Short Stories Books

This childrens book of the classic Beatrix Potter stories is hardbound in a large attractive cover. The illustrations are all wonderfull, and average three pictures per page next to the text which goes along with the scene. My now three year old loves this book.

My mother bought this for my kids, and this is an excellent gift for bedtime, or anytime stories for children. Classics like these are wonderfull to read to children so they can be passed on from generation to generation.

I had several of the small Beatrix Potter books as a child. The drawings and stories enchanted me, and the books were just the right size for my hands. This book is much bigger. It also includes more stories than my original collection--nineteen. It is easy to find the Peter Rabbit stories and some of the others in the small books--but some of the stories in this book (such as the wonderful "The Story Of A Fierce Bad Rabbit") I've never seen for sale in individual form. So, if you loved these stories as a child or if you want to introduce them to a child in your life, this large and beautiful book is a good choice. However, when I have children of my own I'll probably also buy a set of the small books, because I enjoyed them so much in that form myself.

I got this book when i was seven from my grandmother i'm 19 now and still love to read it from time to time. I have loved this book most of my life and i'm buying it today for my sisters kids.

It is wonderful to find all of these stories in one volume, and the illustrations are as beautiful as ever. Beatrix Potter was truly a great artist and storyteller. The lessons young ones learn from these tales are priceless, like many of the greatest fables. Over the years, I have acquired many Beatrix Potter books and collectibles. This volume stands out as one of the most prized items in my collection.

As a father, I'm looking for what's best for my little girl. Other than The Bible, a book of tales filled with mischief and fun such as this is always something you can go back to. I remember my parents reading me "The Tale of Peter Rabbit", yet picking this up, I flipped through it with my daughter like a pirate who discovered a hidden treasure.

I knew all about Benjamin Bunny, Squirrel Nutkin, even the Two Bad Mice! Getting the treasury of Beatrix Potter was like WOW! This is a lot of good stuff, and while a little advanced, kids normally get the meaning and lesson through every story. I loved reading stuff like "The Floppsy Bunnies" and going to Tom Kitten, while wondering about stuff I don't remember reading like Jemima Puddle-Duck. Also remembering the hilarity of "The tale of the Pie and the Patty-Pan", to the somberness of "The Tailor of Gloucester.

Do your kids a favor and get them this Potter, the one we grew up with! This is what I've been looking for, and hopefully parents who actually give a care will do the same. Awesome stuff!

David Evanier tells of his hardships in life with brutal honesty. It is wonderful and absorbing to follow his struggles to overcome these hardships and his persistent search for true and loyal love. He finally succeeds in finding it and he learns to love in return with total trust. His involvement with radical and Jewish groups are both funny and filled with pathos. I loved reading the novel and regretted coming to the end of it.
Elaine Evans

Wow. David Evanier is truly a great writer. The picture he creates is clear. The words-everyone carefully poignant - and rich dialogue make up this interesting gang of short stories I consider classics in every sense. You may compare Evanier to the short list of writers who tell great stories in very few words, every word counting. It's a book to read slowly, and, if you are an old time New Yorker, it is all the sweeter.

...or so believes the narrator, Michael, when his psychiatrist bequeaths him the tapes of their therapy sessions--spanning 30 years! While the thought of revisiting the painful times of our lives may be horrifying to most, Michael embraces the opportunity and, "listening to the forgotten tapes, I measure what is real to me now against what was real to me then."

And that line illustrates, for me, what is one of the hands-down strengths of this fine book: on a sentence-to-sentence basis, this is poignant and heartfelt writing. The language is economical, unadorned and yet packed with emotion--nostalgia and loss and gratitude and the multitude of conflicting feelings that tangle around our memories.

Except this is not memory, simply. Because memory is colored by our experience and our perceptions as we age; memory is naturally distorted. Only so much distortion can take place, however, when we are confronted by our own voice revealing what happened and what we felt ten, twenty, thirty years ago.

The protagonist here takes on each character, each event from his past as if he were living it today. It is past tense and yet immediate. We are right there with Michael--in New York, in Vancouver, wherever--soaking up the scenery and facing each character from his life right along with him, albeit with the added wisdom of age.

Evanier's deft prose highlights the complexities and paradoxes universal in all human beings, but what's special here is that the characters are illuminated through Michael's changing perceptions. I'm thinking, for example, of the quite troubled wife, Karen, who at times seems his destruction and at other times his salvation.

