Status
Available
Call number
Description
Alan Heathcock logra transformar su pequeño pueblo en un gran lienzo de la América periférica. Como los relatos del clásico Winesburg, Ohio (de Sherwood Anderson), los relatos de Volt están llenos de violencia y de arrepentimiento, así como de la triste desesperación de lo grotesco. Cada cuento es como una novela comprimida.
Description
A blistering collection of stories, in which the hard lives of Heathcock's characters try-- and sometimes fail-- to deal with the choices they have made.
Genres
Collection
Publication
Dirty Works S.L. (2016), Edition: 1, 240 pages
Media reviews
Heatchcock’s language is direct, immediate. He doesn’t traffic in fluff, but he does aim right for the heart. The first page will cut you short; and, I’m betting, rouse you to tears.
Each interconnected story is equally devastating and I had to take small breaks in-between them to catch my breath. Heathcock’s prose possesses a plain spoken lyricism much in the same vein as Kyle Minor and Pollack. His descriptions of small town existence are vivid and painstakingly detailed,
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but not so much that the reader becomes lost in exposition.
Would it be fair for me to say that Volt heralds the arrival of a new major American voice? Yes, I would say so. Heathcock’s gifts are undeniable. Show Less
Volt sets a new standard to which all other fiction collections must now measure themselves. I sense it will be a long time before readers find anything worthy of close comparison, unless Alan Heathcock decides to publish another book, and soon.
Eight stories, by native Chicagoan Alan Heathcock, who lives and works in Idaho, where he seems to have found in that mostly rural state great inspiration in the pathetic and maniacal denizens of small towns around him - or in memories of rural Illinois, also, perhaps: several of these stories
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celebrating such country matters stand as tall as most of the best stories by many of our most accomplished writers. Show Less
“…The sensitivity to spiritual pain and healing reminded me plenty of Flannery O’Connor. The language took me to Faulkner and McCarthy. That the stories all take place in one fictional town, Krafton, reminded me of Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio. That it is a debut collection I
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think should find its way into the American canon…” Show Less
When there is no stability, no permanence, and nothing on the horizon, when the only way that you’re going to have dinner is if you wander into the woods and kill it yourself—this is the tension I felt reading Volt. In Alan Heathcock there is a whisper of the lyrical Cormac McCarthy, the
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authority of the aforementioned Donald Ray Pollock, and the danger of Benjamin Percy. You may not come out of this collection whistling “Dixie” and it may darken your soul for a spell, but you’ll come out of it with a sense of gratitude for the tragedy you’ve avoided, and a humble grace for being allowed to see the light. Show Less
Alan Heathcock never pinpoints a location for Krafton, the rural setting for his accomplished debut, Volt (Graywolf, 208 pp., $15). Still, it is easy to imagine these eight linked stories unfolding in a township tucked along Ohio 60 next to Killbuck or Monroe.
These are truly singular, fully American stories; about violence, yes, but more so in the end about faith, forgiveness, and community. About life. Not death. Written whole by a gifted writer.
Frankly, there is little to fault in any of the eight stories that make up this collection. Undoubtedly, there is much grit and violence in this world, but there is also an abundance of tenderness and compassion. Heathcock displays a generosity of spirit that only those writers who love their
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characters can summon, and “Volt” is galvanizing proof of his talent. Show Less
A good story has the power to divert us from our struggles as well as to help us understand them. This is one reason people turn to fiction, and it explains why Alan Heathcock's debut short-story collection, Volt, is an ideal book for our times.
There's nothing easy about trying to distill tragedy and pain into the space of one short story. In Volt, Heathcock does it eight times, with a remarkable sense of compassion, and a deeply felt understanding of the mechanics of mourning.
"There are short story writers who are masters of characterization and others adept at creating vivid, memorable settings. In his first collection, Alan Heathcock blends both talents to create a stark, memorable portraits of small-town life."
"Readers who admire the kind of vivid, distinctive
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short fiction displayed in Richard Ford’s Rock Springs or David Means’s Assorted Fire Events will be excited to discover a familiar but wholly original new voice in Alan Heathcock.” Show Less
The best collections, for my money, are the ones that work the form to its full advantage, turn its weaknesses into strengths, and make the stories inseparable from one another—greater even than the sum of their parts.
