A thoughtful and well-written collection with a strong sense of place and identity.
A volume of short stories gathers grim and touching moments of New England life.
Longtime New England writer Atkinson returns to fiction (following his 2015 history book, Massacre on the Merrimack) with a collection of tales set on both sides of the Massachusetts–New Hampshire border. The seven stories move back and forth across the Merrimack River and cover a variety of time periods, spanning the late 20th century to the present day. While many of the protagonists are blue collar, barely getting by or just breaking even, a few have made it to more stable circumstances only to discover that there will always be struggles, though they may take different forms. The title story, which opens the book, is one of the bleakest, a day spent with a man whose marriage, house, finances, and work are all in tatters, though a successful hunt brings him a small respite. “Bergeron Framing & Remodeling” is a twisted but moving family tale in which deep dysfunctions overlay the fundamental love between a father and his sons. “Hi-Pine Acres” is the evocative story of a widowed farmer with a layabout son who struggles with the decision to sell off land that has been in her family for more than a century. In “Java Man,” high school nicknames and relationships follow the characters into adulthood. The volume concludes with “Hoot,” in which a struggling singer/songwriter returns to her hometown, hoping that performing at a local bar will throw her career the lifeline it needs.
Life is precarious for almost everyone in these tales, even Thom McNulty of “Ellie’s Diamonds,” whose real estate ambitions offer him the highest earning potential of any of the characters, though he is also trapped in a cycle of debt. Atkinson is skilled at depicting small details that reveal much about his players—for instance, when Goody, the protagonist of “The Tree Stand,” brings down a deer, he quickly calculates how much the meat will allow him to shave off his upcoming grocery bills. One character has her “annual glass of wine” while doing her taxes; a neighborhood bar is replaced by a CVS. There are some delightful turns of phrase (one man has “two Kennedys’ worth of shiny brown hair”) and wry asides that succeed in being quietly funny but not excessively arch. Many of the stories are dominated by men who spend much of their time in predominantly male social and professional settings, but in “Hi-Pine Acres” and “Hoot,” Atkinson shows that he can also write fully developed female protagonists. While all the tales have their strengths, the book really hits its stride with “Java Man,” the first one written in the first person, which allows the author to explore his character’s view of the world from the inside, and he does so effectively. Characters, rather than the plots, drive most of the narratives, but Atkinson’s solid authorial voice and engaging writing style bring an intensity that is likely to win over many readers who would otherwise prefer their fiction with a bit more action.
A thoughtful and well-written collection with a strong sense of place and identity.Pub Date: Oct. 20, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-60489-336-6
Page Count: 322
Publisher: Livingston Press
Review Posted Online: Sept. 26, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
It's being called a novel, but it is more a hybrid: short-stories/essays/confessions about the Vietnam War—the subject that O'Brien reasonably comes back to with every book. Some of these stories/memoirs are very good in their starkness and factualness: the title piece, about what a foot soldier actually has on him (weights included) at any given time, lends a palpability that makes the emotional freight (fear, horror, guilt) correspond superbly. Maybe the most moving piece here is "On The Rainy River," about a draftee's ambivalence about going, and how he decided to go: "I would go to war—I would kill and maybe die—because I was embarrassed not to." But so much else is so structurally coy that real effects are muted and disadvantaged: O'Brien is writing a book more about earnestness than about war, and the peekaboos of this isn't really me but of course it truly is serve no true purpose. They make this an annoyingly arty book, hiding more than not behind Hemingwayesque time-signatures and puerile repetitions about war (and memory and everything else, for that matter) being hell and heaven both. A disappointment.
Pub Date: March 28, 1990
ISBN: 0618706410
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: Oct. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1990
SEEN & HEARD
IN THE NEWS
SEEN & HEARD
The range and virtuosity of these stories make this Mosley’s most adventurous and, maybe, best book.
A grandmaster of the hard-boiled crime genre shifts gears to spin bittersweet and, at times, bizarre tales about bruised, sensitive souls in love and trouble.
In one of the 17 stories that make up this collection, a supporting character says: “People are so afraid of dying that they don’t even live the little bit of life they have.” She casually drops this gnomic observation as a way of breaking down a lead character’s resistance to smoking a cigarette. But her aphorism could apply to almost all the eponymous awkward Black men examined with dry wit and deep empathy by the versatile and prolific Mosley, who takes one of his occasional departures from detective fiction to illuminate the many ways Black men confound society’s expectations and even perplex themselves. There is, for instance, Rufus Coombs, the mailroom messenger in “Pet Fly,” who connects more easily with household pests than he does with the women who work in his building. Or Albert Roundhouse, of “Almost Alyce,” who loses the love of his life and falls into a welter of alcohol, vagrancy, and, ultimately, enlightenment. Perhaps most alienated of all is Michael Trey in “Between Storms,” who locks himself in his New York City apartment after being traumatized by a major storm and finds himself taken by the outside world as a prophet—not of doom, but, maybe, peace? Not all these awkward types are hapless or benign: The short, shy surgeon in “Cut, Cut, Cut” turns out to be something like a mad scientist out of H.G. Wells while “Showdown on the Hudson” is a saga about an authentic Black cowboy from Texas who’s not exactly a perfect fit for New York City but is soon compelled to do the right thing, Western-style. The tough-minded and tenderly observant Mosley style remains constant throughout these stories even as they display varied approaches from the gothic to the surreal.
The range and virtuosity of these stories make this Mosley’s most adventurous and, maybe, best book.Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-8021-4956-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Grove
Review Posted Online: Sept. 1, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
