While not perfectly constructed, these stories turn out to be curious, diverse, and enjoyable.
A debut collection offers six wide-ranging short stories on relationships among family, friends, colleagues, and species.
This book covers a vast terrain, exploring numerous styles, settings, and voices. It opens with the very brief “Keeping Busy,” in which Julie, on a smoke break at work, ponders a recent fire that consumed a trailer and man, possibly her co-worker’s brother. She figures the fire started with a cigarette, possibly hers. Julie, her town, and her job all pique interest, but the two-page story is too spare to ground readers or build empathy. “Game Day,” though much longer, has a similar sketchy feel. The story is told by a preschooler, Tommy, who lives with his mother near a large stadium. Tommy is precocious enough to ponder kindergarten and nap simply to improve his mother’s mood, yet seems utterly stymied by the marching band’s instruments at the stadium: “shiny gold funnel shapes” and a “big tummy thing.” A child’s viewpoint is indeed difficult and MacLaurin succeeds in portraying Tommy’s innocence and budding complicity, but the insight isn’t deep enough to create well-rounded characters or necessary tension. “The Greeting” attempts an even more challenging point of view: a dragonfly hoping to welcome two humans, or “Otherkind,” at a lakeshore. While initially confusing, the story shows potential, perhaps as environmental sci-fi. The author hits a stronger stride in “Decision at Camp Ross Trails,” about an eerie Girl Scout camp, and particularly in “Dinner at the Anatevka Grill,” in which a woman shares traditional Russian cuisine and tales of her past with her food critic husband. These characters possess a greater dimension, with their motivations and wants palpable, making the stories believable. “Anatevka Grill” rings true with rich sensory and historical details. The most entertaining story is “Odyssey, with Swine,” the last in the collection. Readers know at the outset where this is headed: a pig will be slaughtered. But they also sense there will be conflict. The narrator’s ensuing “odyssey” aptly pulls the plot—and the pig—toward an inevitable end.
While not perfectly constructed, these stories turn out to be curious, diverse, and enjoyable.Pub Date: Feb. 26, 2012
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 74
Publisher: QuillerWorks Publishing
Review Posted Online: June 10, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