There is so much to be admired in this slim book, one which ultimately feels like a love letter to all those who have peopled Michael's eventful life.

I hadn't read Evanier before...what a mistake that turns out to be!

The Great Kisser by David Evanier (Rager Media, 2006)
David Evanier has been a writer all his life... He is the author of The One Star Jew, Red Love (a novelization of the life and times of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg) and dozens of stories, reviews and essays published in leading literary journals. He has also written for New York Magazine, The Village Voice, and The New York Times Magazine.
In addition to his literary work, David has also written several wonderful biographies, most prominent among them: Making The Wise Guys Weep--The Jimmy Roselli Story, and Roman Candle, The Life of Bobby Darin.

David calls The Great Kisser, a "novel in stories". And it is more or less just that. It's a collection of short and long stories, which don't always proceed in particularly chronological order but follow a different sort of time line--the time line of the heart.
This book is really a memoir, with only a few changes of name, place and date. It's at once the story of a boy, then a man, searching desperately for the kind of genuine love he never got as a child, and also the story of a born artist, a writer; someone, who no matter what other jobs or careers he ever attempted was never meant to be anything but a writer.
The stories move back and forth in time and place--but cover everything from his childhood in the forties and fifties up to the present moment... They travel from Queens to Manhattan, to Vancouver, back to Manhattan, out to Los Angeles (for a long, hard attempt at screenwriting) and finally back to New York.
The book is full of bizarre and fascinating characters; geniuses and charlatans; real and would-be gangsters; cracked literary agents, bigoted, hysterical do-gooders and a large assemblage of lost, crazy and inspired artists that Michael Goldberg (David's novelized namesake) meets on his journeys.
Of all the sad, brilliant and hilarious characters Michael encounters in his travels, by far the most fascinating is his long-time psychiatrist who, in his deranged old age, gives Michael decades of their taped therapy sessions. In fact, that's the way the book starts--with Michael beginning to listen to these thousand-and-one nights of analysis and personal revelation.
David/Michael, in this life story, writes with a kind of vicious, longing honesty about his horribly needy and destructive parents.
Not unlike a great many other people in this sad, spinning world, he spends the better part of his life trying to free himself from the chains of his parents' terrible love--it's an omnipresent plot, sub-plot and super-plot throughout the book...
Michael falls in love, in lust, chases after numerous women, engages in doomed affairs and, when teaching in Vancouver, meets the woman he will one day marry. Their long, troubled and passionate relationship is, in fact, what finally carries the torch of redemption to the finish line of the book.
The Great Kisser is compulsively readable. David/Michael's desperation leaps right from his heart to yours and you often find yourself saying, "I can't take this stuff any more-- But still, I have to know what happens next." There is always a feeling of compassion you have for this character. You find yourself, no matter how much he screws up or lurches around in a selfish frenzy, rooting for him to succeed, both in his attempts to make it as a writer and finally discover true love. His greatest virtue is that no matter what disasters befall him, he never, never stops trying.

Mike Feder
Sirius Satellite Radio

I'd say this book was the story of my life exactly, but it's not the story of my life at all. It's honest without being a bore. It's funny without being a charade. It's brave without attitude. It's just what I want in a book. It's also just what I almost never find.

Here's a sample of the text. It's unfair, really to pull it out of the context of the story, but I wanted you to read it, hear it.

" I loved them all and they loved me and they made me grasp life, even if I could
not hold on to it. But I could never hold on to despair because of them. All People
of the Book who stepped out of history to hold me and embrace me and not let me
fall. Why have I been so lucky in this life, this Jew who came after the Holocaust--
the world had expended its Jew hatred for a while, having gotten it out of its system--
and seen such bountiful goodness, so much beauty, totally unsuitable beauty to make
literature out of because it is unbelievable--so incredible it would be pointless to try
to write a story about it."

David Evanier has written a story about it. A collection of stories. Terrific stories.

What a book. Mulhauser really taps into the psyche of our generation. Through his characters Mulhauser is able to express highly distinctive human emotions against the backdrop of hilarious/tragic circumstances. A must read for anyone interested in the social dilemmas and conflicts faced by todays generation. I'll be on the lookout for future works by Mulhauser as he looks to be a star in the making! Buy this book now, you won't regret it.

