ThreeGuys1Book has 1605 followers | By Jason Rice  Death hangs around Brandon like a necklace. People die, and that’s what defines this story, but it seems to me that this is more about Brandon’s inability to accept death as a part of life. Of course he is moving on, but is he really? His parents have voluntarily departed this mortal coil, and left Brandon and his sister the family house. Brandon lets that drift away, and he finds it particularly hard to enter his parents bedroom where they died. Continue reading Patrick Lane, Flabbergasted by Dan Chaon By Dennis Haritou  From my prejudiced POV, this wicked little atom of a collection is the perfect remedy for anyone, like myself, who sometimes suffers from the very stale beer of American realism. That sort of placid realism, which as Lionel Trilling has observed, doesn’t think of our ideas as part of reality…consigning our fantasy lives to some netherworld…banning our interior dreams and nightmares from the sacred precincts of fiction. Continue reading Diaboliad by Mikhail Bulgakov By Dennis Haritou  It’s brilliant sleight-of-hand by Gardam who keeps her fictional cake while eating it. She has a character who’s a social misfit, impractical for all her vaunted practicality and self-reliance, but still makes her a daughter-in-law via role playing. And it’s not unkind, it’s one the the many surreal but touching scenes in the book. It seems to scream, man, this is weird, only no one says it is, which is ideal. Continue reading Crusoe’s Daughter by Jane Gardam By Dennis Haritou  Imagine that forming a home library was a kind of horticulture. Imagine books without writers. Here’s how it might work: You lay out for yourself a fine selection of bookshelves in a sunny room. You water the shelves appropriately and then leave time for the books to germinate and start to grow on their own! If you had a fine basement library like my good friend JC, then you could grow books like mushrooms, direct from the fungus! Continue reading When Robots Can Read, Will You Still Want To? By Jason Rice  Gopi checks out some books from the library and decides that he is going to be a doctor that specializes in women’s troubles. It’s hilariously ambitious, and can only lead to catastrophy. Gopi easily fools his wife, and she thinks the books he is reading are his solution to their inability to have children. Gopi is fooling people without trying. He occupies a small office that was once housed vertrinarian’s office. Continue reading The Strange Career of Dr. Raju Gopalarajan by Rajesh Parameswaran By Jason Chambers  The finalists for this year’s Story Prize are The Angel Esmeralda by Don DeLillo (Scribner), We Others by Steven Millhauser (Knopf), and Binocular Vision by Edith Pearlman (Lookout Books). The Story Prize, which annually honors the top book of short fiction, chose the three finalists from a field of 92 books from 60 different publishers. The judges for this year’s prize are Sherman Alexie, Breon Mitchell, and Louise Steinman. Continue reading Story Prize Finalists By Jason Rice  Andrew is sitting on a plane bound for London when he hears the news that his father has died, via text message from his own mother. Andrew doesn’t move. It’s not as though he doesn’t care. It is callous not to get off the plane that is sitting at the gate waiting to leave. He is torn between doing what he wants, living his life without this tragedy, and doing what is right. Continue reading Buzzers by Kevin Moffett By Dennis Haritou  Resolutions are such empty things, worthy of being thrown out with the January 1st trash. Reading this diary anthology, you can learn what people really committed their lives to on any particular day. What they fought or played through in the dark, because we’re all in the dark about any particular day we’re living. 1923 may be past, but turn to the page of someone who is still living it in their diary entry. Continue reading New York Diaries By Jason Rice  Kevin Moffett delivers the characters of this story like a true father and son, the arguments are real, and they have a forever-binding tragedy dropped in their laps. The son is a bit of show off, like someone that screams I’M A WRITER, LOOK AT ME!. The father writes and submits his stories to the same journals his son does. Continue reading Further Interpretations of Real-Life Events by Kevin Moffett By Jason Chambers   JE: It’s no secret around here that I’ve long been a big fan of Stewart O’Nan. In his unassuming and workmanlike way, he may be the best American novelist of the past twenty years. Certainly, he’s the most underrated. I love his tiny apertures, his luminous details, and of course his range. Despite O’Nan’s obvious attention to craft, his writing never feels overworked.–it always serves the story,. He rarely draws attention to himself. I love that he’s not a show-off–because he could be if he wanted to. The bottom line is O’Nan doesn’t need to show off, because he knows the characters are the story, and he knows how to unfold them.
I loved “The Odds”. Art is Continue reading The Odds by Stewart O’Nan By Jason Rice  I don’t believe animals can talk, and any writer who writes a story about one that does, is pulling my leg. I especially don’t like it when dogs talk in fiction. There is a reason they can’t talk. Because they are animals. There is also a reason why humans should be careful of all animals. Because they are animals. Continue reading The Infamous Bengal Ming by Rajesh Parameswaran By Jason Rice  The book itself reminds of an art school freshman’s journal that has been left behind absently in the lunchroom, a stranger picks it up only to discover it is almost too good to give back to this student. Each little page gives a different riddle, or joke, a conundrum wrapped in a riddle, or a funny little saying. Continue reading The Tiny Book of Tiny Stories by Joseph Gordon-Levitt By Jason Rice  They have taken Alan to Stephanie’s place, as Tom describes how he got to this part of the world. We switch back and forth momentarily between what Tom understands and what he is a witness to. Alan is killing himself one bender at a time. But neither drugs or booze will do the job right. Continue reading Forks by Alix Ohlin By Jason Rice  She tells me that they are both stuck in this college town, teaching tidy little classes meant for people with no real goal above teaching. They want a divorce she tells me, and I wonder aloud, (weirdly I’m not out of breath), why? They’re cool with it she says, as we jog in place at a traffic light. It turns green, we take off again, and she keeps telling me more about Kathleen. Continue reading Signs and Wonders by Alix Ohlin By Jason Chambers  I loved this short novel about Finch, a corporate drone fired from his job creating fake lives in the blogosphere to promote his company’s products. He receives an offer from an eccentric gazillionaire to become the man’s “garden hermit” and heads down the road to completely removing himself from social contacts. A sort of Walden meets Being There. Continue reading Best of 2011, Part 4: Jason Chambers | |
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