A slyly cutting batch of tales from a contemporary master.
Seventeen stories, straightforward but well-crafted, that cement McGuane’s reputation as the finest short story writer of Big Sky country—and, at his best, beyond.
These days, McGuane’s writing could hardly be further from the showy, overwritten prose of his breakthrough novels like Ninety-two in the Shade (1973). His sense of humor remains, but it’s wiser, more fatalistic and more Twain-like; he writes beautifully about the wilderness but always with an eye on its destructive power. As with much of his recent fiction, most of the stories here are set in Montana and turn on relationships going bust. In “Hubcaps,” a young boy observes his parents’ breakup through the filter of baseball and football games, capturing the protagonist’s slowly emerging resentment; in “Lake Story,” a man’s long-running affair with a married woman collapses during an ill-advised public outing, exposing the thinness of the connections that united them; in “Canyon Ferry,” a divorced dad’s attempt to prove his intrepidness to his young son during an ice-fishing trip pushes them to the edge of disaster during a storm. One of the best stories in the collection, “River Camp,” displays McGuane’s skill at pairing emotional turmoil with the untamed outdoors, following two brothers-in-law whose attempt to get away from it all leads them to a tour guide of questionable mental stability, bears rustling through tents and plenty of exposed raw nerves about their marriages. “Stars” tells a similar story in a more interior mode, following an astronomer who increasingly fails to contain her anger at the workaday world—McGuane skillfully depicts the small but constant ways life goes off-plumb for her—and how she fumbles toward balance in the forest. The conflicts throughout this book are age-old—indeed, the title story evokes “Oedipus”—but McGuane’s clean writing and psychological acuity enliven them all.
A slyly cutting batch of tales from a contemporary master.Pub Date: March 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-35019-8
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Dec. 7, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
PROFILES
A flawed but never dull drama.
A disadvantaged teen finds friendship, acceptance and love with a prosperous Seattle-area family, until a tragic accident changes everything.
Alexa (Lexi) Baill, daughter of a heroin addict, has bounced around the foster-care system for years. A long-lost great aunt, Eva, a Walmart employee, offers Lexi a home in her trailer across the bridge from Pine Island (Hannah’s fictional stand-in for Bainbridge Island) near Seattle. At Pine Island High School, Mia, daughter of Jude and Miles Farraday, and twin sister of Zachary, considers herself an outcast. She bonds instantly with the equally alienated Lexi. Soon, the Farraday’s opulent Pine Island residence is Lexi’s second home. As senior year approaches, Lexi and Zach fall in love and are relieved that Mia approves. Jude, whose days are a pleasant whirl of caring for her elaborate garden and being a supermom, has a strained relationship with her own mother. As seniors, Zach, Mia and Lexi can’t avoid Pine Island’s teen party scene. One foggy night, Zach and Mia get falling-down drunk, and Lexi, less inebriated, urges Zach to let her drive his Mustang home. (The question of who actually drove is left vague, which dodges several moral bullets, to the story’s detriment.) On a hairpin curve, the Mustang spins out and crashes. Mia is thrown from the backseat and killed. Zach and Lexi sustain milder injuries, but Lexi’s blood-alcohol level was above the legal limit, and she accepts the blame for killing Mia. Jude turns against her implacably. Lexi, unwilling to burden Eva with the expense of a trial, pleads guilty to vehicular homicide and serves over five years in prison. While incarcerated, she gives birth to Zach’s child, Grace, and relinquishes her to the Farradays. Grace bears such an uncanny resemblance to Mia that Jude finds it almost impossible to warm to her. Released from prison, Lexi returns to Pine Island, only to find that her daughter is as isolated and distrustful as any foster child.
A flawed but never dull drama.Pub Date: March 29, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-312-36442-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: April 4, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2011
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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