Whatever Happens - Softcover

Conley, Tim

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1897178131 ISBN 13: 9781897178133

Publisher: Insomniac Pr, 2006

Synopsis

Whatever Happens is a collection of stories for people who feel that reality is not the best deal going. Tim Conley explores the fragility of our perceptions as well as the illusions that we so badly need. Sometimes spare, these nineteen stories move between the obsessive and the disinterested, the extraordinary and the humdrum.

About this title

Reviews

This debut collection of 19 very short stories combines keenly observed real situations with fantastic and at times surreal touches. Conley veers from neighbors politely fencing verbally over the rope they each intend to hang themselves with, to four guys going to a bar in the company of a talking dog, and over to the dream of an unhappily married painter. Through all of the shenanigans, Conley stays focused on the emotional truths that run through even the shaggiest of his shaggy (or talking) dog stories. Highlights include "Good Faith" (featuring "the usual people... Grant and Yellow and myself"), "Checking" (where a birdbath delicately evokes a brother's drowning) and the touching dinner table exchanges of "A Country Called Roughage." Lovely small perceptions of character balance the funhouse quality of stories, in which women literally fly away and Bellini's Norma is held to be "the greatest opera for the lost." Some of the stories read as mere absurdist sketches or roughed-out concepts, but they come off as earnest experimentation rather than cloying whimsy. The easy intimacy Conley wrests from bewildering situations is marvelous. (Oct.)
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Edition details

• Publisher: Insomniac Pr
• Publication date: 2006
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1897178131
• ISBN 13: 9781897178133
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 176