This book is a fantastic collection. The interaction between the characters and their northern Michigan setting was captured phenomenally well. I found the enitre collection funny and entertaining, primarilly because the characters and situations, though compelling, remained believable.

This first book by Travis Mulhauser is fantastic. The stories are thick with tender humor, nuanced human understanding and descriptions of a geography that becomes a character in itself. They read utterly without pretension or self-consciousness, like lived experience. The author has a real ability to understand the interior world of a wide range of characters, and to present it in high-definition dialogue and action. "Brothers" is the perfect, chilling end to this collection, as it makes eerily familiar the transformation of lost hopes into misguided action experienced by so many of the characters and so many of us.

I really enjoyed the book..The short stories were just long enough to get the feeling of the characters..I grew up in a small town in the midwest and I felt like I was reading about my own experiences. I laughed and became sad throughout the entire book. I loved how the stories discribed different aspects of the community. Very good book..I can't wait until Travis writes another!!!

I agree with the earlier noted reader reviews: Mulhauser's short stories and novella are entertaining with dialogue that quickly brings the reader into a rural resort region's service-industry economies of finance and spirit. Having recently read Hemingway's "Nick Adams Stories" (circa 1923-1938), set in the same northern Michigan area, I was intrigued by some similar themes used by both Hemingway and Mulhauser that have apparently survived the past 70 or so years: social and financial tension between the seasonal "resort" population and the "locals;" the local boys who made it big via sports or other celebrity (Hemingway frequently used prize fighters while Mulhauser utilized basketball players and rock stars); shady criminal characters and skirmishes between the story's hero and the law; young (mostly) men learning truths through the "school of hard knocks;" and the cleansing beauty of the lakes, streams, and woodlands. That said, I found Mulhauser's work the more enjoyable of the two!

We recieved Slinky Malinky as a gift last year and read it so many times that the book fell apart! All of these books (any Slinky Malinky and Hairy McClary) have the cutest stories about mis-behaving animals interacting with each other and wreaking havoc for the humans in their lives. The illustrations are great and the stories are short enough that my one year old and three year old can both sit and enjoy them. I highly recommend any of the books in this series. They are just adorable.

Hairy Maclary from Donaldson's Dairy is peppy and bouncy and looking for fun. But what he really wants is something to chase and for a dog that often means cats. Hairy Maclary begins his rampage.

Through the course of the book we are introduced to quite a few of the local feline community. But they are all quickly chased away with only slight effort and no real chance for a good chase. But then Hairy Maclary spots one more twitching tale and a long chase ensues. But who is chasing who?

My kids love the Hairy Maclary books with its colorful illustrations, cute and funny animals, lyrical verse and plenty of fun. This one is somewhat reminiscent of the first in the series (HAIRY MACLARY FROM DONALDSON'S DAIRY) but still fresh and a delight. Some of these cats are truly adorable even to do fanciers. Check it out.

We've been reading this, the hairy MacLary and other Lynley Dodd books for 5 years now....started when my son was about 18 months, and still going strong! There is as much in the language for a 6 year old starting to read on their own as for the shared experience with younger children.

Lynley Dodd and Margaret Mahy MUST be New Zealand National Treasures.

Great rhymes, wonderful words ("bumptious and bustly"...) and a fun, simple tale. A real favouite of my two year old. Another great children's book from a superb author. Highly recommended.

This is a delightful book, the language is great and the pictures wonderful. Most of Lynley Dodd's regular characters such as Slinki Malinki and Scarface Claw make an appearance as Hairy Maclary bounces along through the pages in a boisterous mood. I love reading this one to my three year old niece. The words have a real rhythm to them and the story has just enough suspense to keep little ones interested. I have not yet read a Lynley Dodd book that I don't like - but this one is a real favourite!

I'm very sad that the Hairy Maclary books are no longer available in paperback. Our family has 3 Hairy Maclary paperbacks and would like to purchase more. We LOVE the books. The stories are great and the pictures are beautiful.

I'm so sad that this book hasn't gotten more press! My daughter is 4 now, and we've been reading it since she was about 2. The animal noises are fun to make and hear, and the pictures fit the descriptions perfectly! We particularly like the fact that you can see the dog's tail on the right hand page as it is going to investigate the horrible cacaphony. Give it a chance!

