Always Happy Hour, Mary Miller’s second collection of stories, opens with the strangest dedication I have ever read: "For my exes." Why would one dedicate anything to one’s exes? And not just one ex–not, say, “The One I’m Still Friends With”–but all of them, wholesale? At once blunt and tender, impersonal and twistedly sweet, these three words set a tone for the sixteen stories that follow. Exes–the crowd, the mob, the mass–preoccupy Miller’s aimless heroines. They trail behind the narrative … [Read more...] about Ex Marks the Spot: a Review of Mary Miller’s Always Happy Hour
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Review: Douglas Coupland’s Worst. Person. Ever.
Attention Simon Pegg and Nick Frost: Grab the rights immediately. Douglas Coupland's Worst. Person. Ever. might be the most Celluloid-Ready. Postmodern Novel. Ever. If this sounds like a condemnation (shallow), consider your feeling for the cerebral, hilarious, and easily digestible work of another Douglas. It's hard to imagine Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy fans wouldn't feel at home in this absurdist British-flavored comedy, even with its relentless barrage of invectives and crass … [Read more...] about Review: Douglas Coupland’s Worst. Person. Ever.
On Leaving the Sea by Ben Marcus
For all intents and purposes, Leaving the Sea is Ben Marcus’s first “true” short story collection. Arriving almost twenty years after his debut, The Age of Wire and String, the stories demonstrate an impressive and almost un-stomachable ability to jump from one style to the next, yet they're watermarked with voices so uniquely Marcus's own. When I had the chance to speak with him over the phone, I fanboyed-out about this dexterity and acuity, his stylistic hopscotching. “In some ways,” he said, … [Read more...] about On Leaving the Sea by Ben Marcus