Synopses & Reviews
The Spot is an old blacksmith shed in which a gang of men tweeze apart the intricacies of a botched bank robbery.
The Spot is a place deep in Riverside Park, along the Hudson River, where two lovers walk with a keen sense that their adultery is about to come to an end.
The Spot is at the bottom of Niagara Falls, where the body of a young girl floats as if caught in the tangled currents of her own tragic story.
The Spot lies in the eardrum of a madman plagued by a noisy upstairs neighbor on the Upper East Side of Manhattan.
The Spot is a place in a young fathers mind where love, fear, and responsibility merge in the struggle with his sons potentially devastating diagnosis.
The Spot is in a dusty encampment in Nebraska where a gang of inept radicals plot a revolution.
The Spot is a Depression-era rail junction in Michigan where a young hobo spins the story of his return to a place that reminds him of home.
The Spot is in Oklahoma City, where two homeless girls move amid a memorial of outdoor stone chairs, sitting down and standing up, leaving impressions in the snow on the dark stone seats.
The Spot is the new book by the award-winning, internationally acclaimed author of Assorted Fire Events, winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and The Secret Goldfish.
The Spot is a collection of stories by an author who, according to The New York Times, stands among our most gifted younger writers,” a writer whose language, in the words of James Wood, offers an exquisitely precise and sensuous register of an often crazy American reality.”
Review
Praise for previous books by David Means:
“It is Meanss signature talent to view the lives of his characters, and life itself, from somewhere just beyond, in a position of maximum understanding and honorable detachment. A semidivine vantage point for the examination of hopelessly human affairs.” Jeffrey Eugenides
"Means stories meld literary influences from diverse traditions: mainstream writers like Alice Munro and Beat voices like Jack Kerouac. Mix in the impact of singer-song writers like Bob Dylan, and the resulting fiction is uniquely Means' own." Newsday
"David Means knows his way around the English language. [The Secret Goldfish] aims toward a mythology of the modern heartland.so lovely I want to quote the whole thing." Los Angeles Times
"Lean, agile.There's not a cheap emotion or a predictable conclusion to be found...humane [and] unaccountably lovely." New York Times Book Review on Assorted Fire Events
“This is food for the hungry.” Jonathan Franzen Oline H. Cogdill - Jay Strafford - Hallie Ephron - Marilyn Stasio - Wed Lukowsky - Spider Robinson - Robert Silverberg - Richard A. Lupoff - Harlan Ellison - George R. R. Martin - Jon Winokur - Alison Weir, author of Eleanor of Aquitaine and The Six Wives of Henry VIII - Dallas Observer - Jennifer Weiner, author of In Her Shoes and Little Earthquakes - Jay Leno - Laura Zigman, author of Animal Husbandry, Dating Big Bird, and Her - Liz Smith - Eoin Colfer - John Banville - W.E.B. Griffin, author of Final Justice - James Carville - Nomar Garciaparra, professional baseball player - Martin Arnold - Ulick O'Connor - Michael Billington - Michael Coveney - Sir Ian McKellen - The Financial Times (London) - The Guardian (London) - The Sunday Independent (London) - Time Out New York - The New York Times - The Washington Times - The Guardian - The Observer - Financial Times - The Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books - The New York Times Book Review - Library Journal Review - New York Post - About.com - Booklist - The New York Times Book Review - Kirkus Reviews - Bulletin of Center for Children's Books - School Library Journal - Kirkus Reviews - Booklist - Publishers Weekly - Kirkus Reviews - Booklist - Kirkus Reviews - Booklist, starred review - Publishers Weekly, starred review - San Francisco Chronicle - School Library Journal, starred review - Washington Post Book World - The New York Times - Philadelphia Inquirer - Newsweek - San Francisco Chronicle - Chicago Tribune - Washington Post - The Associated Press - San Antonio Express-News - Booklist - Horn Book Magazine - School Library Journal - Publishers Weekly, starred review - Cory Doctorow, author of Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town - Janny Wurts, author of Traitor's Knot - Kevin J. Anderson - Nalo Hopkinson, author of The Salt Roads - Robert J. Sawyer, Hugo Award-winning author - USA Today - Dallas Morning News - Fantasy Review - Houston Post - Publisher's Weekly - The Denver Post - The Providence Sunday Journal - The Washington Post Book World - Publishers Weekly - Booklist - New York Times Book Review - Entertainment Weekly - Boston Globe - Richmond Times-Dispatch - South Florida Sun-Sentinel
Review
Praise for the works of David Means
Achingly intelligent . . . With his jump-cut shifts, startling connections, and breathtaking disconnections, the author stands among our most gifted younger writers. Distinctively, though, he anneals his cutting-edge irony into a compassionate anger that goes beyond the literary times. In a word he might disdain to use, it is timeless.” Richard Eder, The New York Times
His highly original stories are coats that have been reversed to show their linings . . . Means language offers an exquisitely precise and sensuous register of an often crazy American reality. Sentences gleaming with lustre are sewn throughout the stories. One will go a long way with a writer possessed of such skills.” James Wood, London Review of Books
More than impressive . . . Means can produce work that holds up even in comparison with his most gifted Midwestern ancestors, such as Sherwood Anderson and Ernest Hemingway.” Alan Cheuse, Chicago Tribune
It is Meanss signature talent to view the lives of his characters, and life itself, from somewhere just beyond, in a position of maximum understanding and honorable detachment. A semi-divine vantage point for the examination of hopelessly human affairs.” Jeffrey Eugenides, author of Middlesex and The Virgin Suicides
Review
“Means is more than a conventionally accomplished realistic story writer. As Ive written before in these pages, his fiction sometimes skitters up to the borderline of legend . . . he can produce work that holds up even in comparison with his most gifted ancestors like Sherwood Anderson and Ernest Hemingway, employing some of the most sharp-edged and beautifully spare language of any writer of his generation. The stories in ‘The Spot show him working at the top of his powers . . . With this new collection readers with a taste for high art in the short story will want to place him up there with writers such as Evan Connell, James Salter, and, from a slightly younger generation, Tobias Wolff and Richard Ford.” —Alan Cheuse,
The Chicago Tribune“David Means revives the American short story in this quietly compelling collection about adulterous Manhattanites, violent train-yard drifters, pensive madmen, and concerned fathers. Its as if the works of Poe and Kerouac had been rewritten by Cheever.” —Details
“Each story is a reminder of why people break, and an uncomfortable revelation that we are all closer to breaking than we think.” —Esquire
“His book is dark, deep and dangerous. Here, the authors technical authority continues to astonish. Hell switch point of view midstory or examine the act of storytelling while telling a tale that you actually want to read. His most typical pieces, at once shadowy and insanely focused, feature bleak Midwestern violence: the crucifixion of a high-school boy, or the murder of a farmer by a hooker. Others bend time until it becomes as complex as the characters themselves . . . Virtuosic.” —Leigh Newman, TimeOut New York
“The stories by Means (The Secret Goldfish, 2004, etc.) defy categorization. There are 15 of them in this slim volume, a couple as short as a (long) paragraph, yet they resist the tag of ‘minimalism. Instead, they are dense with detail, character and theme, and they connect in some surprising ways that arent immediately apparent. The stories within the stories, like the fiction of Means through which they are framed, often have an archetypal quality transcending the characters (many unnamed), as if something immutable in the human condition keeps repeating itself: ‘The story would end and then it would just keep going, the way this one does. Though the author teaches at Vassar, these stories have a lot more punch and life than academic, creative-writing exercises. —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“In three previous collections, Means proved himself a master of the short form, earning comparisons to OConnor and Carver for his tight, energetic sentences. The 13 luminous stories in his fourth collection are just as strong. Here Means articulates the impulsiveness of angst-driven loners, including the homeless whove lost their faith in others and drifters whose only means of survival is their tale, whether true or otherwise. In the title story, a pimp, schooled in the Bible and disguised as a Northern Michigan farmer, tells a client about a girl whose drowning was his fault, and whose father followed her body to Niagara Falls. A group of hoboes swap stories involving knives until one mans silence betrays his refusal to reveal the tale of revenge that brought him to this place. A man assuming the worst for his ailing son wraps up his sons old toys and arranges an early Christmas. Darkly comic and rich in language and drama, Means cerebral tales are astute, amusing, and companionable.”—Jonathan Fullmer, Booklist
“Every reader has a comfort zone. When an author breaks that boundary, the reader is forced to come to terms with the limits of their own adventurous nature. If it sounds as though David Meanss newest collection of short stories, The Spot, forced me into my own literary panic room—if it sounds as though Im fighting for some sense of ownership over these stories—well, it did, and I am. Means was put on earth to frustrate creative writing teachers and John Gardner evangelists: His characters dont change. A lot of his action happens in flashback. His violence borders on the grotesque. He can take or leave paragraphs as structural units of composition. And he rarely, if ever, allows for immersion into fictions ‘vivid and continuous dream. Yet to read The Spot is to understand that these rules were made to be broken—or, in Meanss case, to be pistol whipped, dragged into a quarry, shot twice in the head, and set on fire.” —The Rumpus
Review
Means is more than a conventionally accomplished realistic story writer. As Ive written before in these pages, his fiction sometimes skitters up to the borderline of legend . . . he can produce work that holds up even in comparison with his most gifted ancestors like Sherwood Anderson and Ernest Hemingway, employing some of the most sharp-edged and beautifully spare language of any writer of his generation. The stories in The Spot show him working at the top of his powers . . . With this new collection readers with a taste for high art in the short story will want to place him up there with writers such as Evan Connell, James Salter, and, from a slightly younger generation, Tobias Wolff and Richard Ford.” Alan Cheuse,
The Chicago Tribune David Means revives the American short story in this quietly compelling collection about adulterous Manhattanites, violent train-yard drifters, pensive madmen, and concerned fathers. Its as if the works of Poe and Kerouac had been rewritten by Cheever.” Details
Each story is a reminder of why people break, and an uncomfortable revelation that we are all closer to breaking than we think.” Esquire
His book is dark, deep and dangerous. Here, the authors technical authority continues to astonish. Hell switch point of view midstory or examine the act of storytelling while telling a tale that you actually want to read. His most typical pieces, at once shadowy and insanely focused, feature bleak Midwestern violence: the crucifixion of a high-school boy, or the murder of a farmer by a hooker. Others bend time until it becomes as complex as the characters themselves . . . Virtuosic.” Leigh Newman, TimeOut New York
The stories by Means (The Secret Goldfish, 2004, etc.) defy categorization. There are 15 of them in this slim volume, a couple as short as a (long) paragraph, yet they resist the tag of minimalism. Instead, they are dense with detail, character and theme, and they connect in some surprising ways that arent immediately apparent. The stories within the stories, like the fiction of Means through which they are framed, often have an archetypal quality transcending the characters (many unnamed), as if something immutable in the human condition keeps repeating itself: The story would end and then it would just keep going, the way this one does. Though the author teaches at Vassar, these stories have a lot more punch and life than academic, creative-writing exercises. Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
In three previous collections, Means proved himself a master of the short form, earning comparisons to OConnor and Carver for his tight, energetic sentences. The 13 luminous stories in his fourth collection are just as strong. Here Means articulates the impulsiveness of angst-driven loners, including the homeless whove lost their faith in others and drifters whose only means of survival is their tale, whether true or otherwise. In the title story, a pimp, schooled in the Bible and disguised as a Northern Michigan farmer, tells a client about a girl whose drowning was his fault, and whose father followed her body to Niagara Falls. A group of hoboes swap stories involving knives until one mans silence betrays his refusal to reveal the tale of revenge that brought him to this place. A man assuming the worst for his ailing son wraps up his sons old toys and arranges an early Christmas. Darkly comic and rich in language and drama, Means cerebral tales are astute, amusing, and companionable.”Jonathan Fullmer, Booklist
Every reader has a comfort zone. When an author breaks that boundary, the reader is forced to come to terms with the limits of their own adventurous nature. If it sounds as though David Meanss newest collection of short stories, The Spot, forced me into my own literary panic roomif it sounds as though Im fighting for some sense of ownership over these storieswell, it did, and I am. Means was put on earth to frustrate creative writing teachers and John Gardner evangelists: His characters dont change. A lot of his action happens in flashback. His violence borders on the grotesque. He can take or leave paragraphs as structural units of composition. And he rarely, if ever, allows for immersion into fictions vivid and continuous dream. Yet to read The Spot is to understand that these rules were made to be brokenor, in Meanss case, to be pistol whipped, dragged into a quarry, shot twice in the head, and set on fire.” The Rumpus
Synopsis
The Spot is an old blacksmith shed in which three men tweeze apart the intricacies of a botched bank robbery.
The Spot is a park on the Hudson River, where two lovers sense their affair is about to come to an end.
The Spot is at the bottom of Niagara Falls, where the body of a young girl floats as if caught in the currents of her own tragic story.
The Spot is in the ear of a Manhattan madman plagued by a noisy upstairs neighbor .
The Spot is a suburban hospital room in which a young father confronts his sons potentially devastating diagnosis.
The Spot is a dusty encampment in Nebraska where a gang of inept radicals plot a revolution.
The Spot draws thirteen new stories together into a masterful collection that shows David Means at his finest: at once comically detached and wrenchingly affecting, expansive and concise, wildly inventive and firmly rooted in tradition. Meanss work has earned him comparisons to Flannery OConnor (London Review of Books), Alice Munro, Bob Dylan, Jack Kerouac (Newsday), Hemingway, Sherwood Anderson (Chicago Tribune/NPR), Denis Johnson (Entertainment Weekly), Poe, Chekhov, and Carver (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel), but the spot he has staked out in the American literary landscape is fully and originally his own.
Synopsis
The Spot is an old blacksmith shed in which three men tweeze apart the intricacies of a botched bank robbery.
The Spot is a park on the Hudson River, where two lovers sense their affair is about to come to an end.
The Spot is at the bottom of Niagara Falls, where the body of a young girl floats as if caught in the currents of her own tragic story.
The Spot is in the ear of a Manhattan madman plagued by a noisy upstairs neighbor .
The Spot is a suburban hospital room in which a young father confronts his son’s potentially devastating diagnosis.
The Spot is a dusty encampment in Nebraska where a gang of inept radicals plot a revolution.
The Spot draws thirteen new stories together into a masterful collection that shows David Means at his finest: at once comically detached and wrenchingly affecting, expansive and concise, wildly inventive and firmly rooted in tradition. Means’s work has earned him comparisons to Flannery O’Connor (London Review of Books), Alice Munro, Bob Dylan, Jack Kerouac (Newsday), Hemingway, Sherwood Anderson (Chicago Tribune/NPR), Denis Johnson (Entertainment Weekly), Poe, Chekhov, and Carver (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel), but the spot he has staked out in the American literary landscape is fully and originally his own.
About the Author
DAVID MEANS was born and raised in Michigan. His second collection of stories, Assorted Fire Events, earned the Los Angles Times Book Prize for fiction and a National Book Critics Circle nomination. His third book, The Secret Goldfish, received widespread critical acclaim and was shortlisted for the Frank OConnor International Short Story Prize. His fourth book, The Spot, was selected as a 2010 Notable Book by The New York Times, and won an O. Henry Prize. His books have been translated into eight languages, and his fiction has appeared The New Yorker, Harpers Magazine, Esquire, Zoetrope, The Best American Short Stories, The Best American Mystery Stories, The O. Henry Prize Stories, and numerous other publications. He lives in Nyack, New York, and teaches at Vassar College.