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Now in his 80s, Ray Bradbury continues to turn out the kind of imaginative and insightful short stories that have made him the grand old man of American science fiction (as noted by the National Book Foundation when it awarded Bradbury its 2000 Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters). His latest collection, One More for the Road, contains 25 stories written over a period of more than 40 years. Most of the pieces are published here for the first time, making the volume a treasure trove for the Bradbury fan. These are familiar later-years Bradbury stories, dealing with some of his recurring subjects: golf, movies and (in a gesture that will please many long-time readers) Laurel and Hardy. In a brief afterword, the author explains how he first became enthralled by the comedic duo.

Some of the stories are softer than others, but some will stick with you long, long after you read them. None of Bradbury’s creations can be summed up in one word or a single phrase. A story like “Tangerine” in which a man recognizes a waiter as one of a crowd he ran with as a young man deals with memory, aging, recognition, discovery, tragedy and more in just a few pages. Here are a few more of the best: “Time Intervening,” a circular wonder of a story in which a man looks backward and forward at his own life; “My Son, Max,” in which a lip-reader follows a family trying rather disastrously to come to terms with one another; and the heart-breaking “Heart Transplant,” in which a man and a woman make a wish that they would both “fall back in love, you with your wife, me with my husband.” In the comic/tragic title story, a publisher agrees to publish a novel on small roadside signs all across the country. For a few minutes we’re lost in this idea: it’s a new style of storytelling and the ultimate road trip all in one. But this is the Internet age, and we quickly find that the idea’s time has passed.

Bradbury has a light, almost ephemeral touch that belies the underlying depth of feeling in his writing. His favorite mode is nostalgia, but not for the past or for his youth: he is nostalgic for the best parts of all of us. Gavin Grant reads, writes and publishes science fiction in Brooklyn.

Now in his 80s, Ray Bradbury continues to turn out the kind of imaginative and insightful short stories that have made him the grand old man of American science fiction (as noted by the National Book Foundation when it awarded Bradbury its 2000 Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters). His latest collection, One More […]

Susanna Clarke's magnificent 2004 debut novel, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, marked the culmination of nearly a decade of authorial journeywork. Short pieces published variously through those years laid the groundwork for the novel's alternative history of a magic-ridden England, and these have now been collected in The Ladies of Grace Adieu.

As this reviewer commented when it first appeared, Clarke's 800-page novel weirdly seemed to be too short, bursting at the seams with an energy that cannot properly be contained by her history of Strange and Norrell, the two greatest magicians of the Napoleonic era. Footnote after thrilling footnote in the novel tantalizes the reader with glimpses of further stories about the realm of Faerie, the whole mass of which could never dispel its fearful mystery and fatal charm. It is a testament to Clarke's boundless generosity that she has now, in this collection, unpacked a number of such footnotes, delivering them as full-length stories a set of eight and granting us a view of both the sources and the essence of her invention.

Clarke's prose traverses an uncanny corridor between the scholar's desk and the fairy's hidey-hole. In the spirit of Tolkien's studious approach to the history of elves and goblins and with something of M.R. James's donnish humor when it comes to charnel horrors Clarke introduces the fantastical, twilight world of magic as scholarship. She even goes so far as to invent an academic discipline: Sidhe, fairy studies, which one apparently can major in at the University of Aberdeen. Though the saga of Strange and Norrell had little to say about lady-magicians, sorceresses conspire companionably here, and to their hearts' content, most notably in the title story.

Grace Adieu is the name of a fictitious English village, but in Clarke's landscape, it could also be a likely form of address. Hell hath no fury like a lady doing magic. If you cross her, you might as well bid grace adieu.

 

Michael Alec Rose is a professor of music at Vanderbilt University.

