Vivid, thought-provoking stories make an enjoyable and challenging book.
An intriguing, wide-ranging story collection with a hint of magic.
The real and the surreal drive the 15 stories in this debut, many of which have been previously published in other formats. “Passeridae” is told from the perspective of cruise ship staff members hiding out in a linen closet after an armed attack on their ship. In “Ghosting,” a woman sees her weight loss drugs work while other pills do nothing to stem her mother’s increasing dementia. “Fuse” is narrated by one-half of a pair of conjoined twins, and “Strange Magic” features an opening line that immediately embodies the story title: “When Mary Ellen’s left breast grew back on its own during our Saturday dinner break, we had confirmation that something weird was happening.” Oddities continue in “Seven Minutes in Heaven,” in which wishes are granted to those who kiss, making it difficult for the narrator to avoid unwanted attention. The letters that make up “Billet-Doux” are struggling San Franciscan Liz’s imagined conversations with her job, her local bar, and the attractive man she sees on the train every day but never actually speaks to. Relatives handle family conflicts, scientists investigate natural and unnatural phenomena, and overlooked children take action throughout the book. The protagonists tell their stories from a wide variety of locations and circumstances, with common themes that unite the collection, and the author uses a narrative tone that is consistent across the stories while also allowing each story to develop a unique voice.
Wimmer is a strong writer and fills the pages with elegant, evocative phrasing (“We said words of respect in our native languages, which between the eight of us totaled fourteen gods and six words meaning ‘grace’ ”). Her tone is often wry (“Evelyn thought of her bed like a trapdoor spider, capturing the interest and monetary resources of her romantic partners”), and even the book’s most sardonic narrators balance their misanthropy with a touch of curiosity. The stories vary in length and format but retain a clear aesthetic sense throughout, making it easy to imagine that the characters from “Flarby” and “Intersomnolence” might someday cross paths. The work educates without being didactic; readers learn about Wisconsin bingo regulations and Waardenburg syndrome in “INGOB” and the properties of sphagnum moss in “The Bog King,” with the bits of trivia blending seamlessly into the tales. The far-from-superfluous details bring Wimmer’s characters to life and add a layer of authenticity, convincing readers that the author knows what she is talking about (whether the topic is used car salesmanship, roller rink playlists, or the duties of sleep lab technicians). The elements of magical realism are presented without fanfare, and Wimmer succeeds in creating a world where they are entirely plausible. Fans of Karen Russell, Veronica Schanoes, and Connie Willis are all likely to find stories to enjoy in the collection, as Wimmer blends traditional literary fiction with a touch of the fantastic.
Vivid, thought-provoking stories make an enjoyable and challenging book.Pub Date: Oct. 28, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-63768-058-2
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Autumn House Press
Review Posted Online: July 6, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
PERSPECTIVES
The spirit of grace under pressure and creativity under fire animates a wonderfully diverse set of stories.
Ng selects 20 stories that illustrate why we might still read fiction in a time of disinformation and lies.
As the trials and tribulations of the 21st century have unfolded, the Best American Short Stories anthology has become a particular way of taking the temperature of each passing year. As Ng writes in her introduction to the latest group, “Short stories in particular can act like little tuning forks, helping us to clarify our own values—then allowing us to bring ourselves into alignment with what we believe. In a time when our values are being tested daily, it’s hard to think of anything more important.” Many of them are also fun to read, a quality appreciated more than ever by depressed and overwhelmed readers. The stories are ordered alphabetically, a structure maintained in the following selection, which is unfortunately limited by space. “Take Me to Kirkland,” by Sarah Anderson, is very funny, a little weird, and certainly one of Costco’s finest hours. “What Would I Do for You, What Would You Do for Me?” by Emma Binder is a cinematic mini-thriller about a trans kid visiting his hometown, terrified of being “clocked” by the people he grew up with after he saves a local from drowning. “Time of the Preacher,” by Bret Anthony Johnston, is one of several pandemic stories—in it, a snake, which may or may not be under the refrigerator, inspires a quarantine-breaking cry for help from a fence-builder’s ex-wife. Another story of that time, “Yellow Tulips,” by Nathan Curtis Roberts, also combines endearing, funny first-person narration with a more serious theme. A Mormon man in an uptight Utah suburb has to manage his developmentally disabled adult son through the complexities of quarantine. One day, he discovers that his son has “gotten into the provisions Mormons are all but commanded to keep, eating Nutella and Marshmallow Fluff from their jars.…Brig, we put these things aside for the apocalypse,’” the father says, while his son “grinned gleefully, sugary goo smeared across his lips and fingers. ‘It’s an apocalypse now!’”
The spirit of grace under pressure and creativity under fire animates a wonderfully diverse set of stories.Pub Date: Oct. 21, 2025
ISBN: 9780063399808
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Mariner Books
Review Posted Online: Oct. 10, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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SEEN & HEARD
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