Scarface Claw is the toughest tom in town, but even he can meet his match. After chasing a few small animals, he sets out after a blackbird high in a tree and gets stuck. So begins the caterwauling.

Hairy Maclary (from Donaldson's Dairy) and his friends (Hercules Morse, Bottomley Potts, Schnitzel Vonn Krumm, etc.) are each disturbed by the strange sound. Each goes to investigate what could be making the terrible noise. Together they find out. But what happens when the toughest tom in town is finally rescued? Does he chase the dogs like usual, hide in shame, pretend he meant to do that? Read and find out.

Lynley Dodd's verse and pacing proves as fresh as ever in this adventure of New Zealand's favorite scruffy little dog. Fans of his friends will be pleased that the rest of the dogs in town are also present. Check out all of the Hairy Maclary books.

Our 3 children have loved this book with all the different dogs and the sounds they make. One child makes the yowling cat sound and I do the dogs. They occasionally join in and it can become very entertaining. It just depends on how mellow or raucous you want to be. The story is simple but cute and the rhyming is creative and catchy.

Before even thinking about reading this one aloud, grab a really big glass of water. All the dogs from the first Hairy Macleary are back and making all sorts of barks, and then there's the sound that echoes around...

If you haven't read any Hairy Macleary yet (and why not!!?), they are great read-aloud stories with plenty of tumpity rhythm and rhymes. (Not to say that you can't secretly grab one and read it quietly, too.)

Wow!!! Not a basic cheesy let tie all the end up in a bow sequel. Very Suspenseful. At time a tab bit of humor. All of them don't just up an get married, THE END. Love that!!!
But most of all I like the fact I could see the Holy Ghost working these characters over in a few different scenes of the book. Sandy in the Party, Michelle- Forgiveness Sermon, Liz- Her Sermon. That was so amazing!!! Real characters being "saved" and not "churched" or "very religious"
I hope Ms. Brooks makes one more on these characters. Just one more!!!

I thought that Brooks did a great job with the sequel. I was totally engrossed from the very moment that I started reading. I completed reading this book in 3 days. I found myself reading into the wee hours of the night and waking up in the wee hours of the morning so that I could read it. If you liked the first one, you will love the second!! I am ready for the third.

Author Kimberley Brooks penned a fiction novel that speaks to all women when it comes to believing God for their mates.

Michelle Williams was able to pull herself together after her break up with Pierre Dupree, finding new love with David Parker, the praise team leader at her church. David wasn't built like Pierre, and neither was he as tall, but he was the saved woman's dream for a mate. However, when Pierre called off his marriage to the minister's daughter at the last minute, Michelle began to explore the remnants of the love she still had for Pierre.

It was not long before Michelle ran into Pierre and he took advantage of an opportunity he felt he deserved to get back into Michelle's life and marry her. In the meantime, Liz was called into full time ministry and another level in her spiritual life concerning forgiveness. Coming to learn who her father is and ultimately meeting him helped to take her to that level and find out some things about herself that made sense concerning the man in her life.

Sandy, Michelle's best friend, thoroughly tested her friendship with Michelle by ignoring the unwritten code concerning friends and old boyfriends, but she too had a lesson to learn as she sought forgiveness from God and her friend.

He's Saved... But Is He For Real is a read that prompts readers to pray and wait for God to lead in relationships before making decisions that can not only ruin relationships, but lives. Ladies, just because he's, in church and he's fine, and he appears saved, be patient and watch his `fruit.' That is, if you can't wait on God for an answer.

The theme for this book is forgiveness, something that is sometimes hard when you have been hurt to the core of your soul by someone you love and trust. I recommend this book to women who are waiting on God for their mates, and for anyone who has trouble with forgiveness.


Reviewed by Sharel E. Gordon-Love
APOOO BookClub

I'm glad she did a sequel to He's Fine but is He Saved. This book was very good and better than the first one she wrote. It's basically a continuation on the lives of three young ladies and their journey in finding love. This book was suspenseful from beginning to end. I especially enjoyed the dating adventures Sandy was going through to find true love. This book is so fun and enjoyable to read. By the way things ended in this book, I hope she does Part III. It still had you guessing for more. She did a very good job with this one.

