Alligator is a collection of short stories that are alive and dynamic. The unheimlich moves the reader through fictional landscapes and through something inside our unconscious minds: some deep need to read about other people’s lives and, because we are empathetic to these characters, experience a lovely catharsis. Our unconscious is a reserve of repressed emotions yearning to push at our consciousness. Ryan’s work is good, really good, because it feeds us.
Tag: short stories
A review of Casual Mysteries and Aperçus by Charles Rammelkamp
A number of the stories turn at the aperçu, the character’s life coming full circle. Not all stories are ominous and not all mysteries are solved, but collectively the stories in Casual Mysteries and Aperçus shine a light on prejudice, anti-semitism, homophobia, misogyny, the unreliability of memoir and perhaps how even dire situations tend to work itself out over time. As you might expect from a poet, Casual Mysteries and Aperçus contains poetry, insight, intrigue, and a whole lot of fun.
A review of One More for the Ditch: A Triptych by Eric McLaughlin
The plots of these three stories unfold slowly. All three have many characters, and each character is necessary, each plays a part in moving their story to its conclusion. In the first two stories the main characters are well intentioned but become victims of their own righteousness. Ironically the protagonist of “A Fully Clothed Breakfast” wins the war, not on the battlefield but within himself.
A review of Curious Events Lately Occurring In This Neighbourhood by Tom Cox
The author’s name is new to me, I am surprised to admit, because Cox’s goofy, solipsistic clowning short stories (some no more than a paragraph) are so captivating. You are guaranteed to read and giggle or skim and smile. At least a number of celebrated writers who have read Cox have done just that.
A review of Those Who Vanish by Patricia Grace King
While most of the stories are told in the third person, “Rubia,” “Small Country” and “The Death of Carrie Bradshaw” are first-person narratives. These stories especially go to the heart of the misunderstandings that prevail throughout this collection. “Rubia” is related by Josie, a girl who tells us she grew up “at the bottom-ass edge of Delmarva, a landscape of crab shacks and chicken farms where the only thing flat as the Chesapeake Bay in your face were the swamps at your back.”
A review of What Mennonite Girls Are Good For by Jennifer Sears
It’s a high-stakes adventure, with planes, guns, pervs, and the gyrations of a goddess in disguise. At the end of the day, it’s a short story collection about religious syncretization, told with a voice of winsome aloofness that makes funnier-than-hell into its own corner plot in heaven.
A review of Stories: The Collected Short Fiction by Helen Garner
Some ideologies have little use for such sentiments, but Garner’s new collection hearkens back to themes that came across even more powerfully in the work of Australia’s first Nobel laureate in literature, Patrick White, who contrasted the sedate, not to say dysfunctional, existence of wealthy suburban Sydneysiders with the bold, tough character of explorers who set off into the Outback to grapple with life on the most elemental level, without concern for fashionable dogmas, changing mores, or social acceptance.
A review of The Grief Shop and Other Stories from a Broken World by Alex DiFrancesco
The book focuses on what could be considered the walking wounded, if it weren’t for their respective nuances and depth, along with surprising turns of humor. The stories are marked by the shadow of a singular, mostly unspoken, ‘tragedy’; however, the collection notably avoids the trap of victimization despite the cataclysmic proportions of its world.
A review of But Where’s Home: A Novella and Stories by Toni Ann Johnson
Johnson’s writing–her vivid detail, sharp dialogue and insightful, deftly witty scenes–reveal a family of distinct, complicated individuals grappling with the internal and external impact of our society’s stereotypes, but also asks us to look more closely at our own relationships.
A review of A Place in the World by Bill Gaythwaite
Gaythwaite’s sheer wittiness is a delight, even without the gripping moral dilemmas that propel the stories forward and the vivid, often morally questionable but nevertheless endearing characters who bring the plots alive. The reader turns the pages to see how their situations are resolved – or not resolved.