“Everything Natalie said seemed, to herself, to have been said better by him. He was less fond of speaking, however, than he was of hitting people in the face, which seemed a more likely source of her love to those of us who knew him,” begins Jason Brown’s linked collection of beautifully haunted, violent, and wry stories set in the densely forested lands of northern New England. In these tales of forbidden love, runaway children, patrimony, alcohol, class, inheritance, and survival, Brown’s elegant prose emits both quiet despair and a poignant sense of hope and redemption. These vivid accounts of troubled lives combine the powerful family drama of Andre Dubus and Russell Banks, the dark wit of Denis Johnson, the lost souls of Charles D’Ambrosio, and the New England gothic of Nathaniel Hawthorne. Jason Brown’s exquisitely crafted second collection will establish him as one of the most important voices in American short fiction.

Reviews

Starred Review. An inchoate evil is hard at work in each of the 11 stunning, loosely linked stories from Brown (Driving the Heart and Other Stories), set in harsh, sparsely populated northern New England. A dark realism is established in the title tale, where a young boy drifts through the turbulent aftermath of his depressed sister's drowning, his family despondent, his pastor sanctimonious. Such angst—sometimes leavened with wry humor, but more often just unsettling—is pervasive. In Afternoon of the Sassanoa, a weary father's ego sinks the family sailboat, with unforeseen consequences for his son. In Tree, an old woman's blithe nephew levels the woods her late husband's family had nurtured for generations. And in A Fair Chance, one of the few stories with anything close to a happy ending, a young recovering alcoholic saves the life of his AA sponsor and employer. Ravaged by despair, numbed by grief and lurching toward unattainable love, the people of these gothic stories somehow never totally self-destruct. Brown's deep sympathy for his flawed characters endows these polished shorts with brilliant appeal. (Nov.)
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