This is the continuation of Kim Brooks' He's Fine But Is He Saved?, where friends Michelle, Liz and Sandy continue their quest for love. In He's Saved But Is He For Real?, Brooks allows her readers to accompany these three women as they continue their respective searches for "the one." Complicating matters in each of their respective searches, Michelle is in a relationship at the time "fine as ever" Pierre Dupree resurfaces, begging her back in his life after having duped her at the alter two years ago. Liz finds herself vulnerable and insecure in her new relationship; later finding that something from her past is withholding her from truly being able to love like God intended. Sandy is still falling for the same old tricks, not only does she continue hurting herself, she hurts those closest to her.

Michelle's strength and obedience in this story is truly amazing. The character trait I liked most in Michelle was the supernatural ability to forgive after having been wronged by someone close to her. Liz confronts her past in order that she is released for her future and Sandy, well she's still Sandy with a lot of growing to do. I think Brooks' next novel in the series just may hold the answer to Sandy's fate. With the help of friends and family, and obedience to God's word, each of the ladies learn that she must let go and let God in finding true love.

Another point I'd like to mention is that while " . . . Is He For Real?" is the continuation of ". . . Is He Saved?," this book can stand alone for people like myself who did not read Brooks' first release. I particularly liked Brooks' writing style and the story progression. I'd definitely recommend this book and look forward to more from this author.

The well-known phrase 'for the term of his natural life' is used by Marcus Clarke to bring home the horrors of transportation and the Tasmanian penal system in the 19th century.
Richard Devine, an innocent man (under an assumed name of Rufus Dawes) convicted of a crime he did not commit, is sent for transportation and assumed killed in a shipwreck. In reality, he is heir to a vast estate (unbeknown to him) and the convolutions of the tale that evolve from this are wonderfully written; the gradual demolishing of Dawes, the unspeakable duality of Frere, the calculating guile of Sarah and the gullible innocence of Sylvia are woven together in a plot that does not end happily ever after. This I think, serves to underline the barbarism and futility of the transportation system.
Based on actual events, Clarke uses his 'hero' to illustrate the depravation and privations that prisoners (and their guards) had to endure. Graphically showing how degradation degrades and power corrupts, the narrative never dwells on gruesome details, instead it relies for effect on the imagination of the reader, which can be more terrifying.
A book that deserves a wider readership.

This was without question one of the most gripping novels I've read in many a day. I first ran across this work in a brief mention by British travel writer/popular historian James Morris, where he thought it akin to the gulag novels of post-Stalinist Russia in subject matter and philosophical content. Add to that a wealth of striking narrative detail, immensely memorable characters (Maurice Frere, Sarah Purfoy, and particularly James North leap to mind), some truly transporting (no pun intended) and incredibly creepy passages, mind-blowing plot twists and turns, and a persistent refusal to provide too pat solutions to characters' problems... Clarke wasn't better than Dickens or Eliot, but neither of the latter could have written this book.

Clarke's masterpiece was published in 1874, after being serialized in 1870-72. Critics have lambasted a few of the less believable elements and some of the pat characterization of a number of supporting characters, but these are flaws to be found in most novels of that time (and ours). Clarke redeems himself by taking the cliches and mannerisms of the nineteenth-century English novel and using them to illuminate a whole new society, one practically mythical to the metropolitan consciousness of the Victorian Anglophone world. This work is a great counterpoint to all those English novels of the day where the hero or villain gets packed off to the antipodes and returns mysteriously changed. The main thrust of the novel, though, was the need to tell the true story of (white) Australian society's beginnings. Clarke, in telling the story of the unjustly convicted Rufus Dawes (aka Richard Devine), provides a panoramic view of early Victorian Australia, from the hellish convict settlements of Macquarie Harbor and Norfolk Island to the nascent frontier towns of Hobart and Melbourne, from the aging memories of the "First Fleeters" (the original convicts who arrived in 1788) to the controversial Eureka Stockade Uprising of 1854. The narrative frequently moves at a deliciously whirlwind pace to accomodate the exciting interaction of characters and history.

