|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
my rating |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
![]() |
|
|
||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1640095837
| 9781640095830
| 1640095837
| 3.27
| 790
| Jun 27, 2023
| Jun 27, 2023
|
really liked it
| The dead, after all, do not walk backwards but they do walk behind us. They have no lungs and cannot call out but would love for us to turn around. T The dead, after all, do not walk backwards but they do walk behind us. They have no lungs and cannot call out but would love for us to turn around. They are victims of love, many of them. – Anne Carson - from the epigraph-------------------------------------- We are our own ghosts, dragging our mournful pasts behind us forever.An apartment in Miami Beach, from 1942 to 2012, seventy years of tenants, eleven of them, each with a story to be told. The conceit of the novel is that the apartment retains some form of consciousness. Nothing particularly overt, mind you. It is handled more like a repository for emotional flotsam, psychic impressions that accumulate and rattle around with the tide of each new resident, to no obvious major purpose, until the final third of the book, when the apartment acquires a spokesperson, a late resident, who is on a mission to save the current one, Lana. [image] Ana Menendez - Image from her site So, was all the depositing of emotional residue by the prior nine tenants merely substructure on which this final pair could rest? I found that a jarring shift, a sort of unwelcome unreliable narrator, as we are no longer hearing apt 2B, but as if this person proclaimed, “Shove over, flat. I’ll take it from here.” Menendez’s work is mostly in short form, so it makes sense that her novel is of the linked-story form, as each resident in turn gets anywhere from six to twenty-two pages for their tale. Even though there is a through-arc, it still feels like a short-story collection, which is fine with me. But this form does limit how much one can get invested in any one character. The final chapter, at a novella-length eighty-four pages, changes this dynamic and gives us a bit more to hold on to with its two primaries. After a prologue, in which an indigenous woman sees the first European invaders on what is now Miami Beach, establishes the roots of the storytelling arc, we jump to the beginnings of World War II. An apartment building called The Helena is still moist with drying paint when it is requisitioned by the military. Major Jack Appleton has been moved from Texas to lead an officers’ school. His wife, Sophie, is not what you might call thrilled. Appleton is controlling and abusive. They are not long for this place. During their stay a ship is set ablaze and sunk off the coast by a German U-boat, bringing the war home. In fact, while the violence may be almost entirely off-screen, there is plenty of it. It is a pervasive thread in The Apartment, from the genocidal infections brought by the first Europeans, to carnage wrought by German forces. A veteran suffers from PTSD after serving in Viet Nam. A Marielita flees her abusive father, but is being kept by an abusive lover. A woman dreams that her husband is coming to kill her. A couple fear for their lives, concerned that they are being pursued by agents from their home country. A soldier is killed in action. There is a suicide and another tenant who might follow suit. A man is set upon by thugs in the street and is beaten bloody. Each chapter ends with an interstitial piece, as the apartment is vacant for a time. Cleaners come in to prepare for the next renter. Some offer some wonderful short character pieces. The apartment sees and feels. The front door closes, and absence returns to apartment 2B. but there is still someone here to record the fact, this unseen eye that moves across the floor as it if were a page, sweeps the bedroom, the naked walls, lingers at the single living room window with its blinds at half-mast.We get a Cook’s Tour of many significant moments in American history, including foreign events that impact here through the residents of 2B, WWII, tensions between the USA and Cuba, Viet Nam, the Mariel boatlift, the demise of the junta in Argentina, USA involvement in Central American conflicts, 9/11, the demise of printed newspapers, Lebanon, Afghanistan. A lot. I’ve been interested for a long time in how the trauma of war and displacement plays out across generations. So this was one of the main ideas I wanted to explore in the novel. Many of the conflicts in this novel have ties to the United States, which of course can sadly be said of many conflicts in the world today. We are all implicated. But simply on a craft level, as a writer, there were some conflicts that I wanted to include for personal reasons.Everyone at the Helena is a transplant from someplace else. Many of the characters are foreign-born, carrying with them a sense of mourning for their lost birthplaces. Some have to jump down to the bottom of the work ladder they had ascended back home and begin the climb again, or take on completely alternate work just to get by. Even those who have made successful new lives pine for what was lost. SHAPIRO: You introduce us very early on in the text to a Spanish word, morrina. What does the word mean? And how did you think about the concept in relation to the narrative you were writing?The vast majority of the stories, eight of eleven, center on women. Conflict abroad manifests as abuse or misery at home. Few move on from 2B to a better life. There are exceptions. Relationships are pretty universally strained. Abuse recurs. A marriage of convenience challenges a relationship of love. There are betrayals, problems with gambling, alcoholism, depression, desperation, racism, bigotry of various sorts, and shame. Some are tormented by decisions they have made in the past. Some seem more like lost wanderers, thrown up on shore after being tossed roughly about by an angry sea. The residents vary in their work lives, with creative arts well represented. There are multiple painters, their models, a journalist and a concert pianist. The most piercing spectral presence of all is a painting one of the residents is working on, as it manifests a particular bit of darkness. Snakes pop up throughout. The book opens with A serpent coils through the underbrush of palmetto and coco plum…Harmless, this one, this time.. Later “Time, spooky and fickle. Not arrow, but snake.” There are more. And now back to the apartment designation. Wait, 2B? Or not? Certainly calls up a soliloquy from Hamlet. And informs a fair piece of the book. The Danish Prince wonders if he should keep on keeping on after, learning that dear uncle murdered his father. Certainly many of the characters here have suffered the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. Some put up a good fight, taking up arms against a sea of troubles. And by opposing [attempting to] end them. Well, some efforts are made. The alternative, the not 2B part, is to end the Heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks that the flesh is heir to. One last “check, please.” And one of ours does indeed choose to find out what dreams may come, when we have shuffled off this mortal coil. Is it the fear of the undiscovered country, of unknowable death, that keeps most grinding through the day-after-day? Or some loftier feeling, hope, or value? Maybe it is simply momentum. While The Apartment is not a traditionally formatted novel, it is nonetheless a beautiful work of writing. While we may not have much time with many of the characters, Menendez does a lot in a short space, a talent no doubt honed by her history of short story writing. The stories are moving, at times to the point of tears. Will Sophie get away from her abusive spouse? Will Eugenio find his way to California? Will Sandman find a way to survive his PTSD? Will Isabel make her own life and not remain a kept toy of an older man? Will Margot and her husband evade those who might be after them? How will Susan handle her loss? Will Marilyn stay with her damaged bf? How will Beatrice cope with the change in her circumstances? Will Pilar be able to find journalism work again? Will Lenin succeed in his mission? Will Lana let the many friendly neighbors help her out, or is her secret too much to reveal? There is poetic beauty in here that deserves to be read, to be appreciated. You may or may not feel impelled to look for deteriorating flats in a soon-to-be submerged part of Florida, but it would be worth your while to check in with your real estate agent and arrange to give 2B a look. It might turn out to be just the right place for you. In the English novels she studied in school, the characters all seemed masters of their own fates. When they stumbled, it was because of a flaw. The direction their lives took was the direction they determined through their choices. But this was not Margot’s experience of the world. The world so far acted on her without consultation or sympathy. Her life, dictated first by her family’s wealth and now by her husband’s work, lacked the agency she was taught to recognize in great works. Even this latest leaving had been out of her hands. Maybe the only true literature was the old ghost stories her grandmother used to whisper to her on those windy cold nights on the Pampas. Spirit and mortals alike, all subject to unseen forces that swelled beneath them, hidden and untamable. Review posted - 9/8/23 Publication dates ----------Hardcover - 6/27/23 ----------Trade paperback - 8/13/24 I received hardcover of The Apartment from Counterpoint in return for a fair review and a one-year lease. Thanks, folks. [image] [image] [image] [image] [image] [image] This review will soon be cross-posted on my site, Coot’s Reviews. Stop by and say Hi! =============================EXTRA STUFF Links to the Menendez’s personal, FB, Instagram, and Twitter, sorry, X pages Profile – from her site Ana Menéndez has published five books of fiction: The Apartment (2023), Adios, Happy Homeland! (2011), The Last War (2009), Loving Che (2004) and In Cuba I Was a German Shepherd (2001), whose title story won a Pushcart Prize. She has worked as a journalist in the United States and abroad, lastly as a prize-winning columnist for The Miami Herald. Interviews -----NPR - Author Ana Menendez explores stories a single location could tell in 'The Apartment' by Linah Mohammad, Ashley Brown, Ari Shapiro -----Lithub - Ana Menéndez on Crafting a Connected Cast of Characters by Jane Ciabattari Items of Interest from the author -----Links to other things she has written Items of Interest -----The Poetry Foundation - To Be or Not To Be - from Shakespeare’s Hamlet -----Wiki - The Mariel Boatlift -----Museum of Florida History - Florida on the Home Front: The German Submarine Threat off Florida's Coast - “The most dramatic sinking in Florida waters took place the night of April 10, 1942, when U-123 torpedoed the tanker Gulfamerica off Jacksonville Beach. The resulting fiery explosion was clearly seen onshore and curious crowds gathered to view the ship's destruction and looked on in shock as the German submarine surfaced and fired its deck gun at the tanker.” ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
not set
|
Aug 28, 2023
|
Aug 30, 2023
|
Hardcover
| |||||||||||||||
1668020793
| 9781668020791
| 1668020793
| 3.75
| 879
| Oct 10, 2023
| Oct 10, 2023
|
it was amazing
| Come. I want to show you something. I learned it from the missionary. We haven’t seen him in a while, yes?…I retrieve my teacup where there is a li Come. I want to show you something. I learned it from the missionary. We haven’t seen him in a while, yes?…I retrieve my teacup where there is a little honey left, and I walk toward the perimeter of the woods and hold it up. I hear her coming up behind me, the slow rustle of her skirt in the grass, but I don’t turn.In The Hive and the Honey Paul Yoon returns to areas that readers of his earlier work will recognize. This is his third story collection, following Once the Shore (2009) and The Mountain (2017). He has published two novels as well, Snow Hunters (2013) and Run Me To Earth (2020). He treats often in themes of Korean diaspora, losing a sense of home, trying to build new families and communities, feeling alone, often being alone, the impact of history on one’s lived experience, and the impacts of war. That holds here. I can’t speak to a unifying Korean identity, but I think, growing up, because I had very little access to an extended family, I was often searching for my own version of that. And I think all my characters are searching for their own version of family. They’re quite literally and figuratively orphans. And they want to rebuild. They want to find a home in all sense of that word. - from the Pen-Ten InterviewThere are seven stories in the collection, ranging from 17th century Japan to 20th century New York. The age of the primary characters covers a wide range. One lead is 16, others are in their 20s, returning from war or prison, or still in uniform. There is a couple in their forties and we see one life across decades. [image] Paul Yoon - image from Interlocutor – shot by Paul Yoon A persistent challenge is to make a home. In Bosun, Bo tries to find a home and family in a small upstate NY town. In At The Post Station, Two samurai must repatriate a 12yo Korean boy to officials from his country. Toshio, the samurai who has been raising his young charge for many years, must face this direct loss of family. The boy must face introduction to an entirely alien culture. Cromer offers a middle-aged London shop-keeper couple, both children of North Korean refugees, who had opted to never have children of their own. But when a 12 yo apparently- battered runaway boy turns up in their shop, many miles from home, it makes them face the insular, child-free lives they had chosen, the community they had not built, the family they had not made. In The Valley of the Moon a man returns from a settlement to his isolated family farm after The Korean War. It is a moonscape, littered with bones and craters. He slowly but steadily brings the farm back. He even takes in two orphans to make a proto-family, but the damage from the war, and from an act he commits before the kids arrived, haunts him for the rest of his life. Biological families here are all dispersed, or worse. Characters are often stuck on their own. Relations in other places are unreachable, unresponsive, or dead. Some of the impetus for the collection was Yoon’s own familial diaspora. My grandfather was a Korean War refugee who eventually, after the war, settled in a house in the mountains in South Korea. Where he lived wasn’t nearly as isolated as the setting of “Valley of the