Susanna Clarke's magnificent 2004 debut novel, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, marked the culmination of nearly a decade of authorial journeywork. Short pieces published variously through those years laid the groundwork for the novel's alternative history of a magic-ridden England, and these have now been collected in The Ladies of Grace Adieu. As this reviewer […]
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Surely one of the more untraditional collections of short stories published in recent memory, A Kudzu Christmas, is a beguiling set of 12 supremely spooky Southern mysteries. In the unsettling Swimming Without Annette, writer Alix Strauss creates a story of vigilantism readers won’t soon forget. After her lover is killed in the alley outside a local diner, Karen stakes out the place. While she waits and watches and eats countless tuna melts, Karen reminisces about Christmases past, including the one when her lover gives her a glass star. Suffice it to say that beautiful star becomes a weapon by the end of the story. In Yes, Ginny, by Suzanne Hudson, a young girl whose good-for-nothing stepfather does little but drink and berate is given a little holiday wish of her own when he suddenly disappears on Christmas morning. Chilly and surreal, A Kudzu Christmas offers a grown-up reprieve from all things Santa.

Amy Scribner is celebrating the holidays with her family in Olympia, Washington.

Surely one of the more untraditional collections of short stories published in recent memory, A Kudzu Christmas, is a beguiling set of 12 supremely spooky Southern mysteries. In the unsettling Swimming Without Annette, writer Alix Strauss creates a story of vigilantism readers won’t soon forget. After her lover is killed in the alley outside a […]
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There are good books and great books. And then there are books like Daniel Handler's Adverbs. Reading it feels like calling in sick when you don't feel sick so you can curl up on the sofa with a mug of hot chocolate and a fluffy blanket and watch the rain fall. It's a Bloody Mary for the hung-over heart. I have such a crush on this book.

You might know Handler better as his alter ego, children's book author Lemony Snicket (A Series of Unfortunate Events). He's written two other grown-up novels, The Basic Eight and Watch Your Mouth. And now, as if that weren't enough, with his third adult book he proves himself a master of the love story. Adverbs is a collection of 16 interlinking stories built around the ways in which people love each other: soundly, obviously, naturally, often, etc. The book begins, as love often does, with the immediate, the obvious and the brief, moving quickly toward cold and complicated before winding up at barely and judgmentally.

Some of the stories are sadder than yours, and some are incandescently happy, and almost all of them are hilarious in places. The same characters or at least the same names show up in several stories at different ages, and key phrases or elements keep kaleidoscoping through the collection, giving the whole thing a disorienting, dizzy-in-love kind of feel. Is the Lila who's desperately ill in "Soundly" the same eye-rolling Lila who tears tickets at the theater in "Obviously"? Is Andrea at the bar also Andrea the ex-girlfriend and Andrea the cab driver? And just how many Joes and Hanks are in this book, anyway? You soon figure out it doesn't matter. It's not who loves, it's how they love that counts.

Trying to pinpoint the nature of love leads to some of the author's best observations. In "Frigidly," he writes, "When love appears it's a supernatural thing like the songs say, but eventually you have to get out of bed, even on the coldest of days, and pay the rent." That sums it up almost perfectly.

Becky Ohlsen writes infatuatedly from Portland, Oregon.

 

There are good books and great books. And then there are books like Daniel Handler's Adverbs. Reading it feels like calling in sick when you don't feel sick so you can curl up on the sofa with a mug of hot chocolate and a fluffy blanket and watch the rain fall. It's a Bloody Mary […]
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A New York Times Book Review Notable Book
A San Antonio Express Best Book of the year

In this inventive collection of stories, Chris Adrian treads the terrain of human suffering—illness, regret, mourning, sympathy—in the most unusual ways. A bereaved twin starts a friendship with a homicidal fifth grader in the hope that she can somehow lead him back to his dead brother. A boy tries to contact the spirit of his dead father and finds himself talking to the Devil instead. A ne’er do well pediatrician returns home to take care of his dying father, all the while under the scrutiny of an easily-disappointed heavenly agent. With its cast of living and dead characters, and its deft balance of the spiritual and the misanthropic, Adrian has created a haunting work of spectral beauty and wit.

RELATED CONTENT

Read the title story in the New Yorker.

A New York Times Book Review Notable Book A San Antonio Express Best Book of the year In this inventive collection of stories, Chris Adrian treads the terrain of human suffering—illness, regret, mourning, sympathy—in the most unusual ways. A bereaved twin starts a friendship with a homicidal fifth grader in the hope that she can somehow […]
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Editor Sheree R. Thomas’ first anthology of science fiction by African-American writers, Dark Matter, was released in 2000 to critical acclaim. Her second entry in the series, Dark Matter: Reading the Bones, once again showcases a wonderful selection of new and established writers. Thomas’ latest collection is a wide and deep survey of the burgeoning field she defines as “speculative fiction from the African diaspora.” The 24 stories range from straightforward science fiction (by writers likes Kevin Brockenbrough and Nisi Shawl) to fantastic and sensual (new writers David Findlay and Kiini Ibura Salaam), to reprints from the field’s leading lights (Nalo Hopkinson, Samuel R. Delany). Cherene Sherrard’s “The Quality of Sand” is one of the key stories. Escaped slaves Jamal and Delphine run a pirate ship in the 19th century Caribbean. When they rescue a woman from Jamal’s home country, there is an unexpected and deep recognition between them. Sherrard’s successful mix of slavery and freedom, gender and religion, belief and duty mirrors many of the concerns expressed elsewhere in Reading the Bones.

Some of the writers explore the darker aspects of life such as Hopkinson’s version of the Bluebeard fairy tale, “The Glass Bottle Trick,” Kevin Brockenbrough’s near-future vampire story, ” Cause Harlem Needs Heroes,” and Pam Noles’ “Whipping Boy,” in which the lead character cannot escape his role of taking his people’s pain into himself. Given that, there is still space for humor throughout.

Reading the Bones illustrates the strength and diversity in the field of speculative fiction and makes us hope that many more volumes in the Dark Matter series are yet to come. Gavin J. Grant is co-editor of the upcoming edition of The Year’s Best Fantasy ∧ Horror (St. Martin’s).

Editor Sheree R. Thomas’ first anthology of science fiction by African-American writers, Dark Matter, was released in 2000 to critical acclaim. Her second entry in the series, Dark Matter: Reading the Bones, once again showcases a wonderful selection of new and established writers. Thomas’ latest collection is a wide and deep survey of the burgeoning […]
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Kelly Link's second short story collection is aptly titled Magic for Beginners, for the short fiction she presents here is truly magical, with masterfully crafted stories that are as dark as they are delightful.

Link's first story collection, Stranger Things Happen (2001), became a cult favorite, with surreal and bizarre stories such as the Nebula Award-winning Louise's Ghost. She gained considerable industry attention when she turned down offers to publish her second collection with a major publishing house, choosing instead to stick with Small Beer Press, the independent press she co-owns with her husband Gavin Grant (a BookPage contributor). Noteworthy stories in Magic for Beginners include the Hugo Award-nominated "The Faery Handbag," a deeply touching story about a teenager named Genevieve and her eccentric grandmother Zofia. One of the most unusual things about Genevieve's book-stealing, Scrabble-playing, story-telling immigrant grandma is her big black purse. The hairy handbag is supposedly made out of dog skin and is the sanctuary for an entire village of Baldeziwurlekistanians. When the ageless Zofia finally dies, Genevieve loses the magical handbag and other invaluable things as well.

In "The Hortlak", an all-night convenience store located near the Ausible Chasm is likened to the Starship Enterprise. Its two-man crew of Batu and Eric are on a voyage of discovery while exploring revolutionary retail theories selling cigarettes and beef jerky to Canadians, truckers and zombies. As 19-year old Eric who is living in the store's utility closet and sharing very strange pajamas with his Turkish manager strives to decipher Batu's secret grand plan for the store, he also tries to figure out a way to escape his dead-end existence. A beautifully bizarre customer, a girl who works the night shift at a local animal shelter and euthanizes dogs after giving them one last mercy drive in her car, may be his way out. Lull is an ingeniously complex story within a story within a story that is ultimately about loss and redemption and happy beginnings.

