Malasz

These are the stories of three boys living in Texas: one growing up, one dreaming, and one fighting to stay alive in the face of destitution and adversity. There's second-grader William, a shy yet imaginative boy who schemes about how to get back at his school-yard bully, Randy. Then there's Sam, a 15-year-old boy who dreams of getting a 1980 Mazda RX-7 for his sixteenth birthday but has to work at a Greek restaurant to fund his dream. Finally, there's Seff, a 21-year-old on the brink of manhood, trying to survive along with his roommate, working as waiters and barely making ends meet. These three stories are told with heart, humor, and an uncompromising look at what it meant to grow up in Texas during the 1980s and 1990s. The collection opens with Wiliam's story, "The Great and Powerful, Brave Raideen". It's a short story with a predictable plot element, but it's nicely done. The characters are honestly portrayed; the dialogue genuine. It demonstrates...

Surgeon Robert Emmerling’s death at age 86 in The Girl in the Photo ’s opening chapter serves as a catalyst for a series of discoveries by his two children. While clearing out their father’s home, David and Abbie find a memoir he had written about being stationed in Japan during the Korean War, years before he met their mother. It describes his involvement with Masami, a woman he met there. David and Abbie also turn up Masami’s photograph and a letter she had written to Dr. Emmerling after he returned to the U.S. This previously unknown episode in their father’s life raises questions for the siblings: Why did the romance end, and what happened to Masami afterward? The novel draws the reader into this family’s story through plot elements that span past and present-day action. In the present, Abbie and David deal with their grief, pursue the truth about Masami and try to resolve dilemmas in their personal lives. But the past mingles freely in the form of frequent flashbacks to the siblin...

Remember Big follows the bumpy journey of Charlie Matthias as he tries to rebuild his life after bottoming out in his early 30s. When the story begins, he’s living in his wealthy parents’ suburban Chicago home after addiction wrecked his marriage and professional golf career. He’s surrounded by dysfunction – a bullying father, a manipulative mother and an assortment of insensitive acquaintances – all of them passing judgment on Charlie’s squandering of his potential. Despite his loathing for the shallow country club enclave into which he’s retreated, Charlie is hobbled by inertia. He has no motivation to find a new career or do anything other than pine for his ex-wife. His family’s relentless criticism finally goads him into making a new start, and he moves to the city. His apartment building’s owners are the parents of a woman he’d known as a teenager. The daughter, Erica Denner, also lives in the building, and Charlie is immediately attracted to her, even though she is the antithesi...

Legend has it that Shakespeare's play, Macbeth , is cursed . As such, the superstitious who work on the play will refer (and insist others do the same) to it as "The Scottish Play". Many have speculated as to the reason, but Harry Greenville writes a novel with his own explanation: the Bard stole the idea from someone else. Shakespeare's victim then sets out to exact revenge through sabotage. Greenville, an aspiring actor living in L.A., makes the mistake of uploading it to a website where it is pilfered. When Greenville learns that his story is being made into a movie, he sets out to exact revenge of his own. There's such a superb attention to detail here that I would swear that Collis worked on a movie set at one point in his life or he performed a mind meld with someone who did. Collis introduces us to the boredom of limo drivers, the humiliating subservience of runners, the brown nosing of the wannabes, and the egos of Hollywood's lords. But at no point d...

This Jealous Earth by Scott Dominic Carpenter. Midwestern Gothic Press. It is interesting that one of these sharply written short stories, “The Spirit of the Dog,” takes place in a uranium mine. Instead of looking for sparkly bits of gold, the miners run around with Geiger counters after a preliminary blast, looking for little bursts of radiation. Most of these stories involve connections: their breaking, their forming, their resilience, their failure. Just as the forces binding particles in the atomic nucleus are enormously strong, many of the characters in these pieces are drawn, despite themselves, to their imperfect families, to their treasured pets. The opposite occurs in “The Spirit of the Dog”; the various miners pit themselves against the new, pretty engineer. Their individual stubborn egos form a sort of misogynist hive mind whose evil ideas drive everyone apart. The egos of squabbling or drunk parents get in the way, but their kids band together for mischief or otherwise st...