In the Devil's Territory - Softcover

Minor, Kyle

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0979312361 ISBN 13: 9780979312366

Publisher: Dzanc Books, 2008

Synopsis

The debut collection of stories and novellas (including "A Day Meant to Do Less," a Best American Mystery Stories 2008 selection) from a young writer who is, as Benjamin Percy has said, a master of "the dark caverns of the human heart."

A schoolteacher escapes East Berlin at night, swimming the Spree River three times carrying elderly relatives on her back, so she can make her way to West Palm Beach, Florida, and "ruin the lives of fifth grade boys." A young husband reckons with the likelihood that his wife's troubled pregnancy will end with her death before Christmas. A preacher bathes his ill and elderly mother, not knowing that she has mistaken him for the long-lost cousin she watched murder his brother in her father's tobacco field. In six stories that read like novels in miniature, In the Devil's Territory plumbs the depths of human mystery, where meet our kindnesses and our cruelties, our generosities and our pettinesses.

Kyle Minor's work has appeared widely in magazines and anthologies, among them Best American Mystery Stories 2008, The Southern Review, The Gettysburg Review, Surreal South, and Twentysomething Essays by Twentysomething Writers: The Best New Voices of 2006.

Advance praise for In the Devil's Territory:

"In the Devil's Territory is a brilliant and electrifying debut from one of America's best young writers. I would walk through Hell to be able to write like him."
- Donald Ray Pollock, author of Knockemstiff

"Who is Kyle Minor and how does he know so much about the dark caverns of the human heart? What whispered spells does he cast to make me laugh and weep and gasp and clench my jaw all in the same page? From what secret river does he pull his sentences, glittering and sinuous?"
--Benjamin Percy, author of Refresh, Refresh and The Wilding

"In the Devil's Territory is an extravagantly good book. Dealing with the uneasy transactions people make in family and companionship, its six stories chart the wide scope of human possibility, from brutality to complicated redemption, and achieve a precise, crucial compassion."
--Erin McGraw, author of The Seamstress of Hollywood Boulevard

About this title

About the Author

Kyle Minor's work has appeared widely in magazines and anthologies, among them Best American Mystery Stories 2008, The Southern Review, The Gettysburg Review, Surreal South, and Twentysomething Essays by Twentysomething Writers: The Best New Voices of 2006. 

Reviews

This debut collection focuses on religion and doubt, and showcases the potential and inconsistency of its young writer. The San Diego County Credit Union Poinsettia Bowl Party, which opens the collection, is Minor at his best—a powerful story about a man overcome with guilt, worry and resentment as the health of his wife and their unborn child hangs in the balance. It is followed by an unwieldy, 68-page tale of a squeamish minister undressing his senile mother for a bath (which is then followed by a story featuring another minister with many of the same life details). In general, the frequent recurrence of circumstance, setting and, sometimes, character, is more repetitive than progressive. Still, Minor has a knack for capturing melancholy and establishing empathy for his book's many wayward characters, as in The Navy Man, which tells the story of a Christian school principal's frustrated wife as she considers cheating (again) on her husband. Hopefully, the author's talents will be better displayed in his next book. (Nov.)
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Edition details

• Publisher: Dzanc Books
• Publication date: 2008
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0979312361
• ISBN 13: 9780979312366
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 220