Moon,” but my memory of him was that he was—or had become after the war—a bit of a loner, someone who kept to himself, and so I think (a) the character of Tongsu and where he returns to was always linked from the start, and (b) that initial push forward into this story stemmed from wanting to create and capture, perhaps, some corner of family history that felt, and still feels, really distant to me—to engage with that distance, creatively, and to engage with him and with so many others of that generation who had to flee their homes and do anything they could to survive during those horrific years. - from the New Yorker interviewYoon’s characters also travel far afield. Bosun came to the USA at 18. In Komarov, a Korean cleaning woman is living in Spain. At the Post Station features a boy who was held prisoner by Japan for his entire life and will now be faced with living in an alien culture in Korea. In Cromer, the parents of the couple living in London all escaped from North Korea, and a young Korean boy flees apparent physical abuse. In The Hive and the Honey, the community over which the young soldier watches is comprised of Koreans who had left Korea and were establishing a small community in eastern Russia. In Person of Korea, the lead’s father had taken work far from home and had become unreachable. Families that remain (the survivors) are severely depleted, family trees having been pruned to stumps or worse by war and dispersion. Holding on even to images of one’s past can become a challenge. Bo thought he would eventually miss Queens or perhaps even South Korea, where he had spent the first eighteen years of his life, but as the months went on, they were like the faces he tried to recall: far away, as though the places he’d once lived had been homes to someone else.But for all the travails, the challenges, there is an intrepid spirit at work that pushes them onward. How easy would it have been for the farmer to simply walk away from his devastated fields? For the convict to have given up hope? The use of imagery is exquisite, illuminating themes, showing how the past impacts, intercedes in, and informs the present. Every night, the moon rose from here, and fell, and shattered. And then built itself back up again.This certainly stands in well for the challenge of all these characters, forced as they are to reconstruct lives after the world has caused them so much disruption. The quote at the top of this review offers another wonderful image. Luring bees with honey then following them back to their nest, taking the steps one can take, however many may be needed, to reach your goal, whether the location of a hive, a home, or something else. A tree grows through the skull of a corpse, offering a (perhaps grim) reminder that life continues, creating a future by feeding on the past. These are very moving tales, as rich with hope, tenacity, and sweetness as they are with loss, disappointment, and sadness, personal tales told against a backdrop of a nation’s history. The Hive and the Honey is an outstanding literary short-story collection, well deserving of all the award buzz it has been receiving. What could be sweeter? economic reasons.”During the pandemic, Yoon says, “we were all scattered. I was separated from friends and to cope I imagined a kind of map. We were all in different places, but we were all part of one world. That got me thinking about the family tree, thinking of that as a map as well. This was the seed of the collection: the movement of a country and its people.” - from the Louisa Ermelino PW interview THE STORIES Bosun - a Korean man, just released from an upstate New York prison, tris to make a life for himself in a small community nearby. Komarov - A refugee from North Korea is working as a cleaner in Spain when she is approached by Korean agents to spy on a Russian boxer they believe to be her son. At the Post Station - Two 17th C. samurai accompany a Korean boy, who had been held hostage all his life, to Korean officials who will take him home. Cromer - The children of escaped North Koreans, a middle-aged couple in London consider their life choices when a 12yo runaway boy happens into their convenience store. The Hive and the Honey - A young Russian soldier is charged with overseeing a Korean settlement in remote eastern Russia. Things get out of hand when there is a killing, then another. Person of Korea - When the uncle with whom he had been living dies, a 16yo boy travels to find his father, a security guard on an island off the east coast of Russia. Valley of the Moon – two years after the Korean War a man returns home to a devastated, vacated farm, and tries to bring it back to life. He takes in two orphans and has a difficult, life-changing encounter with someone looking to cross the border. Review posted - 02/09/24 Publication dates ----------Hardcover - 10/10/23 ----------Trade paperback - 3/14/24 I received an ARE of The Hive and the Honey from Simon & Schuster in return for a fair review. Thanks, folks, and thanks to NetGalley for facilitating. [image] [image] [image] [image] [image] [image] This review is cross-posted on my site, Coot’s Reviews. Stop by and say Hi! =============================EXTRA STUFF Paul Yoon’s personal site Profile – from Wiki Paul Yoon (born 1980) is an American fiction writer. In 2010 The National Book Foundation named him a 5 Under 35 honoree.Interviews -----Publishers Weekly - In Seven Stories, Paul Yoon's New Book Spans 500 Years of Korean Diaspora By Louisa Ermelino | Jul 07, 2023 -----The Pen-Ten Interview - Paul Yoon | The PEN Ten Interview by Sabir Sultan - October 12, 2023 -----The New Yorker - Paul Yoon on the Korean War’s Aftershocks by Cressida Leyshon – about Valley of the Moon -----Publisher’s Weekly - Paul Yoon’s Haunted Geographies by Conner Reed -----LitHub - Writing as Transformation: Who Paul Yoon Needed to Become to Finish His Book by Laura van den Berg (Yoon’s wife) ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
not set
|
Feb 04, 2024
|
Jul 12, 2023
|
Hardcover
| |||||||||||||||
1594561796
| 9781594561795
| 1594561796
| 3.87
| 74,086
| 1839
| Feb 02, 2004
|
really liked it
|
Re-read when reading/reviewing What Moves the Dead, a 2022 reimagining by T. Kingfisher. The language is as thick as the miasma being depicted. Ill-fat Re-read when reading/reviewing What Moves the Dead, a 2022 reimagining by T. Kingfisher. The language is as thick as the miasma being depicted. Ill-fated twins Roderick and Madeline Usher beset by some dark force centered on their land, whether natural or spectral. Nifty, spooky atmosphere, reported to us by a soldier friend of Roderick's. Madeline having some difficulty remaining dead, freaking out her brother. Some obvious flaws, like our narrator bolting maybe a bit too soon as the creepy house is itself beset, not checking on his buddy's status in his speedy buh-bye. But still, a fun dark read. ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
not set
|
Sep 06, 2022
|
Sep 07, 2022
|
Paperback
| |||||||||||||||
006286811X
| 9780062868114
| 006286811X
| 4.01
| 3,728
| Jun 28, 2022
| Jun 28, 2022
|
it was amazing
| I suppose every person, at some point, tries to break free from the identity you are assigned as a kid, from the person your parents and friends see, I suppose every person, at some point, tries to break free from the identity you are assigned as a kid, from the person your parents and friends see, from your own limitations and insecurities. To create your own story. - Angel of Rome-------------------------------------- First sex is like being in a stranger’s kitchen, trying all the drawers, looking for a spoon. - Famous ActorYou know that guy in the second Indiana Jones movie, The Temple of Doom, the Thuggee priest Mola Ram? Questionable taste in haberdashery, but possessed of a special power. He could reach his hand directly into a person’s torso, secure a grip on the heart, and rip it directly out of the body, not a procedure certified by the AMA. While I expect Jess Walter has better taste in hats, he is possessed of a similar power. Of course, when he rips out your heart, you won’t, unlike Mola Ram’s victims, actually die. You will get your heart back. But you will feel deeply, sometimes painfully, and the experience will stay with you. [image] The author? No. Heartbreaker Mola Ram doing his thing in The Temple of Doom – but clearly a relation - image from Swarajya It has been nine years since Jess Walter’s last short story collection, We Live in Water, but he has continued to write them, publishing in a variety of journals and other outlets. When it was time, he looked through the fifty or so he had written since his last collection and managed to cull that down to a dozen, well, fourteen, but his editor made him cut two more. (Boooo! So mean of her!) like many novelists, Walter got his start in fiction writing by crafting short stories and selling them wherever he could – Harper’s, Esquire, McSweeney’s, ESPN the Magazine. Despite his success as a novelist, he still loves writing short stories. After all, he said, they’re no more difficult to write than novels, “they’re just shorter,” he said. - from the Spokesman Review print interview[image] Jess Walter - benign twin of Mola Ram? - image from The Spokesman-Review – shot by Colin Mulvany Just for the record, Jess Walter is one of the best writers working today, and this collection is a fine representation of a master at the pinnacle of his power. His work is engaging, powerful, moving, literary, and often LOL-funny. There are several motifs that repeat through multiple stories but the overall theme here is hope. While there are no overt feathers floating about in the stories, still, there is a comforter’s worth of downy literary substance in the air. Faced with challenging circumstances, many of the lead characters find a way to a hopeful place. It sorta surprised me because I think of myself as someone who likes to plumb darkness, but I kept coming across dark situations that led to moments of hope, and moments of connection between characters that I found surprising. I look back on those years, from 2013 to now [2022], losing a close friend, having my father suffer from dementia, and I can see different themes. A mother passing away from cancer and cancer always works its way…and I can see these themes that in almost all the stories that I ended up choosing, there was a surprising figure. Like Mr. Voice in the first story. And I think I was finding that I was finding such connection in my family and in my friends, even during a hard several years, personally and politically for a lot of people, I think I was looking for those places where you felt some refuge. - from the Spokesman Review print interviewA subset of this is characters, particularly young ones, coming to define themselves, to mold themselves into the people they want to be, rather than simply accepting the pre-fab path that has been laid out for them. I suppose every person, at some point, tries to break free from the identity you are assigned as a kid, from the person your parents and friends see, from your own limitations and insecurities. To create your own story. - The Angel of RomeIn To the Corner, one youngster seems to find a way forward, out of the despair that permeates the place where he has been growing up. Before You Blow centers on a young woman who finds an unexpected career option in her future, In Fran’s Friend Has Cancer, a character wonders just how much of their life it is possible to control. Place is important to Walter Growing up, the geography of New York was imprinted on me in the literature that I read, especially “Catcher in the Rye.” I’ve always wanted to do that for the city I live in. I think as writers, we mythologize these places where we don’t live. And I love creating a kind of mythology of Eastern Washington. It’s one of my favorite things when people from other cities come to Spokane because they want to visit places from the books. I also just love it there. It’s an incredibly rich place to write and set literature. I can still see Holden Caulfield’s Times Square, and I want readers to be able to see my Spokane that way. - from the Seattle Times interviewMore than half the stories are set in Spokane, with one in Boise and another in Bend, Oregon. Three travel farther afield, with one each in Manhattan, Rome, and Mississippi. Fame There are several famous characters in the collection. Mr Voice is a household name in Spokane for his voice-over work there. The Famous Actor is both impressed by his own fame, and massively insecure. One of the characters in Before You Blow is destined for fame, of a sort. The Angel of Rome features two stars, an Italian actress and an American TV actor. Walter manages to give them all personalities, for good or ill (mostly good). Angels Maybe not the magical sort, but no less benevolent. Mr Voice turns out to be so much more than meets the eye. An American actor in Rome takes a shaky American scholar under his wing. An old friend comes to the rescue of a woman in great need. An old man turns his despair into a pointed generosity. Teens Most of the stories focus on characters in their teens and twenties, some adding a POV from the character looking back decades later. A couple focus on older people Thematic threads, and literary gifts are of no matter if the characters do not gain and hold our interest. Thankfully writing characters you can relate to is yet another tool in his shed. Jess Walter can be counted on to write tales that are both image-rich and accessible. But he also gives us relatable characters, heart-rending tales, great twists, and a comedy-club-night-out worth of raucous laughter. You will be charmed, moved, and very satisfied. A triumph of a collection, The Angel of Rome, I am sure even Kali would agree, is simply heaven-sent. “I guess it seems to me”—Jeremiah pauses, choosing his words carefully—“that you shouldn’t give up hope until you’ve done everything you can.” Review posted – July 15, 2022 Publication dates ----------Hardcover - June 28, 2022 ----------Trade paperback - June 2. 2023 [image] [image] [image] [image] This review has been cross-posted on my site, Coot’s Reviews. Stop by and say Hi! ==========In the summer of 2019 GR reduced the allowable review size by 25%, from 20,000 to 15,000 characters. In order to accommodate the text beyond that I have moved the STORIES segment to the Comments section directly below. [image] =============================EXTRA STUFF Links to the author’s personal, Twitter, GR and FB pages My reviews of earlier work by Jess Walter -----2020 - The Cold Millions -----2013 - We Live in Water Interviews -----Seattle Times - Spokane author Jess Walter on writing short stories, his working-class roots and his hometown by Emma Levy -----The Spokesman Review - Northwest Passages: Jess Walter and 'Angel of Rome' - with Shawn Vestal - video -----The Spokesman-Review - Finding truth and keeping it real: In Jess Walter’s new collection ‘The Angel of Rome,’ the Spokane author lets character shine through by Carolyn Lamberson ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