Magic for Beginners is as wildly entertaining as it is just plain weird. Sometimes hilarious, sometimes disconcerting, Link's stories demonstrate her wicked sense of humor and genius wit.

Paul Goat Allen is a freelance editor and writer in Syracuse.

 

Kelly Link's second short story collection is aptly titled Magic for Beginners, for the short fiction she presents here is truly magical, with masterfully crafted stories that are as dark as they are delightful. Link's first story collection, Stranger Things Happen (2001), became a cult favorite, with surreal and bizarre stories such as the Nebula […]
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The buzz about Fight Club author Chuck Palahniuk's new collection of linked short stories, Haunted, is the type that will either scare you off immediately or have you scratching at bookshop doors to get in the minute the book comes out. There's no in-between, especially not when the main thing people are saying about this collection is that one of the stories makes audiences at author readings pass out, weep and vomit.

Well, don't be scared. The story in question, Guts, is such an over-the-top grossout spectacular that it ends up being more funny than disturbing. And that's a good thing. Palahniuk is a funny guy. Haunted is less a collection of horror stories than a warped satire, a combination of Survivor, Fear Factor and that Exquisite Corpse game where each person contributes a paragraph to the same story. The characters are named after their personalities: Miss Sneezy, Agent Tattletale, Miss America, Comrade Snarky. They all saw the same ad for a three-month writer's retreat. It's every aspiring author's dream: escape your real life for a while, and there's nothing to stop you from creating a masterpiece. But the retreat turns out to be not quite as advertised.

Things begin to go wrong almost immediately. No one is allowed to leave the old theater where the retreat is being held. Someone breaks the glass in a window and finds impenetrable concrete behind it. Rebellious would-be authors sabotage the food supply, then the furnace. In an effort to force the directors to let her out, one character hacks off her ear with a knife. This not only fails to get her out but also inspires the rest of the retreat-goers to hack off bits of themselves in an ever more obsessive race to become the star of the inevitable movie of their lives. Sure, they want to be rescued but not until things get bad enough to make a really great story.

Meanwhile, they're all sort of doing what they came for: telling stories. Interspersed with the narrative about what's going on at the retreat are short stories, each supposedly written by one of the characters. (Never mind that all the stories sound like they're written by Chuck Palahniuk.) These get more brutal as the situation becomes increasingly dire. In one, a resuscitation dummy is put to not necessarily educational use by a police department. In another, a reporter down on his luck frames and kills a former child star to win a Pulitzer. In several of them, children go missing for horrific reasons.

Still, the scariest thing about the stories is the same thing that's always scary in a Palahniuk book the hints of evil lurking underneath a seemingly placid reality. He's an expert at inducing paranoia by rattling off details that make you question long-held assumptions. Are those people who stand in line at movie premieres actually paid to be there, just to make the movie seem more exciting? Can you kill someone with a foot massage? Are the homeless really just bored millionaires out slumming? Can you explode from eating too many freeze-dried dinners at once? It doesn't even matter if the answer to these questions is yes. Once you're presented with the question, you can't shake it. (After Fight Club, for example, will anyone ever order clam chowder in a restaurant again?) It haunts you. And that is pretty scary.

Becky Ohlsen writes from Portland, Oregon.

The buzz about Fight Club author Chuck Palahniuk's new collection of linked short stories, Haunted, is the type that will either scare you off immediately or have you scratching at bookshop doors to get in the minute the book comes out. There's no in-between, especially not when the main thing people are saying about this […]
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Food as fantasy, food as fact, food as metaphor, food as motive food is inextricable from fiction, even in ordinary life, and Jim Crace’s vision is anything but ordinary. The Devil’s Larder, a collection of 60 fables, character sketches and occasionally short-short stories, has as its unifying theme only the presence of some sort of food in each piece, whether as a primary urge, a sensual indulgence or emotional amelioration.

A refugee working as a night bus girl in a hotel learns a little English, and more desire, by tasting the remnants of the room service trays and glasses left by the mysterious strangers, especially the man who occupies Suite 17 every Tuesday. Dreaming of stepping into his world, she practices vocabulary with all the items she can name: dressed prawns, Jack Daniel’s, chowder, salt, a single glass of white wine, champagne. Club sandwich comes out almost perfectly. Crace is widely admired as a writer’s writer, and this little book of what are called, rather haphazardly, short fictions, suggests a notebook left by the bed and filled with the odd impressions that come into the imagination in the dark hours. As brief as a few paragraphs, at most a few pages, they employ not so much a magical realism as a feverish, dreamy surrealism. An old man argues that just as great wines seem to hold the ghost of summer’s fruit, vegetables and fruits could be coaxed into releasing their remembered sunlight, and in search of the catalyst, he wanders the town on winter nights, an orange gripped in each of his blue hands. Crace’s eye for the detail is acute and sensual: The enamelled [mackerel] skins pulled off like paper. He dabbles in the epigrammatic: It’s said that cheese is milk that’s grown up. And he can skewer the self-satisfied with the sharpest of knives, as in the story of the woman who, publicly humiliated by her old-fashioned husband for having lunch with friends, keeps his place set after his death. Such are the joys of widowhood. Again I dine. Again my husband goes without. Who does not recognize the town that, to show its charity to a family of refugees, collects such foods as fit the donor’s bill, not the needy family’s: The dieting woman gives away cans of syrupy fruit, others clear out stale pasta, flavorless cereal, sprouting onions, dried beans, sour yogurt, tins with unreadable labels, a child’s attempt at fig cake. A photograph of the charitable effort makes the town look generous, not counting all the problems solved, and all the larders tidied up at last, the daughters satisfied, the heartburns eased, the diets honoured, the separations finalized, and the blunders of the past concealed as gifts. Several of the more complete fictions have appeared in The New Yorker, including the one about the long-haired baker’s son who adds spiked brownies to condemned prisoners’ final meals. Some entries are simply witty observations, such as the eight-paragraph anecdote about the wholesaler who gets rid of a consignment of kumquats by marketing them as pygmy oranges, and when the subsequent craze for kumquats exhausts his store, pulls out the oranges and markets them as kingquats. Others are not even sketches, just notebook entries, like the one (which begs to be nurtured into a full-grown character) of the former waiter whose tip-drawing trick had been to sing out the names of all the ninety types of pastas, in alphabetical order, in less than three minutes, from angel hair to ziti. Now a bank employee, he still goes through the list on his way to work, though he makes it only through cannelloni, cappelletti, cavatelli, conchiglie before the tram arrives. Even fragmentary as it is, the story, well, sings.

Choosing a companion Chardonnay The fragmentary, fantastic nature of The Devil’s Larder makes it to me the best sort of evening reading, something to dabble in before cooking, or in a hammock in the late sun. With it try a wine of similar complexity and shifting color, the 1999 Santa Julia (say Hoo-lia) Vineyards Chardonnay Reserva. This Argentine white from the fecund Mendoza County comes as close as any to the perfect $10 chard, a glistening deep honey gold wine that dips through layers of melon, caramel and honey nougat and slowly opens into very ripe mango. A true New World Chardonnay, it has strong oaky bottom and only the slightest citrus, just enough to keep from cloying. (Fans of the more austere Old World style chardonnays may prefer the non-reserve Santa Julia, currently in the 2000 release, which is equally startling at about $7.) Eve Zibart is the restaurant critic for the Weekend section of The Washington Post and author of The Ethnic Food Lover’s Companion.

