These 11 mostly hard-luck stories, with their mean and nutty existential heroes and their punch-drunk visions of hell, place Jones right among the literary heavyweights. In many of these gritty tales, first-timer Jones displays the peculiar genius of the autodidact—someone who contemplates the great ideas on his own, and tests them against the rawest of everyday experiences. And rawness is all for the Vietnam vet at the center of three tales here. The title piece, a masterpiece of the form, taps the ``reservoir of malice and vicious sadism'' in its narrator's soul: in country, this madman brawler thrives on the rush of violence and the pure adrenalin of survival. In ``Break on Through,'' a psycho in the narrator's recon team finds redemption inches from death. But in Jones's dark world, it's only temporary: ``human behavior...is an abomination.'' ``The Black Lights,'' set in a vet neuropsych ward, is a harrowing tale worthy of Chekhov, as the narrator chronicles his unmanning by grand mal seizures, depressions, and drugs. Just when you think Jones might strike a lighter note in ``Wipeout'' or ``Mosquitos,'' he reveals his funny, bleak view. One narrator seduces women with his ``irresistible sort of psychopathic charisma,'' the other grudgingly seduces his brother's haughty wife. Equally edgy and disorienting, ``Unchain My Heart'' pokes fun at pantywaist editors while it explores, from a woman's view, the appeal of strong and courageous men. The only nice guy in ``Silhouettes'' is a retarded janitor; he's a ``noble innocent,'' and of course exploited by everyone. Life is ``the trip, the only trip'' for an insane, suicidal boxer (``as of July 6th...''); a cancer patient on her deathbed (``I Want to Live!''); and an advertising genius wandering Bombay in an epileptic fugue (``A White Horse''). ``Rocket Man,'' with its Nietzchean splendors, takes you down for the count. Dizzying combinations of prose punches with abstract bobs and weaves: a knockout.
Pub Date: June 7, 1993
ISBN: 0-316-47302-2
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1993
Ten openly celebratory new stories, in a fifth collection, from the prolific Cooper (In Search of Satisfaction, 1994, etc.). With her characteristic wit and aplomband effortless colloquial stylethe author leads her high-spirited, modern-day heroines on their hard (but usually rewarding) life's journeys. Women all need the same thing, Cooper asserts time and again: to strike a critical balance between finding love and findingand keepingthemselves. And though these protagonists make mistakes and fall often into traps set for women since the beginning of time, they're eventually offered redemption and indeed happiness by dint of their own learned wisdom. ``Femme Fatale'' plays with the traditional meaning of that phrase as Darlin' Roscoe's version of Everywoman undergoes a radical transformation for the better. In ``The Way It Is,'' Melody learns after losing the love of her life that it's more-than-OK to pass up Mr. So-So even if it means holding out all alone for Mr. Right. The inspirational ``Yellow House Road'' features MLee (so named by a mother who had 13 children and no time to learn to spell), who leaves her lazy husband to discover what she wants out of lifeand learns that just by trying she ``can DO things by herself, for herself.'' But Cooper is no full-fledged Pollyanna: ``Sure Is a Shame'' concerns Inez and her sorry sister Gartha, two women who made bad choices and couldn't (or wouldn't) escape them; ``A Will and a Way'' has a tragic loss at its center, one not adequately compensated for by its unsatisfying end. Overall, though, the cumulative experiences of these invincible, irrepressible women create an unforgettable, uplifting collection. Funny, real, warm, and right on the money: stories from a gifted author that help to do womankind proud. (Author tour)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-385-46787-7
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1995
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A brilliant collection of ten replete portrayals of family life, from an emerging storyteller (A Hole in the Language, 1990) whose generous command of the depth and range of her characters' lives suggests an American Alice Munro in the making. Marriage, parenthood, separation, and the desolating variety of loss are the emotional coordinates of Swick's fictional territorywhose geographic polarities are Nebraska and southern California. Her people, all unhinged by the miscellaneous pressures of relationship, include a divorcÇe (``The Other Widow'') surreptitiously mourning the sudden death of her married lover, teenage sisters who (in the title story) expertly play their estranged parents against each other, and a rootless twentysomething (in ``Moscow Nights'') who's just been dumped by his girlfriend and who's drawn into reluctant complicity with his divorced mother's adventurous new lifestyle (including her abortion). Swick's characters brood guiltily over their own failings; many, like ``The Prodigal Father,'' eerily envision the worst that lies ahead of the messes they've made of their lives. Nevertheless, her stories crackle with crisp, witty metaphors and observations (``she feels like some character in a soap opera, only not as well-dressed''). Her men are every bit as convincing and winning as her women. In ``The Still Point,'' a frustrated wife ditches her luckless failure of a husband, a ``repeat victim'' whose espousal of Zen Buddhism leads the story in several surprising directions. In ``Crete,'' a college teacher whose untroubled life contrasts sharply with his wife's history of violence and loss, is brought to a totally unexpected point of empathy with the sensibility he has never managed to share. And in the nerve-racking ``Sleeping Dogs,'' Swick's most ingeniously plotted story, a frightened husband and father discovers that his character failings endanger the family he now knows he loves above all else. Swick's richly composed stories appear frequently in The Atlantic and the quarterlies. One of our most visible storytellers, she is rapidly becoming one of our best.
Pub Date: Sept. 13, 1995
ISBN: 0-06-017254-1
Page Count: 224
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1995
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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