Guest Review: Matt Dojny Reviewed by Jennifer Spiegel

Matt Dojny, The Festival of Earthly Delights. Westland, Mich.: Dzanc Books, 2012. Fiction. 400 pages. Illustrated by the author. ISBN: 978-1-936873-692.

A Book Review of Matt Dojny’s The Festival of Earthly Delights:
Who Can Take Him Seriously?

I don’t really know how to do a book review, though I like very much to “review” books. And since it’s that time of year when the literati and pretenders like me make lists about the best books of the year, I promised to abandon my Christmas plans if Karen Lillis included my book review of Matt Dojny’s book on her site, which is—let’s be honest—nicer than my site.

I only need to figure out how to really review a book. Well, then: form. The Festival of Earthly Delights is, eh hem, an epistolary novel (look it up) written by the protagonist, one Boyd Darrow, to the enigmatic Hap, whose identity you’ll eventually figure out. Boyd and his girlfriend-who-is-pretending-to-be-his-wife, Ulla, are young American expats in the imaginary Asian country of Puchai, where they both hold jobs in education, just as good Americans abroad often do, though Ulla is on the professional side of things.

What I really hate about writing book reviews is plot summary, so I’m going to skip it. The novel is a comedic novel. Epistolary and comedic. You’d be right if you guessed that there’s going to be all kinds of trouble, ranging from whacky food-tasting rituals to toilet humor (in one episode, I almost thought to myself, Enough, Matt! But, then, with further consideration, I thought, Well done, Matt! Well done!), from language mishaps to your usual foreign escapades involving drugs and whorehouses. Drugs and whorehouses are common, right? Boyd Darrow is utterly likeable, and we go wherever he goes willingly. He’s not an idiot. He’s not annoying. He’s just a young American abroad. Who lives with a girl named Ulla. In my opinion, one should always beware of women with names like Ulla. Generally speaking, women with the following names should be avoided: Ulla, Pippa, and Joss. Use your own discretion with Zoey.

In the short time I’ve got here, I’m going to focus on two aspects of this book: its comedic status and its rendering of the American expat abroad (Lordy, I love talking about that one).

It’s a comedic novel! Which means, in brief, it’s funny! You know, we’ve got to be serious for a second, and think about what this means. The comedic thing can be problematic. A bit of a stigma. I can’t remember where it is exactly, but I know that somewhere my own Love Slave is labeled comedic.

I don’t know about Matt Dojny’s response, but my response involved some disgruntled balking. Somehow, my writerly credentials were called into question. My legitimacy was at stake. Yeah, yeah, I read Catch-22. Yeah, yeah: Catcher in the Rye. In one of my non-review reviews, I grappled with the issue. The book was Tina Fey’s Bossypants, and I asked—with all sincerity—“Am I a humorist?” (The review can be found here: That Joke Isn't Funny Anymore.) Because maybe being a humorist isn’t such a good thing.

(Someone, incidentally, publically responded to my review by writing, “In answer to your question, No, you are not. ” I’m still suffering from that one.)

I’ve come to terms with the comedic thing. Dojny probably already has. There’s smart funny (which is marked by smarmy, sexy, true moments that contain beauty and sorrow and wit) and there’s dumb funny (sitcom TV with titles like “My Four Dads’ Sisters and Their Gay Neighbor” or “My Gay Neighbor’s Dad and His Four Sisters”). Funny, when funny is good, is smart. And Dojny’s prose is smart. Humor may be the best way at getting at this human thing, the core of what it means to be human. It seems like it’s the funny people who often see things more clearly. It’s not that they take life less seriously or that their light-heartedness is superficiality; rather, funny people are—dare I say it?—pretty damn perceptive, able to see nuances in behavior and thinking that other people miss. Fools!

If you can’t laugh at a good joke about excrement, something might actually be wrong with you.

Yeah, this book is funny. I’m thinking that the trick to humor is honesty—about everything. This is one super simple example. Ulla wakes up and says to Boyd, “I was just having a horrible nightmare. I was in a super-dirty bathroom, and my bare butt accidentally touched the wall.” I’ve had this dream! But here’s the important thing: though you’ve probably had this dream too, you may not know what to do with it. Dojny turns it into a comic moment, an honest moment. The gifted writer takes the common (like the bare-butt-on-dirty-surfaces nightmare) and renders them uncommon (magical moments abroad). That’s a real festival of earthly delights. Djony, gifted writer, does orchestrate a festival.