Alan Heathcock’s Volt (Graywolf, 2011) is one such collection. . . Volt
Alan Heathcock’s Volt (Graywolf, 2011) is one such collection. . . Volt
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never tries to be a novel, never tries to be an anthology of the author’s own greatest hits. In a manner that is equal parts Picasso and Tarantino, Heathcock uses the fragmented nature of the collection to fracture the reader’s lens. He lashes his Kraftonians together into a kind of multi-limbed, multi-brained protagonist. We walk a mile in the shoes of victims, of perpetrators, and of bystanders.
As with Dubliners or Jesus’ Son, to read these pieces in isolation wouldn’t do them justice. To read Volt is to read a master of not only the short story, but of the collection. Show Less
Boise writer Alan Heathcock‘s gripping debut short story collection Volt is an intricately crafted examination of a fictional small town called Krafton that could be located anywhere in rural America.
"Volt," his extraordinary first book, is mired with murder and mayhem but laced with hints of humanity and hope.
With precise, often gritty, language Heathcock delivers many dark surprises in these stories, all brilliantly told, in situations and settings that grab at the edges of our comfort yet
With precise, often gritty, language Heathcock delivers many dark surprises in these stories, all brilliantly told, in situations and settings that grab at the edges of our comfort yet
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make us nervously wish for more. Show Less
"...Volt: Stories, a starkly elegant short story collection by newcomer Alan Heathcock."
“…the purest compliment a reviewer can offer an author is ordering additional copies of a book. This reviewer is purchasing four copies of Volt.”
The compendium offers readers a Spoon River Anthology–like sense of place and people, with characters radiating authenticity and coping with fate and folly in an entirely believable manner.
Heathcock has earned a National Magazine Award for his fiction. This book affirms that promise.
Heathcock has earned a National Magazine Award for his fiction. This book affirms that promise.
Volt is an incredible work of American fiction, and it’s distinctly American, not only in Heathcock’s unstoppable, measured, hard-fought voice, but mainly in how each of these characters believes in their individuality, are rich with individuality, and are yet still so undeniably connected, to
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the point that when they morally stumble, so do the rest, locked together at the ankles by chains. Show Less
The Kenyon Review
Volt is a linked story collection executed well. The connection among characters is organic, with no greater effort required than the occasional flipping back of pages to remember who is who. Heathcock’s economy, confidence and stark style herald an interesting new voice that promises to take the
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short form and rough it up. Too many writers have been careless with the short story in recent memory: using it to tell overly clever smart boy/girl monologues, or to brag in lit-babble about banging Eastern European girls. We are living in a world where writers, in the midst of the storm (dwindling readers, the looming paperless world), must climb the mast and scream: Is this all you’ve got, storm? Recent books like Anthony Doerr’s Memory Wall, Jennifer Egan’s A Visit from the Goon Squad, and now Heathcock’s Volt assure readers there are still storm-screamers out there, demanding to be heard above the squall. Show Less
“…sentence by sentence and paragraph by paragraph, their stories are told beautifully, with many striking turns of phrase. Heathcock is a powerful writer, and infuses each of the eight stories with the sense that catastrophe is inevitable, and personal…”
"For the residents of Krafton, the
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small town around which the stories are set, life is filled with quiet, brutal tragedy narrated with the lyricism of plain speech." Show Less
It’s impossible not to reach into the pun drawer when reviewing Volt, Alan Heathcock’s new collection of short fiction from Graywolf Press. I found myself unable to resist writing that his prose positively crackles with energy, or that a current of literary brilliance flows through the stories,
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or that there is a power here, an electricity, which almost bursts off the page. But it would be unfair to settle for the easy pun, to resort to journalistic shorthand, when Heathcock so clearly doesn’t. Although his stories owe a great deal to the canon of American literature - to Cormac McCarthy, to John Steinbeck, to Flannery O’Connor, and to Stephen King - Heathcock makes them unique at the same time. He tackles the big themes which have always obsessed American writers, those of freedom, faith, land, belonging, and law and morality, in stories which reflect the largeness of the landscape. He writes how small people often feel themselves to be within such a large space and yet he does so by creating an America which is undoubtedly his. His stories contain great yawning prairies of meaning, his characters great chasms of yearning.
