Not a bookclub book. Borrowed from Claudia. Strange book - 9 short stories all together. Most very melancholy. ( )

An interesting collection of short stories. each well written and interesting, and each telling a story with just a little weirdness to it. ( )

An interesting collection of short stories. each well written and interesting, and each telling a story with just a little weirdness to it. ( )

My first exposure to Eric Puchner was through his wonderful novel - Model Home: A Novel -- about a father struggling to keep his family together after career setbacks and one shocking family tragedy. That book made me want to go back and read his short-story collection, which I knew received considerable critical accolades when it came out in 2005. Now I know why. I enjoyed every story in this piece. They all offer compelling storylines about characters he gets you to care deeply about from the very outset.

There's a considerable range of writing talent on display here - unique premises, unexpected character and plot developments, and beautiful descriptive passages with a lyricism that never crosses the line into those overwrought attempts at poetic language that some authors fall prey to when trying to exhibit their "writing chops."

Amid all this virtuosity, there is also a light, deft touch at work that can get you to laugh over characters' foibles, such as the would-be car hijacker whose has the bad luck to commandeer a driver's ed car filled with students who don't know how to drive yet (in "A Fear of Invisible Tribes"). The writing is so evocative that certain images will linger in your mind long after you finish reading the collection: the disabled men who sticks his tongue in the ear of his caretaker every time the caretaker has to change his diaper (in "Children of God"); the father angrily trying to scoop up the one fish he wants in a pet store fish tank because he can't have what he really wants - a chance to interact with the beautiful young girl who normally works the counter (in "Neon Tetras"); the ants marching off with alphabet soup letters that spell out nonsense words beneath the eyes of the two adulterers who have not control over the one language they can't resist speaking in - that of their bodies ("Body Language"); the proud but poor Latina bathing her mentally disabled grown son in her garage cum apartment ("Mission").

The 10 stories in the collection are:

1. Children of God - 22 pp - A suicidally depressed young man begins to take reluctant pleasure in the daily rituals of his life as a caretaker in a home for two men - one mentally disabled, the other severely physically disabled.

2. Essay #3: Leda and the Swan - 26 pp - A high school girl's essay on the Yeats' poem "Leda and the Swan" becomes a revelation of the crazy dynamic of her family life - a rebellious, vegan older sister; an alcoholic mother; a step-father who spends all his time watching ladies' beach volleyball on TV; and a musician boyfriend she thinks she has stolen from her sister.

3. Child's Play - 21 pp - An elementary school outcast has only one friend, and when he has a chance to hang out with the tougher and "cooler" boys in his neighborhood, he becomes an accomplice to a stunning act of sadism.

4. Diablo - 26 pp - An illegal Mexican immigrant shares a studio apartment in San Francisco with his brother. He sends half of the small amount he earns every month back home to his beloved wife and children and dreams of returning one day to Mexico to run a ranch. With the money he's been saving in a papier mache devil that his son sent him (the Diablo of the title), he's halfway toward his goal, until things start to unravel for him - his boss docks his pay after he makes an honest mistake and temptation presents itself on a rare night out for a beer with his wannabe ladies' man brother.

5. Neon Tetra - 6 pp - A young boy discovers his father's desire to frequently visit a lush tropical fish store in downtown Baltimore involves something far more complex than his desire to fill a new coffin-sized aquarium. The descriptive passages are lyrically beautiful - just one example as they step into the tank-filled pet store: "the lavender hush that felt like a rescue, absorbing you into its glow." And the ending here (without giving too much away) is a master-stroke - the father's frustrated attempt to pull from a tank the one fish that he wants above all the other identical ones is a perfect metaphorical illustration of his life.

6. Legends - 27 pp - A couple on a second honeymoon in Mexico that was designed to compensate for the misadventures of their first get caught in the spell of an American who's been living in the country and gone local. Hungry for some adventure, the wife agrees to let this man become their tour guide, even though the more cautious and skeptical husband would prefer they didn't. A trip to the countryside to visit a comatose girl who's supposed to be a magical healer serves as the setting to prove whose instincts were right.

7. A Fear of Invisible Tribes -- 25 pp- An art history graduate student meets another woman, a recovering alcoholic, in driver's ed training. When a man with a sawed-off shotgun hijacks their student driver car, the former alcoholic speaks up boldly to the hijacker and saves the grad student's life. The experience helps the graduate student release all the crippling fears that have compromised her life. But when she tries to befriend her savior their social class distinctions make the relationship difficult. The grad student makes every attempt to prevent the alcoholic from feeling stupid when they're in conversation with her fellow grad students, but her own suspicions about how lower-class women behave become a roadblock to their friendship and undermine her ability to keep her fears of just about everything at bay.

8. Body Language - 5 pp - A married man and woman are cheating on their spouses. The man's wife, who was his lover's friend when they were all in college together, has a disease that's causing her body to cripple into paralysis. Consumed with guilt, the adulterers still can't resist each other.

9. Animals Here Below - 23 pp - A young boy and his sister try to make their stepmom, who raised them since infancy, return home after a three-year absence, hoping they can return their family life to the happier days when they were all together - and before their father entered the prolonged depression he's been in since she left.

10. Mission - 33 pp - An idealistic young man teaches English as a second language to a mix of immigrants from around the world - Russia, Eastern Europe, Mexico & China. He desperately wants to be part of the melting pot that is the Mission district of San Francisco, but he hasn't had much success getting the district's residents to accept him. While his students do begin to flourish, he gets caught up in the anger directed at him by a proud, older Latina, who didn't like being corrected for the use of the word "enemy" in a contextual way that she was sure was right. She drops out of his class and becomes his enemy as she begins stalking him with her grown, disabled son. The teacher's diligent efforts to win her back make this story incredibly poignant. ( )

A terrific short story collection. Diverse yet seemingly authentic points of view and characters. I was personally thrilled by the last story in the collection 'Mission' because it's set in my neighborhood in San Francisco, and at one point the main character was a block from my house! But more seriously, Puchner is great at creating characters with a lot of individuality and authenticity. From the men in the group home to the teens on Halloween to the lesbian getting driving lessons, each character is believable and fully human. ( )