Let’s move on. Americans abroad! First, they are so freakin’ funny! Second, my first book—which is not comedic so don’t expect to laugh—is about expats (Shameless Plug: it’s called The Freak Chronicles). Third, I thought Dojny’s rendering of the American abroad was great. There are too many fine passages to quote from; I’m just going to pick a few. Though it’s common to draw upon the strangeness of food, Dojny does so with just the right tone. He’s gentle, without arrogance. He writes about Ulla’s fondness for this one dessert that’s like a “hot-dog bun filled with soybean ice cream, then smothered in creamed corn.” Sounds gross, but you’d probably like it too. I know I ate worse in Africa. There are bowls that emit the smell of “a hot burp, with a hint of black licorice.”

He captures the fear, the trepidation, the goofy white-kid-among-non-white people thinking which is heightened in extreme [foreign] situations. When a bunch of teenage malchaks (the politically-oppressed group, because there always is one) do potentially dangerous teenage stuff when Boyd walks in their part of the imaginary exotic locale, Boyd’s thinking goes like this: “I tried to compose my features into an expression that said: I’m just a gareng [foreigner] on my way home, minding my own business. I don’t think what you’re doing is cool, but I’m not judging you, either. It’s not really a big deal. Just don’t get anybody killed. I’m a visitor from New York City, the ‘Big Apple,’ so, believe me, I’ve seen much worse. . . I don’t view you as ‘the other.’ I know that the same blood runs through all of our veins. You may not have realized this before, but I know that you realize it now, as you look into my eyes: I am not afraid.” Boyd tries hard to communicate all of this in one facial expression, and this sums up what Dojny does in his rendering of the gareng experience: he captures a vast and complex collection of wild, important experiences in a series of quick, often funny, moments.

Well, he’s funny, but can he write? I like this line: “I woke up this morning with a mouthful of rubies.” Isn’t that what a good comedic novel is like? A mouthful of rubies? Think about it, reader.

I wrote my own little list of the Best Books of 2012, which was really the best books I read in 2012. However, my first choice was actually written in 2011, and The Festival of Earthly Delights was my second favorite read of the year. But since it was, in fact, written in 2012, it’s fair to say it was my pick for the Best Book of 2012! Yikes, that felt a little like a mouthful of rubies too. Don’t try to read this final paragraph aloud.

Summary: this is a really good book.

Guest Review by Jennifer Spiegel
Author of Love Slave (September 2012, Unbridled Books)
and The Freak Chronicles (June 2012, Dzanc Books)

Guest Review: Laurie Weeks Reviewed by Kari Larsen

Laurie Weeks, Zipper Mouth. New York: Feminist Press, 2011. Fiction. 144 pages. ISBN: 978-1-55861-755-3.

Laurie Weeks' Zipper Mouth is the story of a girl living in New York. New York is populated by jobs she hates as well as parties that facilitate ecstatic transformation, but the scenery is dwarfed by her unbearable, thunderous desire. This girl, without apprehension, is accessed by her desire on every level she has ever operated - as a child falling wordlessly for celebrities, as a teenager aching to establish a dialogue with Sylvia Plath - and Weeks conducts this chorus with a kind of mastery that is endlessly positive for young girls to see. Her story demonstrates how it is alright and it is beautiful for girls to want hard - for a better job, for love, for recognition, for things they cannot verbalize. While Weeks does come off through her intimate storytelling as the kind of writer young readers will be dying to talk to once this book finds its way to them, a passionate reading and re-reading of this book will serve to reassert that Weeks does everything right, provides all the words about desire for girls who do or did not have them. With this novel, Weeks has nailed it. Any young girl who reads Zipper Mouth will be armed with the reassurance and sense of belonging in her own desires that stories unconcerned with the scope and power of her own person fail to provide her. It is books of such indifference that make up the majority of what girls are prone to reading, and for the sake of teenagers, Zipper Mouth deserves the ubiquity of a series like Gossip Girl.

Recommended for collections of contemporary fiction, small press fiction, New York fiction, feminist fiction, women writing fiction, and queer fiction.