Jun 27, 2022
|
Jul 06, 2022
|
Jul 05, 2022
|
Hardcover
| |||||||||||||||
164779014X
| 9781647790141
| 164779014X
| 3.27
| 11
| unknown
| Oct 05, 2021
|
it was amazing
| I’m missing a dove, he tells me, a small water fountain…half an assistant.-------------------------------------- I’m missing a dove, he tells me, a small water fountain…half an assistant.-------------------------------------- It’s that awful moment when any of us realize that why we began something is no longer why we’re doing it.In his latest short story collection, literary lion David Kranes puts on quite the show. Performance Art offers up stories about people who perform in public. Nine of the stories in the collection were published between 1991 and 2015, with four new tales fleshing it out to a baker’s dozen. While offering some new material the collection serves more as an introduction to a powerful literary writer you may not know. Kranes is 84, and has been at this a long time. He writes in whatever vessel seems appropriate for the stories that occur to him, whether that is poety, plays, novels or short stories. Sometimes the stories migrate. One of the included tales here was the inspiration for a novel. [image] David Kranes - image from Continuum The external focus in this collection is performance, stage performance, for the most part, although the definition is somewhat fluid. The talents on display run quite a gamut, from a daredevil to a stand-up comic, from an actor to an escape artist, from a spokesperson for a weight-loss program to a magician, from a fire and glass eater to a master of sleight of hand, to a world-class photographer, to a carnival knife thrower, and a bit more. There are some themes, images, and issues that run through, central among which is invisibility. People feeling unseen, maybe even being unseen. Scott paces four rooms, each one of which, even when he’s in it, seems empty. (A Man Walks Into a Bar)Painters permeate. Two of the lead characters paint, and painting is an element in several others. In Daredevil, a character is fascinated with Hans Holbein’s Dance of Death. Target Practice includes a character very into Turner. The Garden of Earthly Delights get some spotlight in Devouring Fire. Celebrities drift or flash through the stories, and not in a particularly favorable way. Several characters are faced with potentially life-changing opportunities. A painter has a chance to be a very in-demand actor. Another painter might have a chance to direct a film for a household name producer. A stage performer has a chance to revive a career long thought dead and buried. An obese woman is offered a huge sum to be the public face of weight loss. A drug addict is offered a chance to be the knife instead of the target. The notion of next comes up. In Daredevil, pop offers useless advice to his son re next steps in life. In Target Practice a social services report on the narrator calls her directionless. (“I had no comprehension of next. I had no next moments; obviously no next month, no next week.”) The stories are set in Vegas, mostly, the southwest, generically, Idaho a time or three. It is pretty clear that Kranes knows The Strip and Vegas like a local. He lives in Salt Lake City. I do not know if he ever lived in Vegas or maybe spent a lot of time there. Both seem likely. There are a few tales that include bits of fantasy. Most do not. I would not categorize this as a fantasy collection, per se. While the circumstances are sometimes extreme, there is still plenty to relate to. How many of us have felt unseen, invisible in the world, or maybe want to be. I can certainly relate to the latter. In my theatrical debut (It was Kindergarten I think) I was called on to walk to center stage and recite Peter Peter Pumpkin Eater. I managed to get the words out, but that was not all. By the time I exited stage left my pants had taken on an unwanted yellow tint. Invisibility cloak, please, NOW!!! And we have probably all felt the sting of feeling completely unseen by that boy or girl, man or woman whom we really, really want to see us. Bottom line is that this collection may not feature all new material (that said, even the previously published stories were new to me) but it offers a splendid sample of a literary talent of great skill and power. David Kranes is a writer worth getting to know. This is top-tier, star-power material. Review posted – 10/5/21 Publication date – 10/15/21 I received an e-galley from the University of Nevada Press through NetGalley, in return for a visible, performative review. Thanks. This review has been cross-posted on my site, Coot’s Reviews. Stop by and say Hi! [image] [image] [image] =============================THE STORIES The Daredevil’s Son (2010) - imagine your father was Evel Knievel. Imagine he was dead set on you following him in the family business. Imagine you have the body, the build, and the looks. Then imagine you have zero interest in doing that. “So then, you don’t want to be like…do what your father does?” people asked.There is a lot here that resonates with Kranes’s life. He grew up in the Boston area, his father a big-shot surgeon at one of the biggest hospitals in the city. He even enrolled in pre-med, but knew it was not for him. Later even tried Yale Law School. Ditto. Dinners at home would feature Nobel Prize winners (as guests, not on the menu). The bar seemed too high, the pressure too intense to succeed, to perform at that level, at things that did not appeal to him all that much. He headed west instead, opting to follow his own inclinations, not those of his father. The Stand-up Phobic (2015) Ethan Fallon feels compelled to perform on stage. The language of the story mimics the sort of stream-of-consciousness that Robin Williams might have launched into in a moment or that George Carlin might have scripted. It is about words, words, words, and associations, free or otherwise There is a manic aspect to Ethan. It is presented as an interview between Ethan and…someone. You feel bad for the guy, with all this verbal churn going on in his head, and only the stage as a venue for relief. Ethan’s hair is an air show and he’s sweating. Every performance lately seems a conspiracy-theorist’s nightmare. Any room he’s booked into is slack-jawed and oversized and swallows him. Like a bad Jonah dream. Like having a three-day booking at the Whale. AT THE HOUSE OF RIBS. YEAH! PUT Y0UR HANDS TOGETHER—WON’T YOU, PLEASE—for our own sackcloth and ashes! Ethan Fallon!A Man Walks Into A Bar (2012) Scott Elias, a dealer (cards, not drugs) and painter, is approached by two men in a Vegas bar. They mistake him for a well-known actor, but offer him a screen test because they like his presence. They see something in him. So Scott is carted off to appear in the film, sorry, project, they are producing, and life gets crazy from there. But is this the life he wants? He has a roomie, a young man, Tory, also a painter, who had been injured in an auto mishap. It is more of a ward and sponsor relationship, not a sexual one. Tory’s paintings reflect Scott’s inner battle. Escape Artist (2002) From birth, Lou has been getting out of things. The need comes with some innate capacity. But there are others who would do well to escape unwanted circumstances, yet lack the native tools and even when they learn the learnable skills, opt for the safety of captivity to the freedom of escape. This story includes a bit about escaping the East Coast, and doctor father, which echoes the author’s relationship with his father. When I was two, a nurse locked me in a closet under a pile of coats. I got out. When I was six, three bullies tethered me with clothesline, filled my mouth with detergent. I escaped, spat the detergent into the sunlight. It turned green in the bright air, hardened into a nugget of turquoise.When the Magician Calls Daniel Lawrence, or maybe Lawrence Daniel, has tracked Sheila down. (There is a reference in another story to a Sheila who had been at least partly mislaid by a fading magician) He seems to think Sheila will remember him. Sounds like they had had a prior connection. He would like to help her fully disappear from her current, somewhat imprisoned life. Maybe he can conjure a bit of magic, although it may not be his true calling. My stage-self hungers for standing-room-only. Mostly, though. I feel like some kind of bulked tortoise, lumbering to the sea. Target Practice The female narrator seems to have almost died too many times to be a coincidence as a kid. Became a target when she got older, for a Sunday school teacher, for boys with an interest and for needles. But when she meets a carnival knife thrower (and former MLB pitcher) she learns, ironically, how not to be a target, but to be the knife, her survival no longer an unexpected miracle. The Warren Beatty Project (1991) Ethan Weise has had a bit of success with his painting, sold canvasses to some famous people. He is working on a series of Edward-Hopper-type paintings, set outdoors. Once, he worked as a “visual consultant” with a student at the American Film Institute. And then, one day, Warren Beatty calls, wanting him to direct a project for him. LaLa Land beckons, limo-driven and low on artistic merit, rich with industry glitterati and the suggestion of connection and work, while short on actual delivery. While his girlfriend pulls him in a different direction. Will he gain notice, or remain largely unseen? Is this project the stuff dreams are made of, or something else? The Weight-Loss Performance Artist (2008) Ginger is 5’5” and 340 pounds. Two men approach her to take part in a project. They have a weight-loss program called PoundSolve that offers tailored meals to subscribers, and software that can project what someone will look like after reaching certain weight-loss benchmarks. They would like Ginger to be their spokesperson, and will pay her $4k per pound for every sixteen ounces she takes off. It a pretty good deal from where she sits. Ginger’s twenty-seven and has almost perfected invisibility. As she moves up to translucent, and even apparent, life changes in many ways. The question is how she will cope and whether the changes are all welcome. My Life as a Thief The narrator here is unnamed. His father is a doctor, working at Mass General (where Kranes’s father worked). He started doing magic at eleven, with a kit his dad bought him. Turns out to be a gateway drug to ever more professional levels of magic. His life as a thief begins when he is thirteen, teamed up with Arthur Foley, a pal, whose father happens to be a criminal. Turns out having a talent for making things disappear offers a direct path to shoplifting. They move on from there. Devouring Fire—An Interview Robbie, a young reporter, has a chance to interview an entertainment legend, Anthony Aquila, 89 years young and still scary. Anthony is renowned for his ability to eat both fire and glass. There is a fun interaction between the two of them, as Anthony totally intimidates the young man, but also sees the potential in him. I’ll confess here: I was drawn to his image. It was like one I’d seen in my History of Religions course at State; he was an ascetic. A kind of harp with skin. Bare feet. Ribs like a rack of lamb. Deep hollow cavernous eyes. You could almost hear his echos echo. Shabby, torn clothes. I got the sense that whatever he did, at the same time he could stand back and watch himself doing it.The Resurrection of Ernie Fingers The Downtown Palace in Vegas seems to be doing everything right, post Covid, yet the players are not showing up. The place needs something We need an attraction,”Dickie Rice, the GM, said to Tony Padre, Head of Marketing. “We need crowds fighting to get in. We do that and who we offer, what we offer will sell itself.”They bring a legend back. Ernie Fingers is a fill-the-place-entertaining performer, but he has been out of the business for a while and has gotten way too familiar with a particular brand of hooch. Can Ernie be brought back to his old form? Ernie ha a special ability, though, and his skills may be fading. The Photojournalism Project (1996) Melissa Probert is a gifted, very much-in-demand international freelance photographer. Her work has been shown in major national museums. Hunt is a painter, working on a project making tempura images of roadside memorials. They had a thing once but have remained friends. Melissa calls Hunt to help her with a special project, a book. She wants to make a photo history of a binge drunk, her own, she having a history of such antics, sans lens. Hunt and Leah, his wife? gf? have an ongoing conversation while he is at Melissa’s multi-day drunk re what and how he sees and her forbearance of his friends. In offering a stage for the unseen, is Melissa making Leah vanish from Hunt’s life? The Fish Magician (1997) Malcolm volunteers from the audience at The Monte Carlo in Vegas to participate in magician Lance Burton’s show. He steps into a Lucite box on the stage and in short order is vanished…well…transported, to Idaho it would appear. Oopsy. And the aging magician cannot recall where he’d sent Malcolm. Some time later his wife, Ginger, alarmed at her husband’s sudden disappearance, and failure to reappear, hires an investigator to find out just WTF happened. This is a fun tale in which the investigator is a psychic former NFL player who dreams of doing standup. The story was the basis for Kranes’s 2018 novel Abracadabra. =============================EXTRA STUFF Kranes does not maintain an on-line presence, as far as I can tell. Here is a profile of him in Mapping Literary Utah Interview -----Radiowest - The Legend's Daughter - by Doug Fabrizio - audio - 52:04 – even though it was recorded eight years ago I found this interview very illuminating re this collection Songs/Music -----Arthur Rubinstein - Chopin’s Nocturne in E-Flat - From Ernie Fingers Items of Interest from the author -----short story from this collection - The Daredevil’s Son -----short story - A Figure in a Window -----a one-act play - Infrastructures ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
Oct 2021
|
Oct 04, 2021
|
Oct 04, 2021
|
Paperback
| |||||||||||||||
0062499777
| 9780062499776
| 3.44
| 430
| Aug 16, 2016
| Jan 17, 2017
|
it was amazing
|
No review planned. Beautiful collection of life stories, one each for the residents of an apartment building that is burning down. Beautiful! if sad.
