Thomas Michael Duncan

[REVIEW] Families Among Us, by Blake Kimzey

Posted on by

families

Black Lawrence Press

40 pages, $8.95

 

 

Review by Thomas Michael Duncan

 

In the first episode of his podcast, The Monthly, Mike Meginnis observes that the chapbook, as a form, appears to be something “people enjoy publishing much more than they enjoy reading.” This struck me as a smart, if generalized, reflection on the medium. Like new literary magazines, a spattering of chapbook publishers appears to sprout from nowhere every few days. This is likely an outcome of the current economic and cultural climate, where it is too expensive for upstart presses to print full-length books when more and more readers gravitate towards digital editions or free online content. The chapbook offers a cost-effective way to put something physical in a reader’s hands, but the ease of production also lends the form to hurried publication and incohesive collections.

Yet when a publisher puts real time and consideration into a chapbook, when a writer tells vibrant stories that bleed into the margins, and when a sharp design meets fitting, fascinating artwork, the result is too great to ignore. In other words, the result is Families Among Us, winner of the 2013 Black Lawrence Press Chapbook Competition. Continue reading →

[REVIEW] The Understory, by Pamela Erens

Posted on by

understory

Tin House Books

200 pages, $15.95

Review by Thomas Michael Duncan

 

Standing in the remains of his fire-ravaged apartment, gripping an iron poker from the fireplace, staring down a man who will not and can not reciprocate his obsessive devotion, Jack Gorse says, “Tell me that you love me.”

So begins the thrilling climax of Pamela Erens’s debut novel, The Understory, reprinted earlier this year by Tin House Books. This rare edge-of-the-easy-chair moment stands out in the otherwise quiet, understated novel, heavily preoccupied with the internal conflicts of Jack Gorse’s devastated psyche. While The Understory is perhaps not as complete or compelling a novel as Erens’s sophomore effort, The Virgins, published by Tin House Books to national acclaim in 2013, this debut bears the watermark of a uniquely talented writer. Continue reading →

[REVIEW] I Am Currently Working on a Novel, by Rolli

Posted on by

novel

Tightrope Books

200 pages, $21.95

 

Rolli understands the public opinion of flash fiction as a lesser literary genre. For evidence, look no further than the cover of his latest collection, I Am Currently Working on a Novel. Drawn by the author himself, who is also an accomplished illustrator and cartoonist, the cover shows a tombstone beneath a starry night with the book’s title engraved as an epitaph. It’s a joke that will hit home with any practitioner of an underappreciated art form and the first of many nods to the writers among his audience.

Rolli’s eccentric, whimsical stories exhibit a style and a brand of comedy all his own. “Candy Island,” begins like this: “In case you’ve ever wondered, all us missing kids aged two to six wind up on Candy Island.  Candy Island sounds great. But it isn’t. It’s a big, scary island. There are lizards bigger than me. We lost three kids last week.” Continue reading →

[REVIEW] Out of Peel Tree, by Laura Long

Posted on by

Long

Vandalia Press
140 pages, $16.99

 

Review by Thomas Michael Duncan

 

Nearly one hundred years have passed since Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio introduced American readers to the novel-in-stories, but the form has yet to be embraced by a wide audience. But neither has it been rejected or abandoned altogether. Publishers anxious about selling readers on loosely connected stories have gone to some lengths to disguise such books (also called composite novels, or short story cycles) as traditionally structured novels. Jenifer Egan’s A Visit from the Goon Squad, published in 2010, is the most critically acclaimed novel-in-stories, yet the cover simply labels it “a novel,” and it is often referred to vaguely as a work of fiction.