Guest review by Kari Larsen
Editor of Enigma Machine Press
Author of the forthcoming chapbook, Say You're a Fiction from Dancing Girl Press (summer 2012)
Blogger at: http://cold-rubies.blogspot.com/

Guest Review: LIFE AFTER SLEEP Reviewed by Joel Thomas

Mark R. Brand. Life After Sleep. Chicago: CCLaP Publishing, 2011. Fiction (novella). Available as an e-book or in handbound edition. http://www.cclapcenter.com/lifeaftersleep/

Mark R. Brand’s sci-fi novella centers around the premise that through the wonders of science, humans can get by on significantly less sleep. A device referred to as a “Bed” allows for full rest in only two hours. Will we use the extra hours in our day for education, cultural enrichment, and making the world a better place? Will we finally get around to donating blood and going to the gym regularly? Or will we simply possess a few more hours each night to help us keep up with our favorite reality shows? Surely we can find more “Real Housewives” adventures to follow, and their own reduced need for sleep will provide even more snippy banter and social catastrophes.

Fortunately, Brand takes readers down a more interesting road. His own background in science and medicine informs the novella throughout, allowing him to provide detailed exposition and explanations of the technology itself and its effects on each protagonist. As we all know, the literary world of tomorrow’s technology often turns out to be a curse more than a blessing, and this novel displays the personal dystopia that is Life After Sleep. Capitalism always wins, of course, and readers soon learn that corporations expect humans to work many more hours, often for less pay. The most glaring example: a war veteran with PTSD working an inhumane number of hours at a futuristic version of Walmart. His Sleep (Brand refers to the shortened version of sleep with a capital letter: “Sleep”) struggles prove nearly devastating, as do the hallucinations of a rest-deprived surgeon who blacks out during operations.

Even with an overarching social theme, the narrative stays focused on individual lives rather than sweeping political statements. This move keeps the novella lean and intimate. Readers meet characters who stay vulnerable and believable, beset by problems and conflict but never forced into saving the world. One major narrative branch, for example, portrays the difficulties of a couple trying to adapt back to more traditional sleep patterns after having a baby. As it turns out, Beds aren’t safe to operate near infants. The young father/husband works too many hours without the benefits of a Bed and its technology-enhanced Sleep, and the young parents both struggle to adapt to their physical needs for rest. In another vein, a successful band promoter pushes the legal and physical limits of Sleep while dabbling in other intriguing technologies (which this reviewer will leave unspoiled so the reader can take pleasure in discovery). Her own desperate lifestyle brings a hedonism and danger-driven appeal to the book.

With Life After Sleep, Brand doesn’t push extremes, keeping a sense of relative believability. Some readers may prefer fantasies so unbelievable that the enjoyment comes from reveling in the seemingly impossible, but this novella’s appeal comes in its chilling likelihood.

Recommended for collections of contemporary fiction, science fiction, medical fiction, and Chicago authors.

Available from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography, or from Amazon.

Reviewed by Joel Thomas
Midwestern adjunct writing instructor
http://thecasserolex.wordpress.com/

Book Review: BAD BAD BAD by Jesús Ángel García

Jesús Ángel García, badbadbad. Colorado: New Pulp Press, 2011. Fiction. 237 pages. ISBN: 978-0-9828436-3-5.

Jesús Ángel García's debut novel, badbadbad, is lousy with exquisite contradictions. The protagonist, Jesús Ángel García, is a fallen angel with a Jesus complex, a lost man with a mission. The novel is a bildungsroman told by a young man who is already divorced with a child; or do I mean a coming-of-age in reverse, an "adult child" seeking his own lost innocence? If he's looking for his innocence, it's through sexcapades with kinky chicks on the social web, and though he's enjoying a lot of sex dates, sex toys, and other Triple-X adventures in the Bible Belt South, he mainly seeks out troubled women who might need his healing powers of love and listening. He attends church services every Sunday morning, but that's just for appearances: He's more excited about evening performances by the local punk band Children's Crusade, but he makes a living as the webmaster for the biggest evangelical congregation in town. By day he forms allegiances with his custody lawyer and the Reverend; by night he shares bourbon and MP3s with the Reverend's excommunicated son. The story's a pulp fiction narrated (from jail? from beyond the grave?) to a younger brother he abandoned long ago to an abusive family. The novel's almost a stroke book, but some of the sex scenes are decidedly unappetizing. And although the novelist uses his own name for his protagonist, I have no idea (as reader) whether the book is thinly-veiled autobiography, metaphor for lived experience, or pure fabrication using the device of truthful confession.

