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Mary Akers
, February 28, 2007
(view all comments by Mary Akers)
Each one of Sim's 18 stories is a deliciously self-contained treat. My very favorites were: "Two Head Gone," a story of human helplessness in the face of ordinary but devastating loss; "The Freedom Pig," in which a runaway slave and his master's pig conspire to reach the promised land; "Get the Can," a lovely, lyrical short-short that uses a childhood game of one-up to show that all things are possible; and especially "Fetch," an emotionally packed short-short that ripped my heart out and left it bleeding in the snow at the edge of the frozen lake.
No stranger to publication, Sim's stories have previously appeared in such vaunted journals as Glimmer Train, Antietam Review, Crab Creek Review, North Atlantic Review, Fourteen Hills, The Literary Review, Red Cedar Review, and New Millennium Writings. And his choice of title? Well, Sim titled his collection spot-on, in my view, because his stories truly are written in the "old style." They hearken back to such various influences as the surprise endings of O. Henry, the grit and realism of John Steinbeck and the barely contained wildness of Jack London.
As a group, or stand alone, Sim's stories are spare and brutally beautiful.
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