|
Notes are private!
|
1
|
not set
|
Nov 25, 2020
|
Nov 26, 2020
|
ebook
| ||||||||||||||||
1982150297
| 9781982150297
| 1982150297
| 3.99
| 103,763
| Apr 21, 2020
| Apr 21, 2020
|
really liked it
|
Sorry, no two-thousand-word review planned. A rare thing, I know, but I do read a few books every year that are just for reading pleasure. No note-tak
Sorry, no two-thousand-word review planned. A rare thing, I know, but I do read a few books every year that are just for reading pleasure. No note-taking. No looks at themes or motifs, imagery, or how it related to me personally. No lists of interviews, summaries of each of the contained stories, no links to interviews with the author talking about the book, no list of links to other reviews I have written of the author's work. No list of characters in the stories who might have appeared before in King family fiction. No corny jokes. No author photo. But just in case you want to know, I have been having a crap week with sleep, which is a major factor in why I was unable to post an actual new review this week. Head hits pillow, maybe I get to sleep maybe I don’t. If I do, I am awake in anywhere from ten to ninety minutes, off to the loo, then back to bed. If I am very lucky I get back to sleep tout de suite. Not so much this week. Even with taking something pharmaceutical to help. So, if sleep will not come, even after putting on music or a podcast and trying to drift off for twenty minutes, I read. A good signal of being ready to try again is when the words on the page devolve to squiggles, eyes beginning to close on their own. So, try again. Maybe I get back to sleep, maybe not. Maybe it will be another brief nap, or a full ninety-minute sleep-cycle. Been like this for the last five days or so. But having a book at hand that I can read without taking notes, just reading, is a necessary tool in my list of things to try in this quest for rest. My failure to be able to get back to sleep has been epic this week, thus I knocked off in one week a 447 page book that normally would have taken me anywhere from 15 to 25 days of chipping away, 20-40 pps at a time. Oh, said I wasn’t gonna write about personal stuff, sorry. But just in case you need to know, I quite enjoyed it, and very much appreciated seeing Holly Gibney in the spotlight in her first solo case, and the thematic commentary King makes on the media in that title story, and his Pinter-esque reverse-chronology of The Life of Chuck. I'd better stop there. Four long-short stories, a fast, fun satisfying read. Vintage King. Guess now I have to pick another bedside book to help me through the seemingly relentless sleep dep. God knows I have enough of them lying around. Publication dates ==========April 21, 2020 - hardcover ==========June 1, 2021 - trade paperback Non-review first posted - November 13, 2020 ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
Nov 05, 2020
|
Nov 11, 2020
|
Nov 11, 2020
|
Hardcover
| |||||||||||||||
9781948226622
| 1948226626
| 3.38
| 1,937
| Oct 13, 2020
| Oct 13, 2020
|
really liked it
| You expect a glove in a melting snow mound. Three days later we realized it was a hand. - The Barrow Wight The human fang is unique in that we use it t You expect a glove in a melting snow mound. Three days later we realized it was a hand. - The Barrow Wight The human fang is unique in that we use it to bite not only one another but ourselves. - Joy, and Other Poisons There’s plenty of ways to manipulate the man you love, and most of them you learn by watching. - Carbon FootprintSo, really, what are the sources of nightmares, small or large? Well, the big ones are fairly obvious, war, plague, violence against one’s person, violence against one’s loved ones, death, serious illness, serious pain, loss of functionality, or body parts, being cut off from those we love, being cut off from everyone, the loss of freedom, the loss of hope, being unable to communicate, and plenty more. We do not really need immortal serial killers, witches, zombie apocalypses, hungry great-white sharks or dark-hearted supernatural or alien creatures to give us the chills. In stories, they often stand in, though, for the horrors we face (or assiduously avoid) in real life. Like Invasion of the Body Snatchers as a metaphor for the dread of Communism, for example, in the 1950s. There is plenty of that here. [image] Editor Lincoln Michel - image from his site Still, there is a generic element that tends to frighten, the unnatural. We are used to a world that operates by certain rules, that fulfills general expectations, that usually sticks to certain norms. Up is up. Down is down. The sun rises and sets. You know, normal. The creepiness of the unnatural is a frequent element in horror stories. (as well as in the real-world unnaturalness of our current political reality). [image] Editor Nadxieli Nieto - image from House of Speakeasy I always thought a sleeping nightmare only counted as such if one was startled to wakefulness by the dream. Turns out, not so much, at least according to the definition below. What level of fear is required for a dream to cross over to nightmare from simply, scary? This from Lexico.com 1) a frightening or unpleasant dreamTurns out it is a fairly common experience. A nightmare is simply something that sucks, which puts many of us afloat in a sea of suckitude. Which would be a really awful way to talk about this collection, which most definitely does not suck. [image] The Nightmare - by John Henry Fuseli – 1781 – image from Wikipedia There are some stories in which the protagonist has unpleasant, or at least decidedly strange, experiences while asleep. But most are awake for their adventures. “Terrifying or very unpleasant experience” definitely covers many of the stories here. Some very definitely have to do with people who are difficult to deal with. Tiny Nightmares, with forty-two stories of 1500 words or less, offers a wide swath of tale types from which to choose. They take place in a range of locales, from bars to shops at sea, from the oceanfront to the desert, from a police station to a museum, from other planets to other dimensions, to horrible places where one might flee to escape the even greater horror of reality. There are plenty of the monsters here that one might expect to unsettle our rest, shape-changers, witches, a demon, a many-mouthed reptilian, a vampire, werewolf, and ghosts, among others, as well as situations or environments that are decidedly unnatural. But most are of the very human sort. Pogo famously said, “We have met the enemy and he is us.” It might as easily be said that we have seen the face of true horror, staring back at us from a mirror. There are many stories among the forty-two that reflect real-world, reality based-fears. In what is perhaps the most chilling, a trio of cops lead us to recall incredible deaths of prisoners in custody. A potential rapist lets his potential victim know just how vulnerable she is. A potential murderer lets his next victim, a gay man, know he is coming for him, and knows his secrets. A killer leaves parts to be found, and leads us to wonder if one was enough. Eco-terrorists practice a dark (and particularly inefficient) form of population control. There are many stories in here in which we are presented with a situation, and offered no resolution. If you are looking for beginning-middle-end narratives with wrapped up endings, you might find a few here, but there are many more that present wonderful concepts, scary concepts. The short story is often just a delivery mechanism for an idea or an image. In longer pieces we have a much greater opportunity to develop a feeling for a character or characters, and it is that relationship, the ability to see ourselves in a character’s situation, that usually makes a dark outcome scary. That is very tough to accomplish with stories that allow only up to 1500 words in which to create, and connect readers with, a made-up person while also presenting the notion. So ideas rule here. There is O-Henryian irony, biting social criticism, some really bad parenting, less than wonderful marriages, and of course, there are a few stories for which you might do a Lewis Black jowl-shake finishing with a “huh?” Overall, though, this is a fascinating collection. Not, for me, all that frightening, but, if you have read my previous reviews of horror books, you know that I have a particularly high bar for scary. I even wonder sometimes if maybe I am missing one of the usual DNA bits that encourages one to keep the lights on overnight after a masterfully terrifying read. Maybe. Dunno. But that said, a few in here did give me chills, the images having planted themselves into my dodgy memory. If you are a fan of the genre, Tiny Nightmares should do quite nicely. And if you are a fan of flash fiction (presuming the 1500 word count limit qualifies. I know for some it is 1000) it is a double win. So, if you are a reader with the eeeeeeek!!!!! genes I lack, you can probably look forward to some large nightmares, just in time for Halloween. Review first posted – October 23, 2020 Publication date – October 13, 2020 I received a copy of Tiny Nightmares from Catapult in return for a fear-free review. [image] [image] [image] [image] =============================EXTRA STUFF Links to editor Lincoln Michel’s personal, Twitter, Instagram and FB pages Links to Nadxieli Nieto’s’s Twitter and GR pages In the STORIES section below, in Comment #1, there are links to almost all the authors, and you will find a few of the stories linked as well, so you can take in a small sample of the product. I would not want to a miss this obvious opportunity for a bit of self-promotion, so offer the following horror stories by moi for your consideration. -----The Hand - definitely of flash length, coming in under 500 words -----Page Turner is a wee bit longer coming in at around 9K Oops - in 2022, GR discontinued hosting its stories section, so these items are no longer available on line. Maybe by next Halloween I will have found a suitable host for them. ==========In the summer of 2019 GR reduced the allowable review size by 25%, from 20,000 to 15,000 characters. In order to accommodate the text beyond that I have moved it to the comments section directly below. [image] ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
Oct 14, 2020
|
Oct 19, 2020
|
Oct 14, 2020
|
Paperback
| ||||||||||||||||
1594561869
| 9781594561863
| 1594561869
| 4.08
| 81,115
| 1846
| May 01, 2009
|
it was amazing
|
A classic, but may be a tough read for anyone with clautrophopbia
|
Notes are private!