One of the most perfect chapters is one where descriptions of a gay pride rally and a KKK march are intertwined. Both events attract the same two camps, it's just a matter of who's marching in the center (each in their own brand of costumes) and who's holding the protest placards on the sidelines. Another choice chapter sees Jesús (aka JAG) take a trip with two of the "fallen angels" (the name of the underground hook-up website JAG frequents) to a huge Southern tent show featuring "guns, knives, and dolls." The scene has a carnival atmosphere, even as it takes place under the kind of tent that (on another day) might house a religious revival. The "dolls" featured at the show are bikini-clad babes who pass out lemonade to shoppers and set up targets for customers enjoying their new guns. The weapons are lit by halogen lights as if they were jewels. The air smells of fried dough. JAG observes the families who push their baby strollers from booth to booth, window-shopping like they're at a mall. His "alt" friends encourage him (against his preferences) to buy a gun, a plot point that makes the reader wonder how alternative these kids really are. They teach JAG how to shoot, how to handle his gun, while the sexual healer imagines his ex-wife as the target. Nearby, some men have brought their own targets: images of black civil rights leaders. In the background, the sound of endless American war marches on.

Over and over in badbadbad, the plot reveals hypocrisies and paints contradictions within characters or scenes that once seemed to be only black and white. Other times it draws parallels and similarities between camps that are supposed to be polar opposites. Weren't the bigoted Bible-thumpers being set up as the bad guys and the queer-fabulous music-lovers the good fellows? What about the third-wave feminist hotties who are unashamed to declare what they want, but push their self-love to the point of shallowness? Are we being robbed of a symbology we thought we understood, or is García (the author) simply righting and complicating perceptions that were far too simplistic when we started reading?

JAG's story is full of people. But as characters enter, entice, and evaporate, one character remains. This reveal sneaks up on the reader: JAG is a narrator who provides some reflection, a certain amount of internal commentary along the way. But often enough the story reads like we're following him as an enchanted observer in a forest of wacky Southern characters—some long familiar, others new to the scene. Eventually, after the reader passes through all the distractions of colorful 21st Century punks, ravers, earth mamas, bondage queens, and neo-goths; after we wade through the rabid religious homophobes, Klansmen, and right-to-lifers, the character of JAG himself emerges. He's surrounded by pals and booked with play-dates, but his loneliness is only growing. His pull towards the social web is compulsive, his need to shop for the next hook-up is constant, his separation from his son is never-ending, and his desire for connection remains dangerously starved. Like JAG's own sudden revelation that constant online contact and overlapping cyber-relationships have added up to nothing, all these compelling characters suddenly disappear from the plot like ciphers: We're dropped into a sudden awareness of a profound emptiness in JAG that's been gathering steam while we were paying attention to everything else--a void growing ever more hungry, angry, and violent under the surface.

Badbadbad draws on styles and themes from familiar stories and older literatures. The novel sustains the straight-talk trashiness of 20th Century pulp, the sex-romp identity games of Kathy Acker, and the dark inevitability of Giovanni's Room. But it considers an absolutely current societal malaise: the twin-headed hydra of selective isolation and social media addiction. In the process, badbadbad reveals a new brand of lust for life and a new kind of lost generation.

Recommended for collections of contemporary fiction, literary fiction, small press fiction, emerging authors, neo-pulp fiction, fiction about the internet age, and Southern fiction.

*****

Find badbadbad on New Pulp Press here.

Find more about this "transmedia" novel (and the 32-city book tour) on the author's website here.

Guest Review: Alex Kudera reviewed by Joel Thomas

Alex Kudera. Fight for Your Long Day. Kensington, Md.: Atticus Books, 2010. Fiction. 264 pages. ISBN: 978-0984510504.

Fight for Your Long Day’s protagonist, Cyrus Duffleman, does not fit the usual literary profile of professors – well-respected educators who juggle natural charisma and artistic brilliance, usually while battling demons available only to the privileged. Instead, author Alex Kudera gives readers a glimpse of the modern faculty majority: adjunct instructors. Like so many adjuncts, Duffleman’s story unfolds as he travels between low-paying teaching jobs and even a few hours weekly as a security guard. A dramatic adventure involving political assassination and dangerous troubled students unfolds around the well-intentioned teacher, but he doesn’t have time to stop and play the hero, especially without health insurance, until the novel comes to its madcap climax.