Clarke's novel is generally cited as nineteenth-century Australia's greatest and points the way towards more nuanced examinations of the colonial experience in the twentieth century (Peter Carey's JOE MAGGS, about the "off-stage" life of Dickens antihero Abel Magwitch, is apparently very much in this vein). Don't read it just for this reason, though. Please be sure to find the longer, original version, as I was fortunate enough to do. Clarke was forced to produce a revised, shortened version for the original publication, one dictated by his editors that turned the novel into a much more "conventional" Victorian literary production (and has a longer title--FOR THE TERM OF HIS NATURAL LIFE). I understand a TV series was made in the mid-80s with Anthony Perkins as North. If this was the case, then it badly needs to be remade on celluloid, because I can't seem to find the series. It's a magnificent novel whose flaws, I think, are amply counterbalanced by its unexpected joys.

It's a collation of events by various persons involved in the penal settlement of early Australia. Marcus Clarke has interwoven these events into a novel of fiction. These are stark facts; and show, as far as I've researched, very detailed. L.P. Hartely said it all,in this case.."The past is a foreign country.They do things differently there." The more you read on, the more you want to know..

LEt me set the record straight first...I have never read this book. I had seen the mini-series almost 10 years ago on CBC Canada. The series was very gripping and always left me waiting for the next in the sequence. Following the end of the series I was determined that I had to read this book. My last attempt to find it was in 1991 when I was told it was out of print and could not be found anywhere. Luckily I have just tripped across the information again and it prompted me to start looking again. Needless to say (but I must) I am thrilled to find it and now be able to finally read it. I hope it is everything that I know it is and more. It is an epic tale of grand proportions. Now if I can only find the video series AND a hard cover copy to add to my library!

Well, as an Australian living in the year 2000, reading this book, written in the 1880s, is an emotional experience.

For it is through works such as this that we can see our past. We can examine the nature of the beast that gave birth to us. Who we are. From whence we came.

If you want to understand why Australians are they way they are, and have the attitudes and language that they do, then give this book a read.

As a student of Rollins College, I took the course "Great Russian Writers". Victor Brook's collection of short stories has been my favorite, definately the most entertaining and thought provoking Russian literature I have read so far. Can you imagine? I even wrote a paper on the recurring theme of happiness in many of Victor Brook's works. Will his characters find happiness or will they simply pursue it in vain? Thank you, Victor Brook, for the great stories.

It is refreshing to read genuine literature in an age of popular fiction. Victor Brook's writing combines imagination with interpretative meaning in each of his short stories. These stories appeal to the inner soul and are adventures in life at its best, at its worst, and in the extraordinary. "A Ceiling with Lizards," for instance, is captivating and evokes thought about why the protagonist ever went to India. The mystery behind each story leads you further into the mind of Victor Brook and encourages you to read more. Victor Brook is an artist with words, and his stories are straightforward and characteristic of literature, which belongs to a generation of uniquely gifted authors.

These are stories for study, for re-reading, for analysis, for plumbing the depths of both human experience and the art of writing. Especially, these are stories for sharing with other lovers of REAL literature, those who are able to undertake an analysis of the nature of reality. Challenge yourself!

Coupling beautiful imagery with eloquent stream of consciousness writing, Victor Brook explores life and humanity in a way that is both refreshing and captivating. His ingenious insights will undoubtedly make a lasting impression on every reader. This book is a must for anyone who wants to understand life in a new and profound light.

I read this book twice and I am going to read it again. In the epigraph for the opening story Victor Brook uses the old sailors saying, "Sailing the sees is necessary, living is not as necessary". True, the characters of Brook's stories are not just living, they are desperately searching for the meaning of their lives. The stories are very poetical, philosophical, lyrical, the language is colorfull and inventive. Get your hands on this book as soon as possible!

What can I say about you book?! It. Is. Great. Owen Egerton's short stories are right up my alley - darkly, almost pitch black, hilarious. Gut wrenching. Layered. My favorite entertainment in any genere is simply that which reflects life. And life is funny, sad, scary, loud, calm and everything at different times and sometimes all at once.

We are all headed toward the same fate - read this book and let's connect before then, shall we?

I picked this book up because I wanted a break from non-fiction. I am a scientist and always felt I was wasting time if I wasn't reading about science. But I was drawn to this book for some reason. This book made me think and made me feel closer to the human condition. That might sound lame but it is true. Older works of fiction sometimes give you a connection to by-gone times. This book gives you a connection to our times and to one of the sure things in life (... not taxes).