|
1
|
not set
|
Jan 1965
|
Oct 06, 2020
|
Paperback
| |||||||||||||||
1734091819
| 9781734091816
| 1734091819
| 4.29
| 21
| Aug 11, 2020
| Aug 11, 2020
|
really liked it
| “Aegean’s full of the restless dead,” she said and made the sign of the cross. Her husband laughed. “You sound like an old woman.” He held her head be “Aegean’s full of the restless dead,” she said and made the sign of the cross. Her husband laughed. “You sound like an old woman.” He held her head between his hands. “The dead are dead.” She twisted from his hold. “It isn’t safe.” - from The Sea Cemetery Chase shot his wife, Rebecca, a sarcastic grimace. “I don’t see how anyone could miss that monstrosity.” He motioned to the large, yellow and white confection with its ornate tower. It dripped gingerbread and confused the eye with its many gables and dormers. - from Sandcastles I felt an unexplained, strange vibe about this place, but couldn’t understand why. - from The Stumpville AffairOut in time for the holidays, Exhumed offers a baker’s dozen short stories of the horror persuasion, introduced by GR Hall-of-Famer, Jeffrey Keeten, at long last bringing in a few shekels for his top-tier writing skills. I included a link in EXTRA STUFF to a video of JK reading his intro. The stories range from scary monsters to scary humans, from ghosts to werewolves, covering many subjects familiar in horror; revenge, guilt, comeuppance, dark prophecy, inexplicable imprisonment by a faceless jailer, madness, magical objects, magical power, and possession. It all begins with a Yuletide tale. Christmas has always been my favorite holiday, well, until, that is, the persistent whisperings began echoing down the flue every year, only to vanish on the 26th. I still enjoy reading The Polar Express to my [image] David Yurkovish - editor of the collection, looking like he just got away with something awful The collection features a handful of stories having to do with the beach, or aqueous locales, which summons to mind a bit of scariness of my own. When I found a body on the beach, while out walking my golden retriever, Bloch, just this summer past, there was a moment when I was uncertain. Did we just find him there, or had I put him there? That cut across the neck certainly did look like one of mine, although I do not usually engage in such antics so close to home. I will definitely have to check the cutlery at home, make sure everything is clean. One of the downsides of getting older. Some things just slip past, ya know? The sea certainly offers up some terrors of its own, like encroaching surf, restless dead, or relentless reminders of things we’d rather forget, for example. In Darkness, Lost brings us two brothers who are trapped by a seemingly seamless vessel on the beach, but have no idea what it is or how to get out. The Sandcastle offers a look at what can remain and A lifetime ago, I used to ride the PATH train between Manhattan and Newark, passing factories of unknown sort in the unpopulated marshland between. One factory, when all lit up, particularly at night, seemed to me a fascinating image of a post-apocalyptic hell. I can’t be sure what I saw--because, ya know, me a bit sleepy heading home from work, darkness, moving train, with a bit of bouncing, interior light reflecting off the windows--but I could have sworn at least one of the flames arcing out of that place took on a human form, and headed toward the tracks. It was only the one time. I never saw it again. I only worked in Newark for a year, so did not have much opportunity for a repeat. I’m sure it was nothing. I am sure you have had the experience of falling asleep on a bus, a train, or even as a passenger in a car, and waking up to find yourself seeing a strange sight, or maybe being in a strange place. In Violet’s Blossoms, Jessica emerges from an unpleasant dream on a bus to debark in Shadow Hills. The name of the town says it all. Yea, though I walk through the Valley of Shadow Hills, I will fear no evil. Well, maybe you should, and thanks for the flowers. I loved how the author used scent to convey the range of emotional content. Small towns and/or suburbs site several of the tales. Well, The Doggone Ghost, set in a department store, could be in a city, I suppose, but I picture it more in an older suburb. In addition to Violet’s Blossoms, noted above, The Stumpville Affair takes place in upstate New York. The locale in Teacher’s Pets seemed small townish and Mirror, Mirror takes place 30 miles outside Austin. The Seamstress is set in a “grimy mill town in western Pennsylvania.” No manifestations of urbophobia or polisophobia here. We all know small towns are much more terrifying than big cities. The only real touch of city is in The Stumpville Affair, in which the occult PIs are based in 1930s Manhattan, although the action takes place elsewhere. But that is not why this one is my favorite in the collection. I love the two lead characters, who are both special in different ways. They have class, style, and toss in cultural and historical references that give the story not only a temporal anchor but racial piquance. My first thought on finishing this one, just a few days past the Harvest Moon, was that it had the heft and the bones to be a fabulous series, when lo and behold, a quick google search revealed plenty more tales with these two. Toss in some physical mayhem of the ripped-to-bits sort, and some hostile locals, including a young thing with a wicked heater, and keep an eye out, particularly during that special time of month. You never know what might be staring at you with red eyes from the cover of darkness. You can find the author, James Goodridge, at Who Gives You the Write on Facebook. But forget sneaking up on him. I am sure his senses are much too sensitive to allow that. One nice touch in Exhumed is that all the authors are at least 40 years old, or as I might call them, whipper-snappers. Sorry, I did not get many chills, well, ok, maybe a few. That is par for the course for me. It is the rare piece of horror writing that can make the gray hairs on my arms, and far too many other places on my chia-pet body, stand and salute. Things political, and maybe involving ex-wives, are likelier to give me serious shivers. There were stories that were uplifting, that left me eager to read more from that author. Some made me smile. Is it ok for horror stories to do that, or does it say something about me? But really, who doesn’t enjoy some high-octane well-deserved come-uppance? Some offer excellent atmospherics and there are enough surprises to keep you reading. So, even if you do not leave the lights on after reading Exhumed, it remains an engaging, fun read, and, since you are not me, it might just scare the bejesus out of you. Exhumed is the first horror collection published by Gravelight Press, a new imprint of indie publisher Devil’s Party Press, based in Delaware. It was definitely a fun, season-appropriate read, and a quick one, too, at 154 pages. I hope they can dig up some more material and give it a jolt, with someone providing the mandatory scream of “It’s Alive!” Gravelight Press provided a review copy in return for a post mortem that did not assail them while they were sleeping. ============================THE STORIES …And All the Trimmings by J.C. Raye An everyman is remade into a stand-in for the big guy, and learns some things about Christmas he had never suspected. Violet’s Blossoms by Josephine Queen Definitely not Zuzu’s petals. A young woman gets off the bus at the wrong stop and finds herself in a mostly boarded up town, with one shop in particular that draws her in, and finds there unwanted reminders of a pain-filled past. The Doggone Ghost by Bernie Brown Payback’s a ghostly bitch for a suit salesman in a department store. Cleanup in Men’s clothing. The Stumpville Affair by James Goodridge Occult PIs on the job in upstate New York after one of the residents is ripped to bits by a werewolf. Howlingly good. Teacher’s Pets by Linda Rumney A dull-as-dishwater teacher is pursued by a divorcee who interests him not at all. He has a large secret, and prefers his privacy. In Darkness, Lost by Bayne Northern Reminiscent of Andy Weir’s Annie’s Day, two brothers, mysteriously trapped inside a large, seamless vessel while at the beach, try to find their way to freedom. Mirror, Mirror by Ellie Cooper A magic mirror found at an auction house outside Austin shows more than mere reflection. The Dark Augur by Elizabeth Vegvary A woman recalls a traumatic incident from her youth, one that included a dire prophecy. The Sandcastle by David W. Dutton A troubled family finds that even the most well-off lives can turn to sand. Waves by Robin Hill-Page Glanden Guilt over losing a child generates a lifetime of dark visions. Mr. Gibb’s Banner Year by Heidi J. Lobecker A nebbishy teacher is tasked with stepping in to coach the boys’ football team, but is haunted by the team’s erstwhile, and late, championship coach. The Sea Cemetery by Andrea Goyan A desperate refugee family face a hauntingly roiling sea as they struggle to reach Greece. The Seamstress by Russell Reece An abusive husband finds himself at the mercy of the woman he’d mistreated for decades. I was reminded of Olivia de Haviland in The Heiress, having learned so well from her afflicters. Review posted – October 9, 2020 Publication date – August 11, 2020 =============================EXTRA STUFF Items of Interest -----Jeff Keeten reads the Introduction -----Gravelight Press is an imprint of Devil’s Party Press ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
Oct 03, 2020
|
Oct 08, 2020
|
Oct 03, 2020
|
Paperback
| |||||||||||||||
unknown
| 3.91
| 660
| 1961
| 1961
|
it was amazing
|
Notes are private!
|
1
|
Jul 18, 2020
|
Jul 18, 2020
|
Jul 18, 2020
| |||||||||||||||||||
0385544294
| 9780385544290
| 0385544294
| 4.22
| 888
| Aug 04, 2020
| Aug 04, 2020
|
it was amazing
| “When will you have achieved all your ambitions, Mrs. Pemberton?” she asked, as others jostled around them. “When will you have achieved all your ambitions, Mrs. Pemberton?” she asked, as others jostled around them.Ron Rash writes of place and people. The place is Appalachia, the people are its residents, and those who stop by to extract what it has to offer. One thing I want to do is for landscape and my characters to be inextricably bound together. I believe the landscape people live in has to affect their psychology. - from the Transatlantica interviewThe time? Fluid, any time from the Civil War to the present. In a sense, I’m writing a current that runs through time in those stories. And, also, paradoxically time is a kind of geography as well: it is also a way of showing people in much different cultural mindsets, even within a specific culture, and thus another way to probe for the universal within a specific cultural landscape.There are nine stories and one novella in this collection, the book taking its title, In the Valley, from that longer piece. [image] Ron Rash - image from the Charlotte Observer Many of these stories include bullying behavior. A Trumpian sort tries to stiff his contractors. A wife-beater demands what he sees as his rights despite his crimes. A thuggish person seeks to intimidate all around him. A corporate exploiter brings on a fitting punishment. But there are also stories that touch the heart without that external stress. Sad Man in the Sky offers a beautiful thought to counter a troubled past. L’homme Blessé shows a form of comfort for those in particularly difficult times. A good deed stands out in a low-end life in Last Bridge Burned. Rash counterpoints evil and redemption in his work. No less here. Throughout, the beauty of Rash’s writing raises the level of all the tales told. If the language were not so beautiful and sublime, particularly in a play such as King Lear, the experience would be unbearable. What I’m trying for in my work—it’s up to the reader to decide if I do—is the sublime. I want my work to take the reader to that place. And I think you can do that with that juxtaposition of language and violence. - from the Transatlantica interviewBut most of all there is In the Valley. If you have not read Rash’s masterpiece, Serena, I urge you to either order it online or dash out to an open bookstore and pick up a copy ASAP. It is one of the best novels ever. Sadly, the film that was made of it was a huge disappointment. But that changes nothing about the book. Read it, please, please, please. You will not be sorry. You can read In the Valley without having read Serena, but, really, don’t. This novella continues the tale of Serena Pemberton, a Lady Macbethian figure, with no moral restrictions. Her only law is greed, and if that requires some violence, no problem. Her personal thug, Galloway, despite having lost part of an arm, does his best to spread his pain around. I think I tend to use maimed characters with the idea that the world they inhabit is wounded. - from the Transatlantica interviewSerena stands in for extraction industries of all sorts. Her only goal is to take as much as she can get. Attempting to clear-cut the remains of the land left to her when her husband died, under mysterious circumstances, in the novel, she feels no obligation to clean up the mess she leaves behind, ecological or human. Serena drives her men like livestock and will stop at nothing, even manipulating time itself, to see that the job gets done on schedule. Rash includes several chapter-end inserts that list all the local life that has been removed with each new level of destruction. I included one of these at the top of this review. Ron Rash fully recaptures the feel, and substance of the novel, using a crew of workers as a Greek chorus, and showing Serena in all her horror. There is old world magic in the form of a blind, and dark-hearted seer, and plenty of dread-inducing people and situations to keep you from getting too comfortable. Serena is a horror movie monster. What she is doing to the land is as horrific as what she does to any who get in her way. It is a riveting read, with heroics as well as cruelty, and the sort of imagery that lets you know you are in the hands of a master. THE STORIES Neighbors - Mrs Rebecca Penland and her two kids are threatened by a group of Confederate raiders in Union territory. She expects that she will suffer what many of her neighbors have, her property in whole or part being burned, and maybe worse. But she also knows that her neighbors will rush to her aid. The women would bring food enough to get Rebecca and the children through the winter. Men would bring axes and the surrounding woods would sound like gunshots as the honed metal struck in the November air. All day the women would