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Alan Heathcock's bejewelled collection of short stories, Volt, has just been released by Graywolf. I haven't been this enthusiastic about a book of stories in a while, and I want to -- in a way -- proclaim that enthusiasm, as much as possible.
There is much poetry in these eight stories, and an incredible amount of ambition. Heathcock sets a high bar for what good fiction should be. I do wish he’d had more faith in the poetry, let it take the reigns a bit more, so some of these stories could go even further, past the periphery of a
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spiritual firmament ever slipping away. But maybe that’s just the nature of life, longing for something more from the world, some unnamable, far off thing, but in reaching for it, we fall back at the last possible second. VOLT walks this line like a tightrope; it’s evocative and precarious, leaving readers in a state of thrilling stillness. Show Less
Physical description
240 p.; 8.27 inches
User reviews
LibraryThing member richardderus
Rating: 4.5* of five
The Book Description: A blistering collection of stories from an exhilarating new voice
One man kills another after neither will move his pickup truck from the road. A female sheriff in a flooded town attempts to cover up a murder. When a farmer harvesting a field accidentally
Throughout Volt, Alan Heathcock’s stark realism is leavened by a lyric energy that matches the brutality of the surface. And as you move through the wind-lashed landscape of these stories, faint signs of hope appear underfoot. In Volt, the work of a writer who’s hell-bent on wrenching out whatever beauty this savage world has to offer, Heathcock’s tales of lives set afire light up the sky like signal flares touched off in a moment of desperation.
My Review: When reviewing collections, it's hard to know what to say about them whole and entire unless they're linked stories. With a group of stories like this book is, it's easiest and, IMO, best to adopt what I've called “The Bryce Method” in honor of an online friend who introduced me to the technique: A summary opinion, plus a short line or a quote from each story, together with a rating for the story. So as my summary opinion, I offer this: Bleak is not always to be avoided. Sometimes art needs shadows to prove there's light. These stories aren't feel-gooders, and shouldn't be attempted by those in need of uplift. There is none here, but not one of these tough, scrappy folks is gonna lie down and die any time soon. They're too scared of the God they're sure they'll meet on the Other Side.
The stories in book order:
“The Staying Freight” gives new and chilling meaning to “Took a walk, Be back soon.” Why? Coming back is going backwards. Winslow Nettles needs, and needs badly, to go forwards.
“Smoke” is a horrible moment in a no-better-than-you man's life, one that changes him forever and not for better. How can one human bear a burden of sin alone? Better, when you're afraid of the god that you've invented, to load some onto an innocent other. Horrifying, and just beautiful.
“Peacekeeper” brings justice to a world where there isn't any, courtesy of the local grocery-store manager turned Sheriff. Is lying always wrong? After reading this, you won't think so. A beautiful and thought-provoking modern morality tale, complete with purifying flood.
“Furlough” couldn't be more horrible: A man, not a dumb kid, leads a young woman to the kind of rough justice that makes a civilized person's stomach churn. That he hates it, that it is vile and cruel in his eyes, is probably worse than the resulting nightmare. Spare, elegant, and horrifying.
“Fort Apache” sets the purposeless present and the vacant future against the void inside adolescent souls and the results explode into fire, chaos, and that angst of inchoate longing that humans will do anything to escape.
“The Daughter” sets a mother lost to random accident, a daughter whose grief severs her ties to reality wile making the whole world painfully abrasive, and a mother-of-all-storms loose in a cornfield maze. Returning to life, such as it is, is always painful, but it takes the pain of a neighbor's child to turn the daughter's rage outward again.
“Lazarus” is the least successful story, to my mind anyway, but it's still head and shoulders above most anything else I've read this century. When a man is wreathed in the smoke of sacrifices to his vicious god, how can he offer moral guidance? By remaining empty. Then what's needed most, right then and there, can fill you up and come out for who needs it. “It's your song, son...It's not for me to name.” (p179)
“Volt” sets the Sheriff, sworn officer of the court, against everything her hometown's about, and against her own ideas of justice instead of the law, as she cooperates with the city cops in bringing a convicted felon/Iraq war veteran in for a court date.
...”One world was like it was back home, where folks ate cheeseburgers and kids had sleepovers and ball games and people went to work and got angry over stupid shit that didn't matter. Like their TV ain't no good, or they ain't got the right sneakers. Some shit like that.… But then there's another world, where folks ain't got a goddamn thing, and these motherfuckers'll try any damn thing to blow your ass to dust. Sarge says it was up to us to keep them worlds apart, and if we thought that shit that happened over there wouldn't make it back to some little girl's sleepover then we had our heads full-way up our asses. ...Supposed to rally us, I guess. ...But then I had to go back out that next day and the next and all I come to think on was how I ain't never had no sleepovers or ball games or none of that shit, and didn't none of it make a damn lick of sense.”p204
Well. There it is. The people who fight for the rights of us all don't have the privileges of us few. And we wonder how come there are so many walking wounded out there screaming their pain with their guns and dancing to the tune of radio mullahs whose hate and bile spewing nonsense feels just like their listeners do inside.
These are beautiful and brave and sad and wrenching demands for anyone with fifteen dollars to spend on a frippery like a book, or with enough luck to live where there's a library, to pay attention.
Ours is not the only world. No oceans separate us from the enemies we've made within.
The Book Description: A blistering collection of stories from an exhilarating new voice
One man kills another after neither will move his pickup truck from the road. A female sheriff in a flooded town attempts to cover up a murder. When a farmer harvesting a field accidentally
Show More
runs over his son, his grief sets him off walking, mile after mile. A band of teens bent on destruction runs amok in a deserted town at night. As these men and women lash out at the inscrutable churn of the world around them, they find a grim measure of peace in their solitude. Throughout Volt, Alan Heathcock’s stark realism is leavened by a lyric energy that matches the brutality of the surface. And as you move through the wind-lashed landscape of these stories, faint signs of hope appear underfoot. In Volt, the work of a writer who’s hell-bent on wrenching out whatever beauty this savage world has to offer, Heathcock’s tales of lives set afire light up the sky like signal flares touched off in a moment of desperation.
My Review: When reviewing collections, it's hard to know what to say about them whole and entire unless they're linked stories. With a group of stories like this book is, it's easiest and, IMO, best to adopt what I've called “The Bryce Method” in honor of an online friend who introduced me to the technique: A summary opinion, plus a short line or a quote from each story, together with a rating for the story. So as my summary opinion, I offer this: Bleak is not always to be avoided. Sometimes art needs shadows to prove there's light. These stories aren't feel-gooders, and shouldn't be attempted by those in need of uplift. There is none here, but not one of these tough, scrappy folks is gonna lie down and die any time soon. They're too scared of the God they're sure they'll meet on the Other Side.
The stories in book order:
“The Staying Freight” gives new and chilling meaning to “Took a walk, Be back soon.” Why? Coming back is going backwards. Winslow Nettles needs, and needs badly, to go forwards.
“Smoke” is a horrible moment in a no-better-than-you man's life, one that changes him forever and not for better. How can one human bear a burden of sin alone? Better, when you're afraid of the god that you've invented, to load some onto an innocent other. Horrifying, and just beautiful.
“Peacekeeper” brings justice to a world where there isn't any, courtesy of the local grocery-store manager turned Sheriff. Is lying always wrong? After reading this, you won't think so. A beautiful and thought-provoking modern morality tale, complete with purifying flood.
“Furlough” couldn't be more horrible: A man, not a dumb kid, leads a young woman to the kind of rough justice that makes a civilized person's stomach churn. That he hates it, that it is vile and cruel in his eyes, is probably worse than the resulting nightmare. Spare, elegant, and horrifying.
“Fort Apache” sets the purposeless present and the vacant future against the void inside adolescent souls and the results explode into fire, chaos, and that angst of inchoate longing that humans will do anything to escape.
“The Daughter” sets a mother lost to random accident, a daughter whose grief severs her ties to reality wile making the whole world painfully abrasive, and a mother-of-all-storms loose in a cornfield maze. Returning to life, such as it is, is always painful, but it takes the pain of a neighbor's child to turn the daughter's rage outward again.
“Lazarus” is the least successful story, to my mind anyway, but it's still head and shoulders above most anything else I've read this century. When a man is wreathed in the smoke of sacrifices to his vicious god, how can he offer moral guidance? By remaining empty. Then what's needed most, right then and there, can fill you up and come out for who needs it. “It's your song, son...It's not for me to name.” (p179)
“Volt” sets the Sheriff, sworn officer of the court, against everything her hometown's about, and against her own ideas of justice instead of the law, as she cooperates with the city cops in bringing a convicted felon/Iraq war veteran in for a court date.
...”One world was like it was back home, where folks ate cheeseburgers and kids had sleepovers and ball games and people went to work and got angry over stupid shit that didn't matter. Like their TV ain't no good, or they ain't got the right sneakers. Some shit like that.… But then there's another world, where folks ain't got a goddamn thing, and these motherfuckers'll try any damn thing to blow your ass to dust. Sarge says it was up to us to keep them worlds apart, and if we thought that shit that happened over there wouldn't make it back to some little girl's sleepover then we had our heads full-way up our asses. ...Supposed to rally us, I guess. ...But then I had to go back out that next day and the next and all I come to think on was how I ain't never had no sleepovers or ball games or none of that shit, and didn't none of it make a damn lick of sense.”p204
Well. There it is. The people who fight for the rights of us all don't have the privileges of us few. And we wonder how come there are so many walking wounded out there screaming their pain with their guns and dancing to the tune of radio mullahs whose hate and bile spewing nonsense feels just like their listeners do inside.
These are beautiful and brave and sad and wrenching demands for anyone with fifteen dollars to spend on a frippery like a book, or with enough luck to live where there's a library, to pay attention.
Ours is not the only world. No oceans separate us from the enemies we've made within.
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LibraryThing member jnwelch
Volt: Stories apparently is Alan Heathcock's first short story collection, and it's an impressive one. All eight stories take place in a beaten down U.S. farm town named Krafton, and some characters, like tenacious former grocer store manager and now sheriff Helen Farraley, appear in more than one.
The first story, "Staying Freight", features the aftermath of a terrible farming accident that kills a young boy. His father struggles to accept it, and in doing so. at one point finds himself in a nearby town taking punches for betting money. Escape, and the inability to really do so, is a theme of a number of the stories. These stories are often grim in their details, but true to life, and they demonstrate the resiliency the town's citizens have even in dark circumstances.
Krafton is not a home for celebrities or displays of wealth. Every penny and bit of happiness is hard-earned and precious. As one character, Jorgen Denmore, describes it, a sergeant urged him and his fellow soldiers in an overseas war to protect the world "back home, where folks ate cheeseburgers and kids had sleepovers and ballgames and people went to work and got angry over stupid shit that didn't matter. Like their TV ain't no good, or they ain't got the right sneakers. Some shit like that." While it was "supposed to rally us, I guess", all Jorgen, whose family is on the bottom rung of the town's ladder, can think is "how I ain't never had no sleepovers or ball games or none of that shit, and didn't none of it make a damn lick of sense."
In one story, faced with someone who committed a horrific act, Helen wreaks justice that is in the community's best interest, even though she knows community members wouldn't approve the means she uses. In another, she treats the criminal with compassion, as she knows he has a good heart and remembers him from when they were kids. Another woman explains how some go wrong, like her son: "You think some are bad or evil or whatnot, but somewhere along the way they were someone's baby, suckling the teat like anybody. Then something puts a volt in 'em and they ain't the same no more. You might think a man like Harlan don't care much what his mama thinks. But I shunned him and he couldn't ever shake it." Helen's view, expressed elsewhere: "Some are guilty the moment you lay eyes on them, and what the law ought to do is stop 'em 'fore they can do what they're born to do."
Heathcock obviously has deep feelings for his characters and their circumstances, and admires them for the way they handle the cards they've been dealt. It's a tough world, and there's room for compassion and kindness, but you better be ready to rise up to meet it when the time comes.
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The stories therefore loosely tie together in various ways. My thanks to Richard for recommending this one.The first story, "Staying Freight", features the aftermath of a terrible farming accident that kills a young boy. His father struggles to accept it, and in doing so. at one point finds himself in a nearby town taking punches for betting money. Escape, and the inability to really do so, is a theme of a number of the stories. These stories are often grim in their details, but true to life, and they demonstrate the resiliency the town's citizens have even in dark circumstances.
Krafton is not a home for celebrities or displays of wealth. Every penny and bit of happiness is hard-earned and precious. As one character, Jorgen Denmore, describes it, a sergeant urged him and his fellow soldiers in an overseas war to protect the world "back home, where folks ate cheeseburgers and kids had sleepovers and ballgames and people went to work and got angry over stupid shit that didn't matter. Like their TV ain't no good, or they ain't got the right sneakers. Some shit like that." While it was "supposed to rally us, I guess", all Jorgen, whose family is on the bottom rung of the town's ladder, can think is "how I ain't never had no sleepovers or ball games or none of that shit, and didn't none of it make a damn lick of sense."
In one story, faced with someone who committed a horrific act, Helen wreaks justice that is in the community's best interest, even though she knows community members wouldn't approve the means she uses. In another, she treats the criminal with compassion, as she knows he has a good heart and remembers him from when they were kids. Another woman explains how some go wrong, like her son: "You think some are bad or evil or whatnot, but somewhere along the way they were someone's baby, suckling the teat like anybody. Then something puts a volt in 'em and they ain't the same no more. You might think a man like Harlan don't care much what his mama thinks. But I shunned him and he couldn't ever shake it." Helen's view, expressed elsewhere: "Some are guilty the moment you lay eyes on them, and what the law ought to do is stop 'em 'fore they can do what they're born to do."
Heathcock obviously has deep feelings for his characters and their circumstances, and admires them for the way they handle the cards they've been dealt. It's a tough world, and there's room for compassion and kindness, but you better be ready to rise up to meet it when the time comes.
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LibraryThing member Crazymamie
Thanks to Richard for bringing this amazing collection of short stories to my attention. I say amazing because these stories are dark and disparaging, and yet it is not depressing to read them. They capture so exquisitely those moments of tragedy that are part of every community. I used to live in
"'I wish I could take my brain and put it inside your head,' Winslow said. 'Just for a moment. Then you'd know what all I can't find how to say.'" - from The Staying Freight
"'Ever feel like your mind's set funny?' Hep said. 'Like ain't a person in the world could understand you? I think I'm crazy. I really think I must be.' Walt watched Hep's face, flushed in the mercurial light. 'Sometimes I wish I was in the movies,' he said. 'Not to be famous or nothing. I just wish I was made of light. Then nobody'd know me except for what they saw up on that screen. I'd just be light up on the silver screen, and not at all a man.'" - from Fort Apache
"The crop whispered, the corn swaying.... The sky hung a black cloth sprinkled with luminous dust." - from The Daughter
"Things vanished. People vanished. Clouds gave way to sun gave way to night. Only feelings, like spirits, endured, branded to the back of our eyes, laced into our marrow. Miriam lifted a sweater to her face, blue and soft and threadbare at the elbows, still holding a hint of her mother's scent. Try as she might, she couldn't imagine her mother on streets of gold, washed in ethereal light, couldn't even imagine her wearing this sweater, which had been her favorite. Miriam could only recall her mother as she'd seen her that day at the morgue, a sheet to her chin...She considered this life and the next, decided Heaven and Hell were just where the living chose to put you once you passed..." - from The Daughte
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a small town that was mostly farms, and these stories that are anchored by their location, the fictional city of Krafton, ring true. It is important, I think, to read them in the order in which they are presented, some characters appear in more than one story and sequence becomes valid here, adding depth to their presence. All eight stories are good, but The Daughter was my favorite, and Lazarus was my least favorite. Dig in - I do not think you will be disappointed, and you will have food for thought long after you have closed the pages."'I wish I could take my brain and put it inside your head,' Winslow said. 'Just for a moment. Then you'd know what all I can't find how to say.'" - from The Staying Freight
"'Ever feel like your mind's set funny?' Hep said. 'Like ain't a person in the world could understand you? I think I'm crazy. I really think I must be.' Walt watched Hep's face, flushed in the mercurial light. 'Sometimes I wish I was in the movies,' he said. 'Not to be famous or nothing. I just wish I was made of light. Then nobody'd know me except for what they saw up on that screen. I'd just be light up on the silver screen, and not at all a man.'" - from Fort Apache
"The crop whispered, the corn swaying.... The sky hung a black cloth sprinkled with luminous dust." - from The Daughter
"Things vanished. People vanished. Clouds gave way to sun gave way to night. Only feelings, like spirits, endured, branded to the back of our eyes, laced into our marrow. Miriam lifted a sweater to her face, blue and soft and threadbare at the elbows, still holding a hint of her mother's scent. Try as she might, she couldn't imagine her mother on streets of gold, washed in ethereal light, couldn't even imagine her wearing this sweater, which had been her favorite. Miriam could only recall her mother as she'd seen her that day at the morgue, a sheet to her chin...She considered this life and the next, decided Heaven and Hell were just where the living chose to put you once you passed..." - from The Daughte
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LibraryThing member rkepulis
The author is obviously a master of short (and not so short) stories. Perhaps the only caveat is that his stories are very bleak, and, while that does not bother me, it may very well be too troubling for many.
LibraryThing member Heduanna
I so wanted to like this... but I just didn't, really. The writing, in many parts, was technically very good, and it had several very insightful moments, but it left me cold.
LibraryThing member SoulFlower1981
For my first "book club" read I wasn't too happy honestly with the book that I was hoping to enjoy immensely. The stories personally did not resonate with me in any fashion and in most instances felt like I was beginning to wonder why I was reading the book. I pushed through it because I never like
Mr. Heathcock does a great job of writing in this book, but that doesn't always mean that a story or in this case stories will resonate with the reader. He has too many stories in the woods or a wilderness setting that may be off putting to readers that do not enjoy the great outdoors. Also there is this almost "religious" feeling about the book that also didn't sit well with me. I am not an overly religious individual and that was some baggage I brought into reading this book which immediately put me off of it.
Also the theme of murder and death seemed to sound through almost every story contained within. While I love a good mystery these did not feel like those types of stories, save for one. These stories felt like just a reflection of anyone's life. These characters could have been anyone in any town, which may be what the writer was going for. It didn't work for me though.
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to be the person to leave a book without reading the final word on the final page. Mr. Heathcock does a great job of writing in this book, but that doesn't always mean that a story or in this case stories will resonate with the reader. He has too many stories in the woods or a wilderness setting that may be off putting to readers that do not enjoy the great outdoors. Also there is this almost "religious" feeling about the book that also didn't sit well with me. I am not an overly religious individual and that was some baggage I brought into reading this book which immediately put me off of it.
Also the theme of murder and death seemed to sound through almost every story contained within. While I love a good mystery these did not feel like those types of stories, save for one. These stories felt like just a reflection of anyone's life. These characters could have been anyone in any town, which may be what the writer was going for. It didn't work for me though.
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LibraryThing member mjlivi
I found this hard to rate - the writing is razor sharp and the stories heartbreaking and intense, but I still couldn't quite embrace it. It's possible I'm just a bit over short story collections of brutal small-town Americana. I also struggled a bit to map out the links in the interlinked stories,
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and really couldn't quite put the timeline of it all together. This feels like a book I could easily have loved that just hit me at the wrong moment - definitely worth a look if you're a fan of the Woodrell/Bass/McCarthy school of American writing. Show Less
Call number
133
Language
Original language
Spanish
Awards
Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers Award (Finalist — Fiction — 2011)
Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award (Longlist — 2011)
GLCA New Writers Award (Fiction — 2012)
Publishers Weekly's Best Books of the Year (Fiction — 2011)
Original publication date
2011-03
ISBN
8494414135 / 9788494414138