens closely to the lives that are his subject and creates a songbook of voices part lyric, part epic, part working-class social realism—with, in all, the ring to it of the honest, human, and true.