I love this book because I see myself in it. Every single story touched me in some way, in some personal way. If you have dealt with death, or thoughts of mortality then you will also see yourself in this book. Sometimes it is disturbing but it is always funny and often encouraging in a way. Every mortal person should read at least a couple of the stories out of this book. It is dark at times but never depressing. While reading it I got a sense of the courage and a feel for how much thought Egerton put into this. I hope the Reaper has Owen Egerton's sense of humor.

... you are going to die.

How do I know? Owen Egerton told me. He told me he was going to kill you with a loaf of white bread.

Just kidding! Owen Egerton is not going to kill you with bread...

...but you are going to die.

How are you going to die? I don't know precisely. I know your heart will stop beating. You will stop breathing. But the details that caused the cessation is a little harder to nail down. You might die sleeping, or a horrible disease. You might be in a car wreck. Or you might die flying (and subsequent inability to land) a small plane. Maybe you will be at the wrong end of a Chuck Norris fight. You could be devoured by a pit of pigs. Or maybe it will be a freak accident involving a water slide & Christianity. Who knows?

Question: Who knows how you are going to die?
Answer: Owen Egerton
His Answer: A loaf of Wonderbread, with the crusts cut off.

But before you die, make sure you read "How Best to Avoid Dying", the book that somehow made death funny & sweet. I laughed my head off. Which you would think would have killed me... but it didn't. I died the old fashioned way: Owen Egerton beat me with a loaf of bread.

These beautifully crafted, provocative stories keep you both laughing and thinking. Give yourself a real treat.

Rarely do stories complement each other so well as in this bizarre collection, which is at once darkly tragic, hoarsely satirical, exuberantly hilarious, and deeply moving. Egerton's art is driven by a playfulness which rings throughout all these gems, but it far from undercuts the serious. The variety of genres in this volume, from traditional short stories to blistering flash fiction, fairy tales to self-referential annotations, are all peppered with an abundance of moods and attitudes. The stories strike you with horror, form lumps in your throat, and make you smirk. This assortment of style, form, and tone demonstrates Egerton's considerable versatility. And as plated here together, kicking, whirring, and giggling, they make a multi-faceted medley which lingers on the tongue, leaving a bittersweet aftertaste.

Egerton begins with a short absurdist tale about a spelling bee, in a world where such competitions decide the ownership of land masses and the losers, intrepid 8-10 year olds, are dropped into a pit below stage where the audience can watch them slaughtered. Other stories include a Christian camp where counselors encounter fatal "accidents" in twisted attempts to drive the campers towards a life in Christ; an account of a married couple's tepid romantic life and the deeper sexual ambitions and desires embodied in a talking, knighted penis; a look into the life of Lazarus, resurrected by Christ and now living in the modern day, desperate to die; and a girl who niggles the narrator to not kill her off, which closes the volume on a note of poetic gorgeousness. And these are the more traditional ones.

One story, "Holy," is a sparse paragraph. "The Beginning of All Things" is a two-page story about rodents fighting for a Snickers bar that turns into a prose poem creation tale. "The Adventures of Stimp" morphs into a series of run-on sentences, almost stream of consciousness, which portrays absolute devotion between a hamster and his owner. As a whole, these shorter pieces aren't as good as the longer ones. They are excellent examples of Egerton toying with narrative form, always original, and brilliantly carve a small but powerful piece of art in miniature. However, several of them lack the emotional depth of the longer works, and they all are missing a sense of roundedness--minute details injected into the narrative that both flesh out the universe of the story and greatly contribute to its power to move.

These details are subtle and quiet: ornamentations of a master's hand. In Egerton's hands, they may be lightly whimsical or deadly serious; in either case, they are some of the finest proof of Egerton's capabilities. Far from feeling tacked-on, these details are weaved into the fabric of the fiction, as Egerton plays with his worlds and our minds. One such detail is a description of looking in on the agonized faces in private hospital rooms, "like looking deep into a radiation chamber, knowing that if you open the door--even a crack--all that radiation would zip out and scar your eyes, throat, and skin." With this brief, almost passing note, the whole of the protagonist's relationship with sickness and disease in the antiseptic desert of the hospital is revealed. In "Spelling," the point that America lost Hawaii to Korea in a spelling bee is again mentioned in passing, evoking both chuckles and a sense of terror: in a single line Egerton has given us all we need to know about the politics of this nightmare. Other cases are more light-hearted elements of comedy that show why Egerton has been considered by so many to be an excellent humorist.

