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erine's review against another edition
3.0
These stories are like a series of landscape paintings. Scenes from lives that on the surface appear similar, but each have unique shadings and nuance. The tone is poetic, a rough kind of dreamy where the dreams have plenty of hard edges in the fog. Most are written with a teen point of view, but they all evoke images of change, life cycling through decay and renewal. I wished for them to be more distinct from each other.
Notes from each story:
The Goat Fish and the Lover’s Knot
A summer at the lake, a friend’s mom who struggles with boundaries, lake/cottage culture, and the passage of time.
All the Time in the World
A young woman this time (still a teen, though) whose mother has left, leaving Sam to deal in her own way. This includes shoplifting and underage drinking, so Sam is now on probation. Ruminations on how folks end up stuck in the hometown they wanted to escape - this part of this story includes an improbable but entertaining homemade guillotine.
Calcheck and Priest
Features two grown men - friends, brothers, doesn’t matter. And their love for each other and the one’s not-quite-stepchild. Manages to be both gritty and really sweet. Includes beautiful description of a coffin: “...hey, you got demons to keep at bay, you decide who or what you want standing guard at the gate.”
The Alchemist’s Apprentice
The flow and rhythm of this story was the most difficult to follow so far. Sentence structure and word order were very shifty. Another teen, a broken but not beaten mother, and a nomadic gentleman who offers some relief from their family griefs and tragedies.
Land of the Lost and Found
Pretty sure it’s wretched, not retched.
A quick story of bad luck turned good. Lots of childhood and family memories sprinkled throughout the collection.
The Good Father
Another teen, a father just out of prison. Bonding time at the dump. Hope for the future.
A Woman Gone Missing
A mother is losing her teenage daughter. The mother, who got pregnant as a teen, reminisces about that teen relationship, as well as the ones after. She thinks about her unstable childhood, full of fighting and crime. And she thinks about now, when her teen daughter has gone to live with her father.
Here’s How It Works
Two brothers, a single bar tending mom, a dangerous mine turned quarry. The brothers don’t know their dads - one struggles more with this and he is the one who can’t leave the quarry alone.
On This Day You Are All Your Ages
Wtf are drops for earwigs? In a pharmacy context? Otherwise, this might have been my favorite, looking at one woman - oldish, maybe 50s - across her whole life. Looking in flashes, in no particular order, referencing her mother as well as the men in her life.
That Story
“...but maybe all miracles are a matter of need and deceit...”
A teen’s father is in prison and his mother has taken up with a slimy Texan. The teen and two of his friends make ominous plans to dispose of the Texan, but find him with another woman, after which their plans fizzle and drift away.
Notes from each story:
The Goat Fish and the Lover’s Knot
A summer at the lake, a friend’s mom who struggles with boundaries, lake/cottage culture, and the passage of time.
All the Time in the World
A young woman this time (still a teen, though) whose mother has left, leaving Sam to deal in her own way. This includes shoplifting and underage drinking, so Sam is now on probation. Ruminations on how folks end up stuck in the hometown they wanted to escape - this part of this story includes an improbable but entertaining homemade guillotine.
Calcheck and Priest
Features two grown men - friends, brothers, doesn’t matter. And their love for each other and the one’s not-quite-stepchild. Manages to be both gritty and really sweet. Includes beautiful description of a coffin: “...hey, you got demons to keep at bay, you decide who or what you want standing guard at the gate.”
The Alchemist’s Apprentice
The flow and rhythm of this story was the most difficult to follow so far. Sentence structure and word order were very shifty. Another teen, a broken but not beaten mother, and a nomadic gentleman who offers some relief from their family griefs and tragedies.
Land of the Lost and Found
Pretty sure it’s wretched, not retched.
A quick story of bad luck turned good. Lots of childhood and family memories sprinkled throughout the collection.
The Good Father
Another teen, a father just out of prison. Bonding time at the dump. Hope for the future.
A Woman Gone Missing
A mother is losing her teenage daughter. The mother, who got pregnant as a teen, reminisces about that teen relationship, as well as the ones after. She thinks about her unstable childhood, full of fighting and crime. And she thinks about now, when her teen daughter has gone to live with her father.
Here’s How It Works
Two brothers, a single bar tending mom, a dangerous mine turned quarry. The brothers don’t know their dads - one struggles more with this and he is the one who can’t leave the quarry alone.
On This Day You Are All Your Ages
Wtf are drops for earwigs? In a pharmacy context? Otherwise, this might have been my favorite, looking at one woman - oldish, maybe 50s - across her whole life. Looking in flashes, in no particular order, referencing her mother as well as the men in her life.
That Story
“...but maybe all miracles are a matter of need and deceit...”
A teen’s father is in prison and his mother has taken up with a slimy Texan. The teen and two of his friends make ominous plans to dispose of the Texan, but find him with another woman, after which their plans fizzle and drift away.
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