Entertaining, well-written stories that carry a deeper message.
Diverse, stimulating assortment of nine short stories by a veteran short story writer and English professor at Texas A&M University.
This brief collection features a variety of themes and plotlines, but most of the stories share some commonalities: settings in the southwestern United States (mainly in the author’s own state of Texas) and characters who either drink too much themselves or are affected by the drinking habits of others. In the opening story, “Atonement Circle,” Roger, a priest currently without a flock, is camping out at his mother’s pristine, white-colored ranch while dealing with the aftermath of his divorce; ostensibly, he’s writing his book, but primarily, he’s drinking scotch from a coffee mug. His peaceful retreat, not to mention his mother’s virginal decor, is destroyed by two housebreaking ex-cons. In “Playa Conchal,” Danny is called to a nursing home where his father, Donald, suffering from a rare form of dementia, believes he is vacationing in Costa Rica. Cornelius takes a familiar enough theme—the heartbreaking effects of dementia—and twists it into a story of hope and living one’s last days to the fullest. Even “Black Stag,” despite a dubious beginning featuring a stag as the protagonist and narrator, emerges as another inspiring tale of two species caring for one another. “The Art of Brunch” is an enjoyable, if slightly predictable, cautionary tale illustrating the old saying “you can’t buy class.” Most unique, and perhaps least successful, of the nine stories is the eponymous and final offering, “Masters Workshop,” about three afflicted children who gather at the behest of Logan Stane. In this story, Cornelius tries too hard to build suspense, constructing unnecessary back stories that detract from the simple tale of a miracle. Cornelius excels at creating memorable and generally likable (despite some flaws) characters. His writing is clean and free of errors, as one would expect from an English professor.
Pub Date: Oct. 18, 2014
ISBN: 978-1500881108
Page Count: 140
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Dec. 15, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2015
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
SEEN & HEARD
IN THE NEWS
SEEN & HEARD
A newcomer to watch: fresh, funny, and tough.
Seven stories, including a couple of prizewinners, from an exuberantly talented young Thai-American writer.
In the poignant title story, a young man accompanies his mother to Kok Lukmak, the last in the chain of Andaman Islands—where the two can behave like “farangs,” or foreigners, for once. It’s his last summer before college, her last before losing her eyesight. As he adjusts to his unsentimental mother’s acceptance of her fate, they make tentative steps toward the future. “Farangs,” included in Best New American Voices 2005 (p. 711), is about a flirtation between a Thai teenager who keeps a pet pig named Clint Eastwood and an American girl who wanders around in a bikini. His mother, who runs a motel after having been deserted by the boy’s American father, warns him about “bonking” one of the guests. “Draft Day” concerns a relieved but guilty young man whose father has bribed him out of the draft, and in “Don’t Let Me Die in This Place,” a bitter grandfather has moved from the States to Bangkok to live with his son, his Thai daughter-in-law, and two grandchildren. The grandfather’s grudging adjustment to the move and to his loss of autonomy (from a stroke) is accelerated by a visit to a carnival, where he urges the whole family into a game of bumper cars. The longest story, “Cockfighter,” is an astonishing coming-of-ager about feisty Ladda, 15, who watches as her father, once the best cockfighter in town, loses his status, money, and dignity to Little Jui, 16, a meth addict whose father is the local crime boss. Even Ladda is in danger, as Little Jui’s bodyguards try to abduct her. Her mother tells Ladda a family secret about her father’s failure of courage in fighting Big Jui to save his own sister’s honor. By the time Little Jui has had her father beaten and his ear cut off, Ladda has begun to realize how she must fend for herself.
A newcomer to watch: fresh, funny, and tough.Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-8021-1788-0
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Grove
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2004
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