If these details describe Egerton's delicate manipulation of narrative, there are just as many examples of immense linchpins: single lines on which the literary value of the story is hinged, which launch the text into the realm of works truly memorable. In such cases, the delicacy is replaced by hammering immediacy, and our hearts and minds are surrendered to the work. In "Tonight at Noon," perhaps the best story in the collection, a jazz enthusiast wakes up to find his girlfriend has committed suicide. He says of jazz virtuoso Charles Mingus, "Most people say The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady is his best, and it's good. But Ah Um is going for more. It hurts more. Lives more. Jenny is dead."

These examples may serve to show the incredible sense of balance present in these stories, which may ultimately be what makes them so successful (there is only one exception to this: "The Fecalist" is boring satire--a departure from the usually sophisticated presentation). Comedy and tragedy are bound inextricably; passing jabs, lasting one-liners, and poetic passages are joined by their poetry; whimsy, heartbreak, and joy are merely different sides of the same thing. The stories, in their individual components and as a collection, build off one another with grace and ease.

If a philosophical point is permitted, this playful balance and duality may be the essence of what Egerton calls how best to avoid dying. The characters in these pieces, who are never mere tools of narrative, are all faced, in one form or another, with the agony of dying and the beauty of living. Or is it the other way around? Laughter and sorrow, fear and joy--these may all be the same entity--and assisting that interpretation may be Egerton's primary objective. If this is in fact the case, barring some minor, unmentionable imperfections, he succeeds with dazzling brilliance.

[Author website: www.owenegerton.com]



Originally published on Curled Up With A Good Book at www.curledup.com. © Max Falkowitz, 2007

Joanna Torreys stories are highly erotic, but make you feel cold at the same time. This is really something I have never read before, and I can't wait for the German edition so that all my friends can read it, too!

This is a beautiful collection of short stories and a novelette exploring the psyches of modern women. Joanna Torrey's writing style is easy to read, yet dense with meaning and allusion. Ms. Torrey can take a single metaphor and use it to explore every facet of a character. In "Hungry," the title story, she uses food, gourmet and down-home, to delineate a wonderfully funny woman and her relationships with various men and her own sexuality. In "Sweat," exercise and the homeliest of bodily functions become the lens magnifying a life of secret desire. "Back Rubs" is a marvelously innocent account of filial and parental love (none of the usual psychotraumas-of-the-week in this story). "Snoop" and "Parking Lot" teach you more about relationships and imagination than any self-help book on the shelves. The novelette, "Me and Mine," should be required reading for every secretary, legal and otherwise--this is our lives, in excrutiatingly funny detail. Highly recommended! A satisfying and hysterically funny collection.

I loved every word of this book. It was very funny, and very sad. Anybody who's ever worked in a corporation or been in a "supporting" role at work will recognize, empathize, cheer for and hurt for the characters Ms. Torrey creates so beautifully. Definitely worth the read.

Hungry is a true feast with the novella, Me and Mine, a deliciously subersive and hilarious centerpiece. Anyone who's ever worked in the corporate world -- especially as a worker bee -- will recognize the Dragon Lady, Peach, Plant Man and especially Mine, Almost Mine and Biggest Mine. And I guarantee you'll never look at a dictaphone the same way again.

But, this is not just a comic writer; her portraits of the disaffected can be wrenching, and Back Rubs just might break your heart.

A beautifully written collection of tales. Joanna Torrey's use of extended metaphor as a funhouse mirror to highlight a character's deepest secrets is amazing. Her wicked wit and deep empathy keep the reader transfixed. "Eyes" says as much about the relationship between women and men, patient and therapist, as any psychology textbook. "Hungry" uses food, gourmet and junk, to explore the contradictions of a woman's feelings for the men in her life. "Backrubs" is a sweet, moving memoir of father and daughter, reclaiming innocence for this relationship. And the novelette, "Me and Mine," should be required reading for anyone who has ever been a secretary, especially at a law firm. Absolutely hysterically funny. Joanna Torrey is unafraid to cut right to the heart of a character's bitterness and fear, and she does it with great humor and compassion. A volume that is endlessly rewarding!