cook and tend fires. Children would gather kindling, then scuff among ashes for the iron nails that had secured the shingles. Everyone would work until dusk, then return the next day to help more. Ira Wilkey might or might not say We will get through this together, but that was understood. They were neighbors.There is a great twist here. Be ready. When All the Stars Fall from the Sky Father and son contractors have a very different approach to the world. Pop is old-school, contracting on a handshake. He is a stickler for detail, even if that makes him slower to complete projects. Junior is much more a person of the present, willing to cut corners, always looking to make a few extra bucks on the cheap. They make the mistake of taking on work from a very Trumpian sort, someone eager to squeeze the absolute most out them without offering fair compensation. How they respond shows the change that has come over too much of the nation. When Brent was growing up, his father would point out how a plumber in Brevard had done shoddy work but then gone out of business, or how a county clerk embezzled money for three years but ended up in prison. It catches up with you, son, he’d say. But plenty did get away with it, Brent knew. All you had to do was look at the recession, which almost caused him and his father to lose everything. The silk-tied crooks who’d done it weren’t arrested and no one pretended they ever would be. People like that got away with anything. Get caught robbing folks, all you had to do was pay back part of what you stole. Turn a million people into drug addicts, you didn’t spend a day in jail.The treatment of Roger Stone would fit right in. Why be decent in an indecent world? Sad Man in the Sky - (there is a link to the story in EXTRA STUFF) A poignant tale of a chopper pilot offering Smoky Mountain Park Tours taking on a job flying a bedraggled-looking man to a dodgy part of the area. The things he sees stirs images from the past. I press the pedal and the skids lift free of the earth. As always, memories of long-ago flights tense my stomach.. He does not know what his passenger is all about, but hopes for the best. L’homme Blessé Jake Yancy, an art teacher at Brevard College, is asked by a former student to check out artwork done by her Uncle Walt in a cabin that is set to be demolished. Walt had returned home from his combat in Europe damaged, but brought back as well memories of peace and beauty, from a surprising source. Yancy is able to relate, given his own recent losses. What he finds when he investigates is remarkable. The Baptism Jason Gunter is young and off-the-scale arrogant. He wants Reverend Yates to baptize him. Yates is not inclined, given that Gunter is a wife beater, who may have killed one wife already, and has driven off a second. Now he has his mind set on wedding that one’s fourteen-year-old sister, Pearl. Four congregation members on his porch, Marvin Birch at the head. They do not want him to baptize Gunter. He says there is a chance that the baptism may cleanse his soul, even if he does not really expect it to do so. And if he refuses, he will force Eliza [Pearl’s mother] and Pearl to walk in the freezing cold to another preacher much farther away, endangering their health.A tough tale on the challenge of doing the right thing while contending with the demands of religious law and an awful human being. Flight - (there is a link to the story in EXTRA STUFF) Stacy is a Park Ranger with a powerful feel for the land she is charged with protecting. A boorish sort makes life difficult for others wanting to fish there. Even though her boss tells her not to engage with this rectum, she cannot let this behavior stand and does what she can to interrupt him. There is an underlying stream here of belonging to the land, not just visiting, but participating and engaging, not just playing. I was reminded of Becky Shytle in Rash’s novel, Above the Waterfall. Becky had found a similar connection to and solace in nature, a way for her spirit to take flight. Trout turn up frequently in Rash’s writing. In Flight, Stacy points a visitor to where real, not stocked, trout might be found. Trout have to live in a pure environment unlike human beings; they can’t live in filth! And so I think there is a kind of wonder; to me, they’re incredibly beautiful creatures…when such creatures disappear, we have lost something that cannot be brought back. - from the Transatlantica interviewLast Bridge Burned Carlyle is down three jobs and two wives. He is closing in on 60, working at a gas station, shutting down for the night, when a woman comes by, thirtyish, just ditched from a car heading to Nashville. “Last bridge burned,” she says. Will he help her out? What about Carlyle? Are there any more bridges for him? This line just kills me. He made some coffee and sat in the front room, staring at nail holes in the wall where pictures once hung. Ransom Jennifer, daughter of a particularly well-to-do father, wakes in the trunk of a car, kidnapped, held by her abductor, who is not obviously otherwise unkind to her, for a prolonged period. She tries to engage him in conversation, as one does. Making yourself human makes it tougher for them to treat you like you are disposable. Her kidnapper lost a child, although he will not speak of her. A killer O Henry-ish twist ties this one up. The Belt Jubal is 80 years old, a Civil War woundee, his life spared when an incoming minié ball glanced off his considerable belt buckle, which sports an eagle with claws extended, his very lucky belt. He is caring for his great-grandchild while his grandson Rob, and wife Lizzie, head into town to sell their eggs and butter. But a big storm is coming and the river is rising way too fast for comfort. The sandbars had disappeared, but the big boulder midstream broke the onrushing water like a ship’s hull. No flood had ever submerged this rock. Can Jubal hang on until his grandson and his wife return? Can he keep the little one safe? The land provides, but the land can also take away. A scary story of contending with natural forces run amok and looking for a bit of luck. With obvious resonance to the climate crises of today. I think people in mountains tend to feel very close to that place. … There’s almost the sense that the mountains are rising up around them, protecting them, almost like a womb. There’s a sense of security in a way. I think that also at times it can be oppressive. There’s a sense of mountains looming over people, reminding them how small and brief their lives are. I find it interesting to see what I can do with that as a writer. - from the Daily “Yonder interviewIn the Valley is a magnificent collection, showing off one of America’s greatest writers at the peak of his powers, in his favorite form. Short fiction is the medium I love the most, because it requires that I bring everything I’ve learned about poetry—the concision, the ability to say something as vividly as possible—but also the ability to create a narrative that, though lacking a novel’s length, satisfies the reader. - from The Daily Beast interviewHe takes on classic conflicts, particularly exploitation of the lesser by the greater, or at least, by the cruder, but with a modern sensibility. He brings his poet’s ear for language to the short prose form, elevating the stories to high art. And he does this without losing the ability to engage, to make you feel, and to make you consider. And if that is not enough, he adds in twists that would make O Henry proud. My only gripe about In the Valley is that it did not go on forever. It is nothing less than sublime. He headed west on Highway 19, the directions on the passenger seat. The leaves were off the trees now, revealing time-worn swells so unlike the wild, seismic peaks and valleys beloved by European Romantics such as Pernhart and Friedrich. Sturm und Drang. Yet the Appalachians were daunting in their uniformity, a vast wall, unmarked by crevices that might provide an easy path out. Review posted – July 31, 2020 Publication dates ----------August 4, 2020 - hardcover ----------July 13, 2021 - trade paperback I received a chance to read this book early thanks to Doubleday and NetGalley. They must have known how much I love Ron Rash’s work. ==========In the summer of 2019 GR reduced the allowable review size by 25%, from 20,000 to 15,000 characters. In order to accommodate the text beyond that I have moved it to the comments section directly below. [image] ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
Jul 2020
|
Jul 12, 2020
|
Jun 22, 2020
|
Hardcover
| |||||||||||||||
3.77
| 507
| Oct 04, 1999
| 1864
|
None
|
Notes are private!
|
0
|
not set
|
not set
|
Jun 18, 2020
|
ebook
| |||||||||||||||||||
155597788X
| 9781555977887
| 155597788X
| 3.84
| 93,752
| Oct 03, 2017
| Oct 03, 2017
|
it was amazing
|
None
|
Notes are private!
|
1
|
Mar 24, 2020
|
Mar 24, 2020
|
Mar 24, 2020
|
Paperback
| |||||||||||||||
1563127873
| 9781563127878
| 1563127873
| 4.05
| 94,023
| Jun 26, 1948
| 1990
|
it was amazing
|
None
|
Notes are private!
|
1
|
Mar 24, 2020
|
Mar 24, 2020
|
Mar 24, 2020
|
Paperback
| |||||||||||||||
0812996542
| 9780812996548
| 0812996542
| 4.11
| 99,399
| Oct 15, 2019
| Oct 15, 2019
|
it was amazing
| “When you get old, you become invisible. It’s just the truth. And yet it’s freeing in a way…You go through life and you think you are something. No “When you get old, you become invisible. It’s just the truth. And yet it’s freeing in a way…You go through life and you think you are something. Not in a good way, and not in a bad way. But you think you are something, and then you see that you are no longer anything. To a waitress with a huge hind end you’ve become invisible, And it’s freeing.”Sometimes people come into your life at just the right time. People you have known turn up, unexpected, and you re-engage, begin again. It was like that for Elizabeth Strout. She was sitting alone in a café in Norway, minding her own business, when Olive inserted herself into her life once again, in her car, nosing her way into a marina, cane in hand. I saw it so clearly—felt her so clearly—that I thought, Well, I should go with this. (from the New Yorker interview). It’s not like Olive Kitteridge had been totally absent from Strout’s life. They had parted ways after Olive won Strout a Pulitzer. But there were bits of her around, pieces of story that did not quite work, material for somewhere, somewhen. But the image was stronger this time, whole, a large presence, demanding attention. And so, it was back to Crosby, Maine, back into the life of a difficult, but complex character, crusty, quick to scorn, but with a warm, perceptive core. [image] Elizabeth Strout - image from the Irish Times Olive, and the other characters in Olive, Again, face the ongoing problem of loneliness, among other things. Thematically, this is very much in line with the original Olive Kitteridge, focusing on relationships, considered both in retrospect and in the immediacy of experience. Lives examined. Olive, for example wends her way through diverse and contradictory feelings about her late husband, Henry. And then wanders in her feelings about a new love interest, Jack. She has to cope with her relationship with her son, Chris, now living in Brooklyn, (where Strout has lived, mostly, for over thirty years) and take a tough look at herself as a mother, seeing some less-than-wonderful behavior of hers repeating in her son’s life. There are some particularly moving scenes with Olive trying to make sense of her role with Chris and his family. Olive is not the only character here putting a life under the microscope. Jack Kennison, Olive’s new bf, has plenty of his past to reconsider, including his relationship with his daughter, and is in for a bit of a surprise that had been kept from him for decades. As in the first volume, the stories alternate, pretty much, between Olive, and not Olive, although Olive does cameos in the tales that do not focus on her. A teen, working cleaning houses part time, finds herself resenting the excessive pride one woman displays about her Mayflower heritage. (Strout can track her New World ancestors back to 1603) She finds herself in a very unexpected, awkward, and remunerative situation, that requires a lowering of her standards. Or is it a seizing of power in her life? The story includes a consideration of the class bias that still persists in far too many, as Kayley Callaghan has had it drilled into her that as a working class girl of Irish heritage, she will always be invisible to people like the Doris Ringroses of the world. She finds a way to make herself seen. In one of Olive’s stories, she copes with a MAGA home health aide, and former student of Olive’s, resenting the presence of another HHA, a dark-skinned, hijab-wearing USA-born Muslim, whose mother was an immigrant from Africa. A returnee to town on the passing of her father finds deep solace in the family attorney, and a welcoming ear to hear her tales of growing up in an abysmal home. There is such pain, warmth, emotional connection and relief in this one, that you may want to have a box of Kleenex handy. “I think our job—maybe even our duty—is to—"Her voice became calm, adultlike. “Bear the burden of the mystery with as much grace as we can.”One of the persistent motifs throughout the stories is secrecy. Pretty much all the characters have things they have kept to themselves. Haven’t we all? Some of the secrets are not your garden variety misdemeanors or marital wanderings, but most will be at least somewhat relatable. Ever since I was a kid on that dirt road, I think that the biggest compelling engine in me has always been the desire to know what it feels like to be another person. I just always have been pulled through life by that deep curiosity to know. It’s a frustration for me to not even know what, like, these fingers touching the desk would feel like if it wasn’t me. As a result I have watched and watched and listened to people all the time. I’m always trying to absorb the tiniest detail that I can see or hear from them. - from the Guardian interviewOlive is in the latter stages of her life. We follow her into her 80s, as her capacities decline, and she must make unwelcome adjustments in her daily existence. There are so many facets to Olive that she glistens like a diamond. She is preternaturally crusty, and can be a chore to be around, (enough so, that Strout claims this is the reason she alternated Olive tales with stories of other Crosby residents) but she has a sort of perceptual superpower that lets her see some core emotional elements in people, and is able to jump in and act on her perceptions. This is where her kindness, her softer