Kudera himself takes on a tough job with this novel. The writer clearly wants readers to understand the heavy load adjuncts undertake for low pay, and he includes specific details that real adjuncts will recognize as absolutely accurate. Students struggling with mental illness surfaces as a sub-theme, too, and he treats the topic with sensitivity even while illustrating inadequate resources for such situations at most colleges.

The author blends this gritty reality with humorous fantasy, deftly balancing heavy subject matter and an entertaining story. Hilarious caricature illustrates the idiosyncrasies and mounting frustrations for the character he affectionately nicknames “Duffy.” The novelist also cleverly sneaks in countless cultural references. This reviewer’s favorite appears when Kudera describes how Security Guard Duffleman stumbles into an underground punk rock show and gawks through scantily-clad girls’ mesh halter tops: “Duffy X-rays specks of” a body part, a pun that nods to readers who might also be punk fans. The plot involves some outlandish intrigue, with humorous references to a “President Fern,” a Homeland Security official with the surname “Cliff” (substituted for “Ridge”), and the dynamics of on-campus political radicals.

The combination of wordplay, satire, and over the top excitement make for an entertaining read. At the same time, Kudera’s thoughtful commentary reminds readers that Cyrus Duffleman represents many long, low-paying days worked by real adjuncts across America. The elements combine for an enjoyable book entertaining and exciting enough for a broad audience but thoughtful and sharp enough for university literature professors, even those fighting for their own long days.

Recommended for collections of contemporary fiction, academia-related fiction, Philadelphia-based fiction, social and/or political satire, working class fiction, and urban fiction.

Available from the publisher and at select bookstores.
Distributed by Itasca Books (who work with Baker & Taylor and Ingram).
Read more at Atticus Books.

Reviewed by:
Joel Thomas

Midwestern adjunct writing instructor
http://thecasserolex.wordpress.com/

Fiction Review: THE ABSENT TRAVELER by Randall DeVallance

Randall DeVallance. The Absent Traveler: A Novella and Other Stories. Kensington, Md.: Atticus Books, 2010. Short fiction. 186 pages. ISBN: 978-0-9845105-2-8.

Charles Lime, the protagonist of The Absent Traveler, is a Bartleby for our age. Instead of working for a lawyer on Wall Street, he’s employed by a big box store in a Western Pennsylvania strip mall. Rather than copying legal texts, he rings up electronics. He doesn’t live in an ill-lit corner of his office but rents an equally pathetic space in an unrenovated basement. A 26-year-old college grad who prefers not to have any ambitions beyond head cashier, Charles baffles his peers, enrages his father, saddens his mother, frustrates his manager, and washes over the collegiate coworkers who pass through his workplace en route to different cities and better jobs.

The Absent Traveler, its protagonist, and his “absence” are curiously compelling. Written in third person, though largely from Charles Lime’s point of view, the story offers a window into Charles’ thoughts. But none of what goes through Charles’ mind serves as easy explanation for his scant motivation, and little of his interior bonds us to him in comfortable sympathy. Meanwhile, we learn that Charles has a penchant for daydreaming and a fetish for travel literature. Charles prefers not to travel far in physical reality (he resides a short walk from work and a short drive from his childhood home), but has a strong instinct to escape: When he picks up a book, the dingy walls of the basement fade away. The insults of his father, a young woman’s rejection, his predatory alcoholic landlady: all recede to a safe distance when Charles is in the throes of an overseas tale. As his latest travel book becomes more and more a part of the novella’s text, it slowly reveals the deeply seductive nature of Charles’ will to elude reality--the darker (even destructive) side of his extreme inertia in real life.

Interestingly, author Randall DeVallance, who traveled with the Peace Corps to Bulgaria, has eschewed the instinct to create a traditional travel memoir: the narrative of the “authentic” exotic experience. Instead he weaves his Eastern European memories into the travel tale which draws Charles Lime in so fully, it leaves him absent to his own daily life. Preferring daydreams and alternative futures to actualities, The Absent Traveler sneaks up on us as a dark fable for the age of the internet: In a time when increasing numbers of us spend increasing hours interacting with a pixelated virtual reality, what transpires in the physical lives we're no longer acknowledging? Charles Lime is an anti-hero who makes a virtue of flying under the radar, but whose story won’t easily be forgotten.