Food as fantasy, food as fact, food as metaphor, food as motive food is inextricable from fiction, even in ordinary life, and Jim Crace’s vision is anything but ordinary. The Devil’s Larder, a collection of 60 fables, character sketches and occasionally short-short stories, has as its unifying theme only the presence of some sort of […]
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Do people behave any better than animals? Do they often behave worse? That question underlies Jill McCorkle’s latest book, Creatures of Habit, a collection of stories set in the fictional town of Fulton, North Carolina, that explores the vagaries of childhood, love and marriage.

The best stories in this book deal with betrayal. In Chickens, McCorkle demonstrates her profound ability to report on the intricacies of human psychology. The story tells of a young college graduate, Kim, who always expected to marry Randy, her childhood sweetheart. Toward the end of her college career, however, she learns that Randy has been dating and sleeping with other girls. When he attempts to patch things up, her pride rebels. Instead of taking him back, she starts dating a divorced man 14 years her senior. Has Kim betrayed her birthright or has she bailed out of a bad situation? McCorkle shows her brilliance as a writer by not telling the reader exactly where to stand on this question.

Snakes is another story that deals with the compromises one makes with the romantic ideals of youth. A middle-aged married couple has weathered a dark patch in their relationship. They are enjoying a quiet evening together when the wife learns that her husband had a brief affair during their estrangement. Now she has to decide whether to undo the repairs her marriage has undergone by making an issue of his lapse.

Another powerful story is Turtles, in which McCorkle draws back the curtain on old age. The central character, Carly, is ending an unloved life in a nursing home that fails to live up to the promises of its brochure. Her son never visits, and she has an unrequited crush on a distinguished old man in another wing. Even the nursing home dog leaves her for another resident who offers better snacks.

McCorkle is a justly beloved author, in part because of her ability to deal a straight hand without bitterness. Though she does not hold back when it comes to capturing the cruelty in life, she doesn’t sell short its moments of tenderness, either.

Lynn Hamilton writes from Tybee Island, Georgia.

 

Do people behave any better than animals? Do they often behave worse? That question underlies Jill McCorkle’s latest book, Creatures of Habit, a collection of stories set in the fictional town of Fulton, North Carolina, that explores the vagaries of childhood, love and marriage. The best stories in this book deal with betrayal. In Chickens, […]

In The Courage Consort, Michel Faber's latest literary offering, readers are drawn into three very different worlds with one prevailing theme: the abject loneliness that often marks the human condition. With these novellas, Faber shows a particular gift for exposing the raw emotions so uncomfortably familiar to us all. The title story (which is also the strongest) introduces the reader to a British vocal group spending two weeks in a secluded Belgian manor as they labor over a particularly complex piece. Although they all sing as one, each of them is emotionally isolated from the other—particularly married couple Roger and Catherine Courage. As the fortnight unfolds, members of the motley ensemble struggle to relate, both personally and professionally. Then they are faced with a sudden tragedy that threatens their identity as a whole.

In "The Hundred and Ninety-Nine Steps," Sian, a melancholy woman disabled in a car accident, joins an archeological dig at Whitby Abbey. There she begins to uncover the details of a long-ago murder, while also unearthing some of her own buried emotions, discovering that the past can link to the present in the most unexpected of ways.

"The Fahrenheit Twins" is the book's most bizarre tale. Its main characters are Tainto'lilith and Marko'cain, young twins living in a faraway arctic land with their distant and frequently absent parents. Self-sufficient and completely cut off from the world, these children have created their own charmed universe. When their mother suddenly dies, reality pierces their idyllic existence, forcing them to realize for the first time how truly alone they are.

Based in Scotland, Faber has won several awards for his novels and short stories, including the Whitbread First Novel Award and the Neil Gunn Prize. His dialogue drips with British witticisms, and his prose can seem rather dry at first. But as his stories unfold, his work becomes increasingly poetic. Haunting, intimate and quietly sad, these tales should stay with readers for a long time.

Rebecca Krasney Stropoli writes from New York City.