Perhaps readers resist the novel-in-stories because these books rarely feature a single protagonist, instead focusing on a specific place or group of people. Like Winesburg, Ohio features stories about a fictional, small-town Ohio family, Out of Peel Tree, the debut novel-in-stories by Laura Long, follows a family from a fictional Appalachian town. Long’s stories explore critical junctions in the lives of four generations of West Virginian women. A wife learns of her husband’s previous marriage for the first time through an obituary. An old widow captures a would-be-thief by consulting her husband’s ghost. An engaged woman has second thoughts when her wedding is postponed for her fiancé’s chemotherapy. These stories are heavily ruminative, and ripe with detailed imagery. Plot is not so much a driving force as an occasional companion to portraits of working-class life. Continue reading →

[REVIEW] Any Deadly Thing, by Roy Kesey

Posted on by

deadly
Dzanc Books
250 pages, $15.95

Review by Thomas Michael Duncan

Roy Kesey’s Any Deadly Thing spans more of the globe than any other collection in recent memory. The stories within these pages take place in Peru, Croatia, China, Paraguay, Paris, Louisiana, and much of northern California. A single story touches on Beijing, Guatemala, Mexico, and New York. It’s a departure from the trend of tying a collection of stories together through a common location or region, a decision that allows space for Kesey to demonstrate his versatile command over voice and language.

The collection begins with the story of a troubled, protective single father in the rural town of Fallash. He is a hardened, no nonsense man who works with his hands, and Kesey uses short, choppy sentences in plain English:

“Jay takes the bag, nods at the register girl, runs out to the truck. He gets home and already the dog is sitting up, licking at the air around his daughter’s face. He watches, looks. Haircut could have been worse. Dog’s got no collar but it’s clean, somebody’s for sure but nobody’s from around here close. He boils up the potatoes, fries some venison sausage, lets her feed a little to the dog. The rain stops. An okay day.”

Continue reading →

[REVIEW] Songs for the Deaf, by John Henry Fleming

Posted on by

songs


Burrow Press
172 pages, $15

Review by Thomas Michael Duncan

For one reason or another, so much short fiction is preoccupied with everyday people. Perhaps because ordinary, relatable characters are the quickest and easiest way to connect with readers. Of course, quickest and easiest are not synonyms for best.

The characters in John Henry Fleming’s stories are not ordinary. Take the father in “Chomolungma.” When a crisis threatens to tear his family apart, the man of the house takes drastic measures. Or maybe “drastic” isn’t the right word. “Insane” might be a better descriptor. He orchestrates a leisurely family outing to the peak of Mount Everest. But with the family strapped for cash, he can only afford “discount Sherpas” who “can’t even tie their own shoelaces.” A lack of physical conditioning, proper equipment and provisions, bone-chilling walks along shaky ladders spanning deadly chasms—these perilous obstacles are mole hills to this man. The basic idea is noble, to unite the family by working together to reach a common goal. But the father pits his family against an unconquerable opponent, dooming them from the start. His wife and son succumb to delirium, and his daughter begins an ill-fated romance with one of the young, cheap Sherpas. Continue reading →

[REVIEW] Housebound, by Elizabeth Gentry

Posted on by

~by Thomas Michael Duncan

Housebound

&NOW Books

160 pgs/$11.40

 

As any restless new parent will tell you, the world we live in is a dangerous, frightening place. Parents are blessed with these beautiful, wailing, flesh-blobs of wonder, and burdened with the task of protecting them, raising them to be good, happy, productive members of society. Is it any wonder why some parents chose to exercise a great deal of control over their children and their environment, to shelter their young from all the apparent and hidden pitfalls beyond the boundaries of the household?

At nineteen, Maggie is eldest of nine highly sheltered children living in a way that borders on quarantine. Each child is homeschooled, recreational time is limited and monitored. The only times the children leave the house are when the older ones run errands and when the entire family visits the library together. The family lives an isolated existence, underlined by the house itself, which is isolated from the rest of civilization by an array of natural features. Housebound, Elizabeth Gentry’s debut novel, begins with Maggie announcing her plans to leave the house to find a job and a new life in the city. This declaration creates a rift between her and the rest of the family, breaking a longstanding spell over them:

“Some time had passed since two complete sentences had been spoken over breakfast that did not pertain to some practical task—an instruction or bid for help. The children shifted on their benches, unable to believe they were witnessing a declaration of intent that even their parents’ refusal could not erase: Maggie had not asked permission nor had she made the announcement in private. She made it in front of all of them deliberately, suggesting that they, too, might seek out something else.” Continue reading →

King of the Class, by Gila Green (A Review by Thomas Michael Duncan)

Posted on by

Now or Never Publishing

237 pgs./$19.95

In her debut novel, Gila Green imagines a near future in which Israel has been divided into two separate nation-states by a costly civil war. Eve Vee, the protagonist with an imaginative and wandering mind, attends a secular university in the otherwise Jewish Orthodox dominated state of Shalem, the newly created and nationally unrecognized state. As the story begins she is a young bride-to-be, woozy with love for her fiancé, Manny. But Manny has been cheating on her—not in the traditional, carnal way, but by secretly studying to become a rabbi and discovering a new, strictly religious lifestyle. Eve, who is far from a devout Jew, refuses to change her own lifestyle to meet Manny’s new needs, and the engagement comes to an abrupt end. But when Eve is visited and persuaded by a “pre-soul”, a ghost-like embodiment of her unborn son, she gives her relationship with Manny a second chance.

One of the novel’s primary concerns is the place of religion in the modern world. Manny embraces a kosher diet and honoring the Sabbath, among other Jewish laws, but Eve finds these practices archaic and inconvenient. She struggles to cook a kosher meal and succeeds only with the help of a virtual guide (one of the few times in the novel that advanced technology and religion find harmony). She refuses to pity her husband when he injures himself (on more than one occasion) fumbling in the dark because he will not use electricity on the weekends. Green reveals both conflict and comedy in the discord between the nonstop reality of contemporary living and cautions of devout behavior. Continue reading →

The Word Made Flesh, by Kevin Catalano (A Review by Thomas Michael Duncan)

Posted on by

firthFORTH Books

58 pgs./$8.95

 

Ask ten people for the definition of a short story and you will receive ten very different answers. Some agree on certain basic characteristics- a beginning middle and end, a protagonist, a conflict- yet sound arguments can be made against these aspects as defining elements. Hemingway’s famous (and disputed) ‘Baby Shoes,’ for example, is generally considered a short story despite being only six words long and not featuring a single character. The nine stories in Kevin Catalano’s debut collection are a diverse bunch. They vary in length (from a single paragraph to ten pages), in perspective, and in approach. A few of the stories follow a traditional arc- rising action, climax, resolution- while others resist conformity.

The title story reads much like a piece of tribal lore passed on through oral tradition:

and the men came down the mountain, came out of the wilderness cast in furs and skins, the rank of beast on their gnarled bodies, a fearful mystery in their eyes.

The single-page story is fascinating, but heavily abstract. It feels like an origin story and sets a savage, grave tone for the rest of the book.  Continue reading →

The News Clown, by Thor Garcia (A Review by Thomas Michael Duncan)

Posted on by

 

Equus Press 

477 pgs/$10

The constant media bombardment that blankets our nation every day has become an accepted fact of twenty-first century life. News spews forth from all media at all times, and it’s nearly unavoidable. A question that looms over this media circus: how much of the reporting is actual news designed to inform an audience, and how much of it is a spectacle designed to draw attention, generate interest, and boost ratings?

This question is one of many that Thor Garcia toys with in hs debut novel The News Clown. The protagonist, also named Thor Garcia, is a small-time reporter for Cities News Services of Bay City, where he contributes brief, to-the-point articles on crime in the city. Interspersed throughout the narrative, his articles generally pertain to graphic violence or drug use:

SANTA COSTA MAN SEVERS THREE BODY PARTS

SANTA COSTA (CNS) The Santa Costa County Sheriff’s Dept. said a 36-year-old man on Monday used a knife to cut off his finger, scrotum and penis in an apparent act of self-mutilation. Continue reading →