Recommended for collections of contemporary fiction, small press fiction, short fiction, and Western Pennsylvania authors.

Available from the publisher and at fine bookstores.
Distributed by Itasca Books (who work with Baker & Taylor and Ingram).

Read more at Atticus Books.

Guest Review: DEGREES OF ELEVATION reviewed by Doug Mathewson

Charles Dodd White and Page Seay, eds. Degrees of Elevation: Short Stories of Contemporary Appalachia. Huron, Oh.: Bottom Dog Press, 2010. Anthology of short fiction. 186 pages. ISBN: 978-1933964393.

To successfully capture a place; to transport the reader to a different world using words alone is a mighty feat. By observation or remembrance writers create narrative portraits of a place. People are often shown to us through their language and peculiarities of culture. Capturing a sense of the land is harder. The dialogue of Stephen King brings us back to his native rural Maine. E. Annie Proulx, with her sharp eye and careful ear has taken us on a long journey from Newfoundland, down through Vermont to Texas and finally to Wyoming. Every place is unique, as are its inhabitants. Both are woven tightly together in a finely detailed pattern. They seem to be inseparable. This tie between place and people is incredibly strong in this collection of new Appalachian short fiction. Degrees of Elevation published by Bottom Dog Press is a treasure. These seventeen stories introduce us to the independent-natured people who live in a very natural land entirely dominated by coal. These are fictional works, telling the stories of people who are very real.

I was honored to be introduced to Scott McClanahan’s kindly “Mary the Cleaning Lady” who helps a young girl gain a greater understand of the world. Silas Hound, Richard Hague, and Denton Lowing treat us to their determined eccentric characters. Each living life to its fullest. When I read Alex Taylor’s story “The Coal Thief” I felt I knew Uncle Ransom from somewhere. Then I recognized him as every mythological trickster from the Monkey King to Br’er Rabbit!

Hard times, doubt and depression offset with the smallest kernel of hope prove the most stringent tests of people. These tales are beautifully told by Mindy Beth Miller, Jim Nichols, and Sheldon Lee Compton. I earnestly cared for every one of their characters. Marginalized sub-cultures are explored by Crystal Wilkinson and John McManus. These writers introduce us to people we may not even know exist. “Horseweed” by Chris Offutt and “Into the Gorge” by Ron Rash both show us so much in so few words about the wooded hills of Appalachia, and how times have changed.

Several of these stories may well stay with the reader for years. Two in particular will always be with me. “Haskell” from Chris Holbrook’s “Upheaval” is heart-breaking man who is coming apart physically and mentally. The story is told in specific small language that is so much a part of this man’s life. In “Country Boys” by Rusty Barnes, Reena puts Jimmy in some enticingly difficult situations till he gets over his head, and has to decide. Jimmy’s choice is not easy, but yours is. Support small and independent press by purchasing this fine collection of stories written by some of the very best authors you will find today in American short fiction.

Degrees of Elevation at Bottom Dog Press:
http://smithdocs.net/recent_titles

Degrees of Elevation at SPD: http://www.spdbooks.org/Producte/9781933964393/degrees-of-elevation-short-stories-of-contemporary-appalachia.aspx

Review by
Doug Mathewson
Editor at Blink-Ink
http://www.blink-ink.com/
Published by:
Full of Crow Press and Distribution
http://www.fullofcrowpress.org/

Guest Review: Allen Frost reviewed by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE

Allen Frost. The Mermaid Translation. Huron, Oh.: Bottom Dog Press/ Bird Dog Publishing, 2010. Fiction. 140 pages. ISBN: 978-1933964409.

I know nothing about this author or his intentions. As I read this I wondered what it would've been like to read it at age 8. I reckon that might've been when it would've seemed the most magical to me. It seems like it'd be in good company if it were to be grouped with L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time, Evans G. Valens' Me and Frumpet: An Adventure With Size and Science, & Tolkien's The Hobbit - all of which stimulated my imagination, sense of wonder, & ability to daydream when I was 8 or 9. I'm further reminded a tad of novels for adults like In the Days of the American Museum by Robert Edric & Leonora Carrington's The Hearing Trumpet. While in some respects the novel seems surreal it's not really stream-of-unconsciousness enough to be surrealist. It's more stolidly in the tradition of kids books everywhere - there're ethical underpinnings that're a relief to me as an adult who's often exasperated by the boneheaded macho behavior of the male world. THIS BOOK IS (mostly) GENTLE - & thank goodness for that. The chapters are short, the language is simple, the characters are 'exotic': a former deep-sea diver, a mermaid, dolphins, a magician, elephants. The world is post-empire & the forces of fantasy are free-ranging.
http://smithdocs.net/BirdDogy/BirdDogPage.html

