Dark, Dark, and More Dark

After reading Donald Ray Pollock’s dark and gripping The Devil All the Time, I ordered his debut collection of short stories, Knockemstiff.

Like Pollock’s novel, the stories in Knockemstiff are deeply disturbing—tales of the down and disenfranchised in southern Ohio.  It’s hard to read more than a few of these stories in one sitting, but fans of Pollock’s unique literary perspective will appreciate this collection.

 

What would Honest Abe Say?

Mike Lofgren worked on Capitol Hill for some three decades, spending all of that time in close quarters with Republic bosses and colleagues.  His critique of the Republican party, then, comes from a reliable source—despite the fact that much of his criticism would sound completely natural coming from someone on the other side of the aisle.

But Democrats don’t come away unscathed, either.  Lofgren’s The Party is Over: How Republicans Went Crazy, Democrats Became Useless, and the Middle Class Got Shafted should be required reading.  Regardless of your political affiliation, the last chapter especially has some sage advice for repairing our country’s damaged system.

 

Love and Wolves

I simply couldn’t find enough time over the last week for Tell the Wolves I’m Home!  Had I the time, I would have devoured the book much more quickly.

In 1986, early in the AIDS crisis, fourteen-year-old June Elbus loses her beloved uncle (a famous but reclusive artist) to the disease.  She suddenly feels unmoored in the world, left alone without Uncle Finn, her best friend.  Aside from June’s memories, all that remains of Finn is his final painting, a portrait of June and her older sister.

But then June receives a message from her uncle’s lover, Toby.  Because June’s mother resents Toby (believing that Toby separated Finn from the family and that Toby is responsible for Finn’s death), June decides to meet him secretly in Manhattan.

Over the next several months, June forges a friendship with the man she was never allowed to know before her uncle’s death.  She finds out things she never knew about her family, she learns more about her uncle’s life, and she discovers that some of the things she loved most about her uncle were things that he gained from his relationship with Toby.

A story about love in its many forms, Carol Rifka Brunt’s Tell the Wolves I’m Home is a gem of a book.