 

In The Courage Consort, Michel Faber's latest literary offering, readers are drawn into three very different worlds with one prevailing theme: the abject loneliness that often marks the human condition. With these novellas, Faber shows a particular gift for exposing the raw emotions so uncomfortably familiar to us all. The title story (which is also […]
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In Wendy Brenner’s home page, courtesy of the University of North Carolina at Wilmington’s English department, she says her goal as a teacher is to lead students into battle with the inexpressible.’ Brenner’s new collection of stories, Phone Calls from the Dead, perfectly illustrates how she herself has won this battle by consistently using language to go beyond words. The stories in this book express the desperation of protagonists sometimes made mute by their inability to coherently communicate among themselves. By using seemingly inanimate and therefore voiceless 20th century technologies and animals as metaphors reflecting her characters’ inadequacies, longings and failed aspirations, Brenner expresses for them what they cannot express. In this collection, both man and machine are miswired. The father in the title story addresses a conference of the Instrumental Transcommunication Network, relating how his dead son communicated with him through a tape recorder. In another story, a computerized switchboard at a hospital, through a programming error, places calls to those staffing the information desk as if to ask rhetorically by its silence, Is anyone out there listening? And in another, an air conditioning system falls apart section by section, thereby keeping a gorgeous repairman just outside the reach of a temporary worker whose life seems to be falling apart in a similar way. In each story, Brenner expertly interweaves the tragic with the comic. We laugh at these characters, distantly hearing within their voices the cadences of our own, but we flinch, too, because their familiarity sometimes brings us too close to the edge of recognition. We’d like to think we’re not in the same boat or wired to the same network, perhaps but we know we are.

Acclaimed author Padgett Powell has called Brenner’s work disturbed, taut, funny, and wise, and his assessment accurately describes what makes her writing just plain good. Not many can harness the disturbing with the funny, which partially explains why this winner of the Flannery O’Connor Award for her first collection of stories, Large Animals in Everyday Life, was named one of 25 fiction writers to watch by Writer’s Digest. But the last word is that, like O’Connor, Brenner imbues her narratives with great meaning as she works to understand, as she puts it, the inexplicable, inevitable, intuitive, devastating, [and] holy. With each story, she figures it out.

Bonnie Arant Ertelt is a writer and editor living in Nashville.

 

In Wendy Brenner’s home page, courtesy of the University of North Carolina at Wilmington’s English department, she says her goal as a teacher is to lead students into battle with the inexpressible.’ Brenner’s new collection of stories, Phone Calls from the Dead, perfectly illustrates how she herself has won this battle by consistently using language […]
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David Bezmozgis' Natasha: and Other Stories,  seven stories about growing up a poor Russian Jewish immigrant in Toronto are so Russian in tone they should be read with a glass of tea at hand and a cube of sugar between one's teeth. Yet they are so Western in theme that even if you've never set foot outside your hometown, they'll make your heart ache.

Newly arrived émigré Mark Berman is a first-grader in "Tapka," Bezmozgis' opening story about the boundaries of trust and the inherent stupidity in leaving a beloved pet with a seven-year-old. By "Minyan," the finale of this short collection, Mark is a young man, idealistic but a little wiser.

The 30-year-old Bezmozgis writes with a depth of grace and wry understanding not usually discovered before middle life. His stories are a potent mixture of the compassionate and the obscene. That combination is most apparent in the collection's title story, "Natasha," in which the 16-year-old Mark has to explore his feelings for teenaged Natasha, his cousin by marriage and a whore by circumstance. She casually leads Mark into a world of fantasy that inevitably comes crashing down, forcing a return to a reality of adult choices.

Though this collection is small, each story packs a devastating wallop as it describes what it means to be a foreigner, an outsider and a Jew in a land where even after half a lifetime, you're never really sure you know the rules.

Ian Schwartz writes from New York City.

David Bezmozgis' Natasha: and Other Stories,  seven stories about growing up a poor Russian Jewish immigrant in Toronto are so Russian in tone they should be read with a glass of tea at hand and a cube of sugar between one's teeth. Yet they are so Western in theme that even if you've never set […]

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