side, her dynamism comes to the fore. It is a thing of magnificent beauty when it does. She is even able to embrace friendship! There is considerable lyrical beauty in Strout’s writing You could see how at the end of each day the world seemed cracked open and the extra light made its way across the stark trees, and promised. It promised, that light, and what a thing that was. As Cindy lay on her bed she could see this even now, the gold of the last light opening the world.The light is significant, particularly the late winter light of February, and we are offered frequent glimpses of trees reddening, and leaves falling, as what was is slowly stripped away to clear the path for what is to come. Strout brings some characters back from volume #1 for a closer look. She even brings in a few from her 2013 novel, The Burgess Boys. I remember walking down the street one day and all of a sudden realizing, Oh! Jim and Helen Burgess could actually be in Crosby, Maine. They could have dropped their grandson off at camp. That’s what New Yorkers do, they send their kids to camp in Maine. So I thought, how fabulous. It was so fun, particularly because it gave me the chance to explore the enormous cultural divide between New York City and Maine.There is some political perspective in this, not a lot, and some of the political turns are achingly poignant. There are moments of humor as well. Olive’s misery while attending a baby shower is priceless, as is her eagerness to flee, regardless the cost. We are all right for a book at different times of life. Olive, Again may be right on the money for me. While I am not the age Olive is at the end of the book, I have a sister who is, and who is facing similar situations. As a senior citizen I can certainly relate to the issues Olive faces, as can most of us of this age, I expect. Was I a good parent? Did I do right by my kids? Was I the best person I could have been? Did I do something meaningful with my life? It will make you ask some of these questions of yourself. And if you have not yet achieved silver status, there are probably people around you who have. The concerns of the elders in this book might give you a clue as to what is going on in their lives. That said, there are plenty of younger characters banging around in these pages who can offer a perspective from a different generation. The stories in Olive, Again are strong, moving, and beautifully written. Olive is as wonderful a character as she is difficult a person. It has been a privilege renewing our acquaintance. That late season light has a way of staying right in your face and making you squint. But it also gives a magical glow and shadow to all it reaches, helping make visible what might otherwise remain unseen. Review posted – December 6, 2019 Publication date – October 15, 2019 My review of Olive Kitteridge =============================EXTRA STUFF Links to the author’s personal, Twitter and FB pages Interviews -----New Yorker - Elizabeth Strout on Returning to Olive Kitteridge - by Devorah Treisman -----New Yorker - Elizabeth Strout’s Long Homecoming by Ariel Levy -----NPR - 'We've Got More To Say About You': Olive Kitteridge Is Back, And Complex As Ever - by Scott Simon -----Irish Times - ‘She just showed up’: Elizabeth Strout on the return of Olive Kitteridge - by Catherine Conroy ----- Strand Book Store - Meg Wolitzer Talking with Elizabeth Strout - video – 50:46 Items of Interest -----Excerpt - Motherless Child – in The New Yorker ----- PRH Author Lunch - Elizabeth Strout, author of OLIVE, AGAIN, at the PRH Author Lunch at the ALA Annual Conference 2019 ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
Nov 14, 2019
|
Nov 26, 2019
|
Nov 26, 2019
|
Hardcover
| |||||||||||||||
0062970194
| 9780062970190
| 0062970194
| 4.00
| 17,378
| 2019
| Oct 01, 2019
|
it was amazing
| …a child has only the two parents, but if you’re lucky enough to be an artist for a living, ultimately you wind up with a few mothers and fathers. …a child has only the two parents, but if you’re lucky enough to be an artist for a living, ultimately you wind up with a few mothers and fathers. When someone asks a writer, ”Who’s your daddy?” the only honest answer is, “That’s complicated.”You might need some version of Ancestry.com to label all the literary influences at play in Joe Hill’s latest story collection. Or maybe not, as Hill gives us a pretty good idea right off the bat, in the introduction. Pretty obvious who influencer number one might be. In fact, dad is listed as co-author on two of the thirteen stories. But the writerly genetic material that feeds these stories comes from some pretty heavy hitters, like Ray Bradbury, Bernard Malamud, Lawrence Block, Stephen Spielberg, George Romero, and the publication Fangoria (Fango to fans). Part of the fun of reading this collection is to think about the influencers noted in the intro and suss out what manifests where. Hill adds some further explanatory comments at the end of the collection, which furthers our appreciation a bit. [image] Fangoria cover compendium - image from Mental Floss Hill offers an interesting take on the structure of a short story collection, one he derived from the writings of Bernard Malamud. A book of stories isn’t a novel and can’t have the simple narrative drive of a novel. I think it should still try to have a feeling of progression, of connectedness. It’s like a road trip. You’re staying in a different inn every night: One evening it’s a romantic Victorian B&B with a supposedly haunted gazebo out back, the next it’s a cruddy Motel 6 with what looks like old bloodstains on the ceiling. The places where you stop to rest and dream are unique—but the road is the same, always waiting to carry you on to whatever’s next. And when it’s over, you’ve arrived someplace new, someplace (you hope) with a good view. A place to breathe deep and take it all in.Or maybe kiss your ass goodbye. This is Hill’s first short story collection since 20th Century Ghosts, which came out in 2005. (Strange Weather being a collection of novellas) But it is not like he stopped writing stories in the intervening fifteen years. The stories here come from as long ago as 2006. Several have been published elsewhere, sometimes in surprising formats. [image] The author, appearing as Billy in the 1982 George Romero/Stephen King film, Creepshow So, the stories any good? You betcha. And they cover a range of sorts, from warm and fuzzy to gut-punch, “Holy Sh—” twists, from highly stylized to familiar. There are many references, homages, or influences (take your pick) to be seen here. Hill points them out for you in the intro. In realizing so well the feel of the work of the masters, Hill yet again reinforces his place among them. Just when you think you’ve read what absolutely has to be the best story in the collection, along comes another that makes you think you have, for sure this time, read the best story in the collection until you read the next… I am not saying that I loved all thirteen tales. In truth, I did not. While there is a considerable diversity in their sorts, what impresses me most is the feeling for people that Hill clearly possesses. He has a talent tor writing believable characters, and the creativity to come up with interesting situations in which to manifest their humanity. [image] Joe a bit more recently – image from Wikimedia This is not flash fiction. (OK, except for that bonus nugget at the very end) The stories in Full Throttle range from 24 pages (Wolverton Station) to 49 (Late Returns), so, depending on how long your train to work takes, or how much time you allow yourself for reading before bedtime, you should be prepared for the possibility of not getting through every story in one go. But if you are someone who plops down into a comfy place and has at your book du jour for however long, no worries. THE STORIES Throttle picks up Richard Matheson’s classic story about a truck bearing down on a hapless everyman. A very young Steven Spielberg made it into a pretty good film. Hill was asked to write a story for an anthology honoring Matheson’s work. Throttle is the result. Instead of an everyman beset by a dark force, a group of bikers are returning from a particularly dark deed when they are pursued with evil intent. Pop’s expertise with hogs came in pretty handy here. Dark Carousel - takes place at a rundown seaside resort. The air was redolent with the cloying perfume of cotton candy, an odor that doesn’t exist in nature and can only be described as “pink” smell. There was always a puddle of vomit on the boardwalk that had to be avoided. There were always soggy bits of popcorn floating in the puke. There were a dozen sit-down restaurants where you could pay too much for fried clams and wait too long to get them.It also featured a carousel called the Wild Wheel. Clearly not their first rodeo, this group looks like they have been burned, and are screaming. Enjoy the ride. A group of 19-year-olds, full of themselves and a bit too much alcohol, behave badly and get an unexpected something extra. A couple of the characters are named for the hitman in dad’s Battleground. Look also for a reference to a Hill novel tucked in between the animals. The story was released as an audio book, on vinyl, read by Nate Corrdry. Wolverton - was inspired by a UK town (Wolverhampton) Hill and his PR man passed while on a book tour, prompting a loop of Warren Zevon’s Werewolves of London running through his head. A Wall Street wolf comes across a different sort while riding a train in Jolly Olde. By the Silver Waters of Lake Champlain - was written for a collection honoring Ray Bradbury, but was as much inspired by a childhood interest in the Loch Ness monster as it was of Bradbury’s story The Foghorn. Shift to Lake Champlain, and engage a group of kids to catch more than a glimpse of an ancient beast. But who would believe them? Hill has dad’s gift for writing kids, and shows it off here. This is one of the stories being dramatized in the 2019 Shudder network production of Creepshow, a series. Faun - (No, not Tumnus) mixes more Bradbury inspiration, from his story A Sound of Thunder with a bit of Narnian trans-world portal. But what if, instead of curious children crossing over, it was people of a more mercantile, heartless, armed sort? Totally captures Bradbury’s feel, while expanding it, and offering a contemporary perspective. The tension here is palpable, and there is a killer twist. Also, a creative spider (who may or may not be named Charlotte) weaves an invitation to a web. Late Returns offers a tale that seemed somewhere between Rod Serling (This could soooo be an episode of the Twilight Zone) and Bradbury again. After his elderly parents pass away, a truck driver returns to his hometown to see to their affairs, which includes returning a very long overdue library book. It seems the library just happens to be in need of a driver for their Bookmobile, and voila, our guy has a gig, however part-time. But there is something strange about the bus and the clientele who avail of its services. There is a bit of scary in here, but mostly it is a heart-warming homage to readers of all ages and all times. I get choked up just thinking about it. Hill says he wrote it because he hates the idea of dying when only halfway through a book. All I Care About Is You - maybe the most horrifying story in the book. Hill was asked to write something for a collection being put together by Dave McKean, based on an illustration. He already had a draft of the story in hand before the request, but filled the request nonetheless. What is frustrating is not knowing the image on which he based the rest of the tale, or if he just ignored the illustrations completely. The future-set story tells of a young lady who is very disappointed at her lack of wealth relative to her friends. She comes across a pay-as-you-go robot, pops in a few coins, and Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship. More sci-fi than horror in the telling, Hill brings us back to the roots with a gut-punch of an ending. Have your albuterol handy for the end of this one. You will be gasping for air. Thumbprint - was written in 2006 and published in Issue 10 of Postscripts Magazine. It was later adapted into a graphic novel. [image] Graphic novel cover – image from IDW Mal’s father had served in Viet Nam. Mal’s war was in Iraq, her darkest battle taking place in Abu Ghraib. She’s back home now, but has become hardened, someone her father, were he still alive, would not respect. She is haunted by her experiences and crimes abroad. When pages of large thumbprints start turning up, in her mail, on her car, under her door, Mal is spooked. Fabulous tension-building in this one, with another outstanding resolution. The Devil on the Staircase - Ok, straight up, my least favorite of the bunch. The central image in the story is a staircase that may lead down to hell, inspired by the vertiginous stairways on the Amalfi coast, where Hill was vacationing when the notion struck. The form of the story is made to mirror the story itself, so, using a monotype Courier font, the text appears as stairways going up and down. In the story a young man commits a serious crime in order to win the girl he loves. It is mostly about selling one’s soul, and has a nice, sharp finish. But I never felt engaged. Twittering From the Circus of the Dead - Hill says of this one, “…here in 2019 it’s clearer than ever that social media won’t save us from zombies—it’s turning us into them.” On the road back to Cali from a vacay in Colorado, a family turns off to go to The Circus of the Dead. Not The Greatest Show on Earth, I can assure you, but possibly the last. A snarky teen reports events as they happen, on Twitter. In fact, the entire story is told in her Tweets. Some LOL material in here. We get what is going on pretty soon, but going through all the steps to the end is still wonderful. It offers a take on the importance of actual, you know, reality. I was reminded a bit of the 1962 film Carnival of Souls (no laughs in that one). Bon appetit! Mums - Anti-government zealots in the Ozarks are up to no good in various ways. Our young teen every-boy, Jack McCourt, tries his best to make sense of a crazy and maybe supernatural situation. Or has Jack inherited the family gene for being batshit nuts? His father, Hank, is a domineering sort, keeping his family virtually imprisoned on his many acres of Separatist heaven. Jack begins to see between the lines and the seeds of his newfound awareness are planted when he learns some things he was not supposed to know. In the afterward, Hill says that he fears the national crop is neither wheat nor corn, but paranoia. Clearly there are some people we should be paranoid about. In the Tall Grass - siblings Beck and Cal Demuth are driving cross-country, in Kansas, radio off, windows open, when they hear a call for help. It came from the tall grass near a church parking lot. A boy’s voice. But then another voice, his mother’s? calls out telling them not to go in. What’s a kindly-hearted pair of sibs to do? Seems the tall grass has something more going on than transforming sunlight into chlorophyll. I could tell you the tales this one made me think of, but then I would have to devour you. So, if you have already read the story, go ahead, but otherwise, probably not. (view spoiler)[It, and Children of the Corn by pops, and The Call of Cthulhu, by H.P. Lovecraft. (hide spoiler)] It was originally published in Esquire, and a feature length film rendition is due out shortly. You Are Released - an appropriate title for the last story in a collection, Hill says it is, I suppose, my attempt to write a David Mitchell story. Mitchell is the author of Cloud Atlas, Blackswangreen, and The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, and over the last decade I’ve sort of fallen in love with his sentences—which float and dip and soar like kites—and with his gift for kaleidoscopic narratives that quickly shift from one time and place and perspective to another.On a long flight headed east across the USA, we see the interactions, perspectives, and motivations of nine characters as they cope with the stress and with each other during a particularly dark stretch. Very nicely done. Hill adds a delicious short-short extra piece at the very end, a reward for those who read ALL the pages of a book. Strap in. Bottom line is that this is a wonderful, satisfying, warm, but scary, classical, but sometimes shocking, collection of stories that will move you, then hit you hard, and leave you knowing that you have been in the hands of a master story-teller, writing at Full Throttle. Review first posted – 8/16/19 Publication dates -----hardcover - 10/1/19 - Just in time for Halloween! -----trade paper - 9/8/20 November 28, 2019 - Full Throttle is named to the NY Times list of 100 Notable Books of 2019 ====================EXTRA STUFF is in comment #1 below ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
Jul 12, 2019
|
Aug 04, 2019
|
Aug 03, 2019
|
Paperback
| |||||||||||||||
9789887936015
| B07PGDXJJD
| 4.44
| 45
| Mar 05, 2019
| Mar 05, 2019
|
it was amazing
|
[image] “De kleine co-Pilote” (The little co-pilot) by Jantina Papercamp The second issue of PromiseShore’s bookazine, Zizzle, was released in March, 2 [image] “De kleine co-Pilote” (The little co-pilot) by Jantina Papercamp The second issue of PromiseShore’s bookazine, Zizzle, was released in March, 2019. The first had been published in October, 2018. (My review of that one can be found here.) In a quick reprise, issue #1 introduced a hard-cover-format short story collection aimed at young readers. The physical presentation was fabulous, with great attention paid to the look and feel of the book, as well as to the content. The stories were all good, with some that were wonderful. Question is whether the magic of issue 1 is repeated in issue #2. I am happy to report that publisher Yuetting Cindy Lam has gotten it right twice. [image] Yuetting Cindy Lam - image from PromiseShore The quality of the selected writings is top-tier. As with the first issue, there are ten stories, with three degrees of difficulty, Easy, Less Easy, and Not Easy. Each story has its level indicated by a book-stack icon in yellow, green, or red, in the Table of Contents and at the beginning of each story. (Personally, I would have gone with green for Easy and yellow for Less Easy), but no biggie. The stories are all under 1200 words, brief enough to hold the attention of young readers. As in the first, the second has an appendix in which the authors tell about the inspiration for their stories, and another in which the authors reveal their favorite books and authors when they were kids. Each story is introduced with a photo of the author as a child. The background color of all the story pages varies from tale to tale. The gorgeous artwork is by provided this time by Dutch artist Jantina Peperkamp. [image] Jantina Pepercamp - image from her FB pages The stories are diverse. In Child of the Short Spark, one day, out of the blue, a boy becomes a prodigy, on piano and whatever else he wants. The newfound gift presents some unexpected challenges to him. In Familiar a young student, believing her teacher be an actual witch, tries to gift her with an appropriate companion. Nuclear Missiles Are Coming Our Way takes on a kid’s embarrassment at his physically dimorphic parents. Imagination takes charge in No-School Day, when a daydream supersedes reality. Some pre-ad jealousy and mean-girl hostility arises in Sticks and Stones, matching up with clothing color and designs to reflect the tension between beauty and awfulness. Good Biscuits, Wonderful Tea shows how even the mature can learn from the young. My personal favorite was The Gift of Everness, a beautiful, moving fable about the externalities of growing old. My War Effort offers a touching portrait of a time (WW II) and place (Brooklyn) in which women come together to support each other and their men at war. Sealed offers a multi-generational look at the appeal of one’s home town. And finally, I’m Not Going to School tells of a child whose ADHD results in an excess of dust-ups at school, and a strong desire to stay away. It is a fair bet that you will find something in this collection that you will love. It is the intent of the publisher that these stories be enjoyed by kids and adults alike. Can’t speak for the kids, but I know one adult who liked them a lot. [image] Lesley Dahl -image from her GR page The stories offer a respectable gender range, with three male, four female, and three generic child leads. No ethnicities are specified, but some are identifiable. I expect the folks at PromiseShore struggled with how to cope with offering a fair ethnic balance. It looks like they ducked the issue by going mostly generic. The same cannot be said of the artwork. There are five different beautiful paintings in the book, variations of one image appearing on both the front and back covers and inside as well. They are all lovely, but offer a singular look, white, very, very white. A bit of diversity would have been welcome. I personally would prefer art work that illustrates the stories, but it looks like they will be sticking with non-story-specific images. [image] Girl in swimsuit - by Jantina Papercamp The book includes a smattering of encouraging quotes from the likes of Sylvia Plath, Alice Munro, Dr Seuss, Picasso, Emily Dickinson, and others inserted between stories. “The constant happiness is curiosity” and “The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.” And more of this sort. A nice addition. Hopefully this bit of subliminal support will help young readers keep at it. Bottom line is that Zizzle is a singular, remarkable, beautifully crafted series that should find a home wherever there are young readers, and in libraries across the planet. I dearly hope it finds enough readers to support the publisher continuing to make these lovely, lovely books. FYI, I received a complimentary copy from PromiseShore, despite the fact that my children are all grown, and there are no wee beasties of the two-legged sort ratting on my rugs. That left reading them to the cats. Nesto was trying to get through the latest Neal Stephenson, but it was too much for him, so I read him some Zizzle. He immediately stopped contemplating consciousness in the digital space removed from the physical, made himself comfortable, and drifted into a nice slumber to the soporific tones of my voice. Of course he might just have been settling in to sleep anyway. [image] Review first posted – May 31, 2019 Publication date – March, 2019 =============================EXTRA STUFF Yuetting Cindy Lam/Zizzlelit -----PromiseShore -----ZizzleLit.com -----ZizzleLit on Twitter -----YCL on Pinterest -----a lovely vid of YCL hand-building a book -----YCL short story - Trance -----YCL short story - Ma’s Cactus Fiction Editor Lesley Dahl’s personal and FB pages Jantina Pepercamp’s personal and FB pages ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
Mar 25, 2019
|
Mar 26, 2019
|
Mar 25, 2019
|
Hardcover
| ||||||||||||||||
0062679139
| 9780062679130
| 0062679139
| 3.50
| 6,471
| Jul 02, 2019
| Jul 02, 2019
|
it was amazing
| We all know the big bad is coming, and there’s nothing we can do to stop it, yet still we go to our jobs and we chitchat about nothing important wi We all know the big bad is coming, and there’s nothing we can do to stop it, yet still we go to our jobs and we chitchat about nothing important with coworkers and we go to dinner and we go to the mall and we go to our dentist appointments and we buy groceries and we make plans with friends and family and we walk and love our pets and we watch TV or read or sit in the glow of our smartphones, and all we’re doing is going through the motions because we can’t stop and think and accept that the pit of dread in our stomach is a pit of knowing. The big bad is coming.Growing Things is my second exposure to Paul Tremblay’s writing. The first was his outstanding, award-winning 2018 novel, The Cabin at the End of the World. I have not read his earlier horror novels, A Head Full of Ghosts or Disappearance at Devil’s Rock. Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. The reason this matters is that there are a few stories in this collection that use characters from A Head Full of Ghosts. It would certainly enhance one’s appreciation of those to have read the novel. And there is one story among these nineteen that serves as a prequel to Disappearance. Impact officially lost on me. [image] Paul Tremblay - image from More2Read.com If you do not mind such things, or have read the requisite novels, then no problem. There really should be few reasons not to thoroughly enjoy Tremblay’s dark tales. Some may be familiar to frequent readers of the genre. Turns out that seventeen of the nineteen have been previously published in anthologies or magazines. But now, together for the first time!... The approach to the stories varies, from third-person omniscient to first-person narrator to addled first-person narrator. From a story told largely through photographs to a tale told through journal entries. From a choose-your-own-adventure offering to a tripartite querying of a circus seer laid out in a very unusual physical format. There is a story within a story, and one that qualifies as a novella. Sometimes Tremblay will get you close to a character, enough to care, while in other stories the characters are held at a distance, in favor of concept. Be prepared for ambiguity. He even makes fun of himself for this impulse in one of the stories. Monstrous things might be extreme manifestations of fraught emotional/behavioral states, and sometimes the horrors be real. There are several things that turn up more than once. One is most certainly a fondness for Lovecraftian beasties. There will be tentacles! Teachers recur (Tremblay’s day job is cramming math into high school brains. Maybe using tentacles?) Students get a corresponding degree of attention. Childhood is indeed a powerful source of so much horror. And let’s not forget writers. They are kept busy scribbling away, or being referenced. Best of all, there are many fun reads in Growing Things, which should only secure Tremblay’s rep as one of the best horror writers working today. You probably don’t want to let any grass grow under you waiting to pick this one up. Some fears can only be explored by story. Some emotions can only be communicated by story. Some truths can only be revealed by story. Review posted – September 13, 2019 Publication dates ----------July 2, 2019 - hardcover ----------July 7, 2020 - trade paperback November 28, 2019 - Growing Things is named to the NY Times list of 100 Notable Books of 2019 December, 2019 - NPR names Growing Things as one of the Best Fantasy and Speculative Fiction Books of 2019 Sadly, new reductions in the allowed review size on GR have forced me to break this review up into parts. THE STORIES follows immediately in comments #1 and #2 while EXTRA STUFF remains here =============================EXTRA STUFF Links to the author’s personal, Twitter and FB pages Interviews -----Cemetery Dance - Interview: Paul Tremblay on Craft, King, and Building His Cabin - not sure if it includes this book -----GQ - Paul Tremblay Is Horror's Newest Big Thing - by Tom Philip – 7/10/19 -----Slant - Interview: Paul Tremblay on Growing Things and the Hope of Horror Fiction - by Neil McRobert – 7/11/19 -----More2ReadInterview: Paul Tremblay on his Growing Things and Other Stories, his characters, writing, recommendations, and inspirations -----WGBH News - Paul Tremblay On His Book 'Growing Things' and Growing Up In Massachusetts -----Hangouts on Air - 2:17:45 – Tremblay with others My reviews of other books by Paul Tremblay -----2018 - The Cabin at the End of the World -----2020 - Survivor Song ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
Mar 04, 2019
|
Mar 12, 2019
|
Mar 04, 2019
|
Hardcover
| |||||||||||||||
unknown
| 3.69
| 26
| unknown
| unknown
|
it was amazing
|
Notes are private!
|
1
|
Jan 03, 2019
|
Jan 03, 2019
|
Jan 02, 2019
|
|
|
|
|
|
my rating |
|
![]() |
||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
3.27
|
really liked it
|
Aug 28, 2023
|
Aug 30, 2023
|
||||||
3.75
|
it was amazing
|
Feb 04, 2024
|
Jul 12, 2023
|
||||||
3.87
|
really liked it
|
Sep 06, 2022
|
Sep 07, 2022
|
||||||
4.01
|
it was amazing
|
Jul 06, 2022
|
Jul 05, 2022
|
||||||
3.27
|
it was amazing
|
Oct 04, 2021
|
Oct 04, 2021
|
||||||
3.44
|
it was amazing
|
Nov 25, 2020
|
Nov 26, 2020
|
||||||
3.99
|
really liked it
|
Nov 11, 2020
|
Nov 11, 2020
|
||||||
3.38
|
really liked it
|
Oct 19, 2020
|
Oct 14, 2020
|
||||||
4.08
|
it was amazing
|
Jan 1965
|
Oct 06, 2020
|
||||||
4.29
|
really liked it
|
Oct 08, 2020
|
Oct 03, 2020
|
||||||
3.91
|
it was amazing
|
Jul 18, 2020
|
Jul 18, 2020
|
||||||
4.22
|
it was amazing
|
Jul 12, 2020
|
Jun 22, 2020
|
||||||
3.77
|
not set
|
Jun 18, 2020
|
|||||||
3.84
|
it was amazing
|
Mar 24, 2020
|
Mar 24, 2020
|
||||||
4.05
|
it was amazing
|
Mar 24, 2020
|
Mar 24, 2020
|
||||||
4.11
|
it was amazing
|
Nov 26, 2019
|
Nov 26, 2019
|
||||||
4.00
|
it was amazing
|
Aug 04, 2019
|
Aug 03, 2019
|
||||||
4.44
|
it was amazing
|
Mar 26, 2019
|
Mar 25, 2019
|
||||||
3.50
|
it was amazing
|
Mar 12, 2019
|
Mar 04, 2019
|
||||||
3.69
|
it was amazing
|
Jan 03, 2019
|
Jan 02, 2019
|