A volume of fun, absorbing, and contemplative tales.
Jaffe’s short story collection features queer characters at various life stages.
The characters in these stories navigate provocative, moody, and delightfully thought-provoking scenes and situations. The opening story (which is also the collection’s longest) features an aging, crestfallen, recently divorced gay man visiting the queer haven of Wilton Manors, Florida, “nestled as it is in the crook of Fort Lauderdale’s lusty embrace,” to scope the place out as a possible retirement locale. Unexpectedly, Sam repeatedly finds himself the object of desire. The rapid-fire stream-of-consciousness prose in the experimental “Still Life With Toupée” details what disasters may lie in wait when one dashes out for milk for the morning coffee. Jaffe ventures into speculative fiction with “The Great Masturbator,” in which a queer Texan longing for romance questions whether love-seekers like him had “been killed off by climate change.” His mind is forever changed when he’s enchanted by a musclebound traveling circus performer who has everlasting intentions for him. In “Helping Hands,” a man initially terrified by the arms and fingers protruding from the floor and ceiling of his condo soon welcomes tactile attention from the “first hands to touch [him] since Covid began.” In the SF-inflected “The Procedure,” a futuristic government orders a medical test on a gay man who’s somehow survived a decimating pandemic. The author’s personal history, characterized by the “blending of gay sexual abandon with Jewishness,” is effectively portrayed in “Reflections of a Sex Angel,” in which a gay man’s bar mitzvah is just the first of many obsessive sexual adventures that leave the protagonist troubled—until he is deified. Moments of pathos arise, most notably in the dialogue of “He Said, He Said,” which finds a longtime gay couple reminiscing about their 50 years together while somberly contending with one’s crippling progressive memory loss. These are entertaining stories for the thinking reader, addressing issues of queer aging, community, and the hilarious societal responsibilities of being a “sex angel.” Jaffe’s tales will appeal to a broad audience and keep readers rapt throughout.
A volume of fun, absorbing, and contemplative tales.Pub Date: March 19, 2024
ISBN: 9781955826747
Page Count: -
Publisher: Rattling Good Yarns Press
Review Posted Online: Nov. 29, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
It's being called a novel, but it is more a hybrid: short-stories/essays/confessions about the Vietnam War—the subject that O'Brien reasonably comes back to with every book. Some of these stories/memoirs are very good in their starkness and factualness: the title piece, about what a foot soldier actually has on him (weights included) at any given time, lends a palpability that makes the emotional freight (fear, horror, guilt) correspond superbly. Maybe the most moving piece here is "On The Rainy River," about a draftee's ambivalence about going, and how he decided to go: "I would go to war—I would kill and maybe die—because I was embarrassed not to." But so much else is so structurally coy that real effects are muted and disadvantaged: O'Brien is writing a book more about earnestness than about war, and the peekaboos of this isn't really me but of course it truly is serve no true purpose. They make this an annoyingly arty book, hiding more than not behind Hemingwayesque time-signatures and puerile repetitions about war (and memory and everything else, for that matter) being hell and heaven both. A disappointment.
Pub Date: March 28, 1990
ISBN: 0618706410
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: Oct. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1990
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SEEN & HEARD
The range and virtuosity of these stories make this Mosley’s most adventurous and, maybe, best book.
A grandmaster of the hard-boiled crime genre shifts gears to spin bittersweet and, at times, bizarre tales about bruised, sensitive souls in love and trouble.
In one of the 17 stories that make up this collection, a supporting character says: “People are so afraid of dying that they don’t even live the little bit of life they have.” She casually drops this gnomic observation as a way of breaking down a lead character’s resistance to smoking a cigarette. But her aphorism could apply to almost all the eponymous awkward Black men examined with dry wit and deep empathy by the versatile and prolific Mosley, who takes one of his occasional departures from detective fiction to illuminate the many ways Black men confound society’s expectations and even perplex themselves. There is, for instance, Rufus Coombs, the mailroom messenger in “Pet Fly,” who connects more easily with household pests than he does with the women who work in his building. Or Albert Roundhouse, of “Almost Alyce,” who loses the love of his life and falls into a welter of alcohol, vagrancy, and, ultimately, enlightenment. Perhaps most alienated of all is Michael Trey in “Between Storms,” who locks himself in his New York City apartment after being traumatized by a major storm and finds himself taken by the outside world as a prophet—not of doom, but, maybe, peace? Not all these awkward types are hapless or benign: The short, shy surgeon in “Cut, Cut, Cut” turns out to be something like a mad scientist out of H.G. Wells while “Showdown on the Hudson” is a saga about an authentic Black cowboy from Texas who’s not exactly a perfect fit for New York City but is soon compelled to do the right thing, Western-style. The tough-minded and tenderly observant Mosley style remains constant throughout these stories even as they display varied approaches from the gothic to the surreal.
The range and virtuosity of these stories make this Mosley’s most adventurous and, maybe, best book.Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-8021-4956-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Grove
Review Posted Online: Sept. 1, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
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