Roy Kesey has been hailed as one of our best young writers. All Over, his debut collection, presents nineteen of his most original stories. They first appeared in magazines such as McSweeney's, Ninth Letter and The Kenyon Review, and have been since been in anthologized in Best American Short Stories, The Robert Olen Butler Prize Anthology and New Sudden Fiction.
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Editorial Reviews
Review
"Roy Kesey writes with the soul of a ventriloquist."
--David Ulin, The Los Angeles Times
"(A)mong the best post-postmodern fiction that I've read in years."
--Justin Taylor, The Believer
"Kesey is on to something great here--the kind of fiction that bends our minds like paper clips."
--David Abrams, January Magazine
"A near-direct descendant of Samuel Beckett."
--Jonathan Messinger, Time Out Chicago
"Kesey is a shapeshifter, a voice-imitator, a puppet master... He is Barthelmean in his ability to make something dense or highbrow come off as funny or gamesmanlike, which is high praise."
--Blake Butler, Rain Taxi
A restlessly inventive collection, as the best story collections so often are - comic and tender, ironic and earnest, deadpan and passionate. A distinctive new voice, from a distinctive new press. --Peter Ho Davies, author of The Welsh Girl
For those keen to know the next generation of the American short story, consider All Over, which features the loopy paranoia of Don DeLillo, the po-mo-mo whimsy of Donald Barthelme, the spooky learnedness of Thomas Pynchon, the high-minded literary sleight-of-hand of Robert Coover and John Barth, and the secret geek speak of George Saunders. Add a touch of the Brothers Grimm, Jules Verne, and the Looney Tunes, and you've got a book of a million moving parts, all of which work in breath-taking harmony to keep illusion aloft. --Lee K. Abbott, author of All Things, All at Once
--David Ulin, The Los Angeles Times
"(A)mong the best post-postmodern fiction that I've read in years."
--Justin Taylor, The Believer
"Kesey is on to something great here--the kind of fiction that bends our minds like paper clips."
--David Abrams, January Magazine
"A near-direct descendant of Samuel Beckett."
--Jonathan Messinger, Time Out Chicago
"Kesey is a shapeshifter, a voice-imitator, a puppet master... He is Barthelmean in his ability to make something dense or highbrow come off as funny or gamesmanlike, which is high praise."
--Blake Butler, Rain Taxi
A restlessly inventive collection, as the best story collections so often are - comic and tender, ironic and earnest, deadpan and passionate. A distinctive new voice, from a distinctive new press. --Peter Ho Davies, author of The Welsh Girl
For those keen to know the next generation of the American short story, consider All Over, which features the loopy paranoia of Don DeLillo, the po-mo-mo whimsy of Donald Barthelme, the spooky learnedness of Thomas Pynchon, the high-minded literary sleight-of-hand of Robert Coover and John Barth, and the secret geek speak of George Saunders. Add a touch of the Brothers Grimm, Jules Verne, and the Looney Tunes, and you've got a book of a million moving parts, all of which work in breath-taking harmony to keep illusion aloft. --Lee K. Abbott, author of All Things, All at Once
About the Author
Roy Kesey's other books include his debut novel Pacazo, the award-winning novella Nothing in the World, and a historical guide to the Chinese city of Nanjing. All Over made The L Magazine's recent "Best Books of the Decade" list. His short stories, essays and poems have appeared in more than eighty magazines, including McSweeney's, Subtropics, Ninth Letter and The Kenyon Review. Among other awards, his work has won a Pushcart Prize Special Mention and the 2008 Missouri Review Editors' Prize in Fiction, and has appeared in several anthologies including Best American Short Stories, The Robert Olen Butler Prize Anthology and New Sudden Fiction. He is the recipient of a 2010 prose fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. He currently lives in Peru with his wife and children.
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More About the Author
Roy Kesey's books include his debut novel Pacazo, the award-winning novella Nothing in the World, a historical guide to the Chinese city of Nanjing, and a short story collection called All Over, which made The L Magazine's recent "Best Books of the Decade" list. His short stories, essays and poems have appeared in more than eighty magazines, including McSweeney's, Subtropics, Ninth Letter and The Kenyon Review. Among other awards, his work has won a Pushcart Prize Special Mention and the 2008 Missouri Review Editors' Prize in Fiction, and has appeared in several anthologies including Best American Short Stories, The Robert Olen Butler Prize Anthology and New Sudden Fiction. He is the recipient of a 2010 prose fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. He currently lives in Peru with his wife and family.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Roy Kesey is a star, and these stories are why,
By
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: All Over (Perfect Paperback)
The first thing you'll notice about the stories in All Over is that they move lightning fast, that their trajectory is fueled by funny, that their funny is not separable from the sadness from where the funny comes, that the sadness is not wry or perfunctory, but rather as true as the true things we'd rather not know our lives are limned by.
The second thing you'll notice is that you're done reading, and you're done laughing, but the stories aren't done with you. They'll be eating at you for awhile, because of that sad thing, and because of that true thing. The third thing you'll notice is that you've picked up the book again, and you've forgotten, while those stories were eating at you, that amidst all that sad and all that true, those stories were really pretty funny, and you'll read the funny with pleasure, forgetting what's going to hit you next, which is the whiplash of the sad and the true. You'll get knocked around this way a few times, and you'll read the book again, even after you think you're done with it. Who else does this to you? Donald Barthelme, sure, and also Brock Clarke and George Saunders and Kurt Vonnegut. Heady company, yes, but Kesey earns it out, story by story. I'm glad I bought this book, and if you're on my Christmas list, I might buy you a copy, too, but why wait, and deprive yourself of these complicated pleasures? This is a book to buy now, and to read, and to savor.
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Publisher comments,
By
This review is from: All Over (Perfect Paperback)
As the publisher of Roy Kesey's remarkable collection, I am proud to share with you some comments from other author/readers about Roy's 'All Over:'
"These stories by Roy Kesey, in the way they brilliantly blend humor and pathos, remind me of coins tossed in the air, turning over and over, one side cast in light, the other in darkness. His writing is original, fearless, strikingly funny, and clean - so clean - his words sharp enough to cut the eye." - Benjamin Percy, author of The Language of Elk and Refresh, Refresh "All Over is the strangest, best collection of stories you will read this year. With a seamless blend of lyricism and minimalism, Roy Kesey travels All Over the terrain of he psyche, the human condition, the relationships we have and fail to have. These stories team with insights, little horrors, moments of sweet verity, and surreal surprise. The characters are persuasive, and the storytelling is both hallucinatory and familiar. This is a new voice you must hear." -Laura Kasischke, author of Be Mine, and five other titles "Roy Kesey tempers his prodigious imagination with fine syntactic control, so that his stories - like Donald Barthelme's - feel simultaneously free-wheeling and precise. All Over is an exhilarating collection - funny, harrowing, smart, odd, and inventive." -Chris Bachelder, author of U.S! and Bear vs. Shark "Reading Roy Kesey is like being allowed to peep momentarily through a mysterious hole in the wall into a hidden universe that is very much like ours only slