The first story in this collection was all right, but most of them were awful. The author's grasp of humorous writing reminded me of the stories I wrote in junior high school. They were fine stories for junior high school...just not for a published adult collection. ( )

Like many first short story collections, Rebecca Curtis’ Twenty Grand explores a variety of styles and themes — signs of a young writer searching for her unique voice perhaps. What makes this collection special is that Curtis writes so well no matter which direction she turns. She offers heightened realism in “Summer, with Twins” or “The Alpine Slide”, stories that are told from the perspective of a quirky young woman protagonist. Our sympathies engage, but there is also something slightly askew. In other stories, such as “The Wolf at the Door” or “Monsters”, Curtis dips into George Saunders’ surrealist territory. Still others, like “Knick, Knack, Paddywhack” or “Solicitation” or even “To the Interstate” have the feel of more experimental McSweeney’s-type pieces. But perhaps the best stories combine aspects of each of these modes through which Curtis arrives at a kind of heightened surrealism — stories that on the surface seem straightforwardly realist but keep pitching over toward whatever horrors lie off the even keel. Here, the title story, “Twenty Grand”, and “Big Bear, California”, and also “The Witches” set the mark.

Since I’ve mentioned almost every story in the collection, it will come as no surprise that I think Rebecca Curtis is a young writer worth watching. There is so much potential here. And for that alone I would gladly recommend this collection. The edition I had also included a P.S. section at the end, which is not untypical these days. There I was expecting to find an interview or something further about the author. Curtis has taken this section and turned it to good effect by using those twenty pages to pick out favourite places, businesses, and activities in her home state of New Hampshire, possibly to redress some of the seedier views she presents in her stories, many of which are set in New Hampshire locales. Sounds like a straightforward project, but here it is just as curious and heightened and slightly askew as the rest of the writing, so don’t skip the P.S. I’m already looking forward to whatever else Curtis will eventually publish. ( )

Rebecca Curtis shows her literary dexterity in this collection of quick reading stories. Some of the stories are realistic enough to be believed, and others are so weird its like having a looking-glass into somebody's dreams...or nightmares. This collection takes you all over the emotional spectrum, and through a pile of genres, as well. What is more impressive than the variety is that regardless of the style or voice the quality of the writing remains consistently good. Its one thing to be able to write well in one voice, but quite another to write well in five or more!!!! ( )

Vivid imagery suffused with longing: The stories in Rebecca Curtis' "Twenty Grand" (HarperPerennial: 240 pp., $13.95 paper) are satisfyingly bittersweet. Eastern resort towns provide most of the settings, but the narrators aren't vacationing — they're teenagers who waitress, or their dads work in the local garage, or Mom is stuck in a snowbound cabin. The townie dilemma — feeling ownership of a landscape that the wealthy somehow lay greater claim to — adds tension to stories filled with gorgeous and telling detail.

"[G]old grasses waved and the metal towers of the lift glinted white. The wires holding the chairs shimmered like mirages in the heat. A hawk floated in the sky like an ash," Curtis writes in "The Alpine Slide," in which a doomed summer business is the backdrop for a sheltered teenager's coming of age. The girls telling these stories — almost always girls, in first person — are self-destructive or calmly determined or uncomprehending, but always connected to the beauty around them.

Yet Curtis' debut collection also includes counterpoint, a handful of stories stripped bare of character and setting. In these, a husband and wife remain nameless, physical details are rare and the language is thin and taut. In "Solicitation," the narrator tells us, "At the counter the counter boy looked at us funny. I did not think anything was so funny I did not like his funny look." This deadpan delivery, circular and ultimately unsettling, is paired with the illogic of dreams. Characters move in silhouette against blank backgrounds, like Javanese shadow puppets. If at times the surrealism falls short of the work of, say, an Aimee Bender, it has an unmistakable power. Binding the unreal and real is the common theme of betrayal, more than once between sisters — betrayal that as it wounds remains genuinely, strangely tender.

Reviewed for the Los Angeles Times: http://www.latimes.com/features/books/la-bk-kellogg1jul01,1,7747251.story ( )