Reviewed by
tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE
http://www.thing.de/projekte/7:9%23/tent_index.html

Guest Review: Caleb J. Ross reviewed by Kristin Fouquet

Caleb J. Ross. Charactered Pieces. Outsider Writers Press, 2009. Fiction. 63 pages. ISBN: 978-1-59948-228-6

This collection of stories is one of the best I’ve read in a long time. The short form has always been my preference. I admire when a writer can take us immediately in and then release us in short duration. When it works, it is exhilarating. Caleb J. Ross delivers this.

The stories in Charactered Pieces are dark, sometimes disturbing, and anxious. I found a theme of parental angst stream through many of them. It was enjoyable to spend some time in the mind of Ross, but in the end, it was more personal. I believe a story is successful when you discover something about yourself after reading it. I highly recommend this collection.

Kristin Fouquet, author of Twenty Stories (Rank Stranger Press, 2009)

Kristin's website is Le Salon

Book Review: THE LOVE BOOK by Ken Wohlrob

K. Wohlrob, The Love Book. New York: Bully Press, 2007. Fiction. 216 pages. ISBN: 978-0615171425.

These stories of sex and death, attraction and repulsion, men and women, start out in a gritty mode, exposing the less pretty realities of some of life's unfortunates. One triumph of The Love Book is the tenderness Wohlrob reveals in the course of writing each relationship, a raw and recognizable humanity he brings to the surface in places the reader least expects: Compassion for just the characters with whom I was most uncomfortable crept over me in absorbing Wohlrob's deft and distilled prose. The stories in The Love Book are never veiled autobiography, but add up to an original vision all Wohlrob's own, one that has been piercingly and wisely lived, felt, and imagined. Recommended for collections of contemporary fiction, short fiction, suburban fiction, small press fiction, New Jersey authors, Italian-American authors.

Book Review: STORIES by Scott McClanahan

S. McClanahan, Stories. Pittsburgh: Six Gallery Press, 2009. Fiction. 146 pages. ISBN: 978-0981009124.

Scott McClanahan is one of the most refreshing writers of fiction I've read in a long time. I love his debut collection, STORIES, which revives the pleasures of the age-old art of storytelling. McClanahan's narrator is funny and profane, at least a little bit self-depricating but somehow always compassionate to his subjects. As a writer, McClanahan is smart and hilarious, evoking layers of pathos from the twists and turns his stories and narration take. His tales revisit familiar Appalachian characters, small-town disasters, and gothic themes that Flannery O'Connor, Breece D'J Pancake, or Tom Waits could love (lost limbs, jailtime, disfigured strippers, hit-and-runs, the small-town down-and-out), but the tone of the narrator makes them something I've never heard before, immediate and contemporary. With many more stories up his sleeve, McClanahan is going places. Highly recommended for collections of: contemporary fiction, short stories, young authors of fiction, Appalachian fiction, small press fiction, first-person fiction, rural fiction, or West Virginia fiction.

Book Review: The Way the Family Got Away

M. Kimball, The Way the Family Got Away. New York: Four Walls Eight Windows, 2000. Fiction. 143 pages.

Michael Kimball breathes life into American experimental fiction in this moving debut novel. The tale reads on one level like timeless myth-making, as the family makes its way from Texas to Michigan with their infant child, a few days past his funeral, in the car trunk. But the unusual narration, and Kimball's adeptness at imparting grief through both the telling and the silences, make "The Way the Family Got Away" the freshest literary fiction. The stories of the death, the family, and the trip north are told through the alternating voices of the surviving young brother and sister: The brother tells the tale in terms of which possessions the family must barter to get from one town to the next, while the sister narrates the doll version of the family drama and hopes to bring her baby brother--magically--back to life. In Kimball's novel we find a domestic fiction more often rendered by women: an emotional tale of narrow parameters and deep impact. This writer is one to watch: Highly recommended for both academic libraries interested in literary or American fiction, and medium-to-large public libraries.