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A review by kawai
The Heaven of Animals by David James Poissant
4.0
It's easy to see why this collection was ten years in the making. Each of Poissant's stories shows the marks of having been tuned to the perfect pitch: There's nary a wasted word or phrase in each story. As other reviews have mentioned, Poissant treats his characters with such empathy that it's almost like watching the work of a seasoned character actor, taking the roles of each person in an ensemble cast.
The stories tend to follow the standard contemporary short story form (limited third or first person POV; minimalist prose; linear timeline; realism as the central aesthetic), and some of the characters start to blur towards the end, as the middle-aged, middle-income, anglo-saxon everyman gets quite a bit of treatment. But Poissant has included several stories that break that form, weather surrealist ("What the Wolf Wants"), or second-person imperative ("How to Help Your Husband Die"), and these contribute a bit of diversity to the collection. Truth be told, they were some of my favorites.
There's barely a story in here that won't strike an emotional cord of some sort, and Poissant manages to do it in a million different ways, whether through humor, despair, tragedy, or the sort of love that can span all three and more. It's a worthy read and one that establishes a new talent in contemporary fiction.
The stories tend to follow the standard contemporary short story form (limited third or first person POV; minimalist prose; linear timeline; realism as the central aesthetic), and some of the characters start to blur towards the end, as the middle-aged, middle-income, anglo-saxon everyman gets quite a bit of treatment. But Poissant has included several stories that break that form, weather surrealist ("What the Wolf Wants"), or second-person imperative ("How to Help Your Husband Die"), and these contribute a bit of diversity to the collection. Truth be told, they were some of my favorites.
There's barely a story in here that won't strike an emotional cord of some sort, and Poissant manages to do it in a million different ways, whether through humor, despair, tragedy, or the sort of love that can span all three and more. It's a worthy read and one that establishes a new talent in contemporary fiction.