Customer Comments

The characters who populate these linked stories feel like people I know; the settings and scenes speak to this moment in history in such a powerful way; and though these stories never quite go speculative (I would argue that “The Arboretum” could pass for a ghost story), there’s that delicious sense of a tilted world, the feeling that you couldn’t possibly predict which direction any given story is going to go in. “S.T.D. Demon” in particular is a tour de force. I feel like it actually rearranged my synapses, not unlike a talk the poet Mary Ruefle gave at Tin House a few years back--the subject of which was, in part, shrunken heads. That's the power of a great writer three or four levels deep with some genuinely profound (and profoundly weird) subjects--deep enough to make them funny. And Monica Drake is one of the funniest ladies around.

One of the best novels I read in 2013. Smart, funny fiction with real heart--equally savvy about technology, religion, and mythology. Love the way Wilson steps right over the slavish conventions of fantasy based on Tolkein to do what he did, and few have since, which is mine that actual mythological substrate of a culture largely unknown to modern readers.

This is, by far, the best book on creative writing I have ever read. I read it, teach, preach it, and return to it for inspiration again and again. If you feel like your education in writing has taken the bloom off the rose, consider this book the antidote: an approach that acknowledges story as a living, breathing thing that cannot ever really be dissected without killing it (but which can, nevertheless, be studied in its natural habitat). Practical enough for the beginner, subtle enough for the advanced practitioner, and chock full of the sort of pleasures that made you fall in love with fiction to begin with.

I'm amazed at the degree to which Jack Driscoll captures his characters at a single, complex moment in time in this beautiful collection. Often, very little actually happens in the forward motion of the story--perhaps just a single, decisive tick forward: a man falls from a deer blind, a man's wife steals a horse--but a person's whole universe is revealed over the course of those few pages. The effect is intensely heartfelt, profoundly empathetic, and also extremely concise. The problem of exposition is a big one in fiction, and the most common technique, as far as I can tell, is to hang little bits of backstory on the little details of scenes (i.e., the forward motion of the story). But Driscoll has mastered a higher level technique: he buries his exposition in pure voice. I'd recommend this collection to anyone who's a fan of short stories. These little pieces are magic.

Brilliant academic satire. This is John Rembers' take on the decay at the heart of American culture--darkly funny, beautiful, and often profound. If you're tired of finely crafted fiction that seems to take place at no time in particular, in no place in particular--fiction that seems largely divorced from the deeply complex world we live in--these stories may help you remember that art can shake us awake to our place in the world. White privilege, subtle misogyny, and even plastic surgery were never so hilarious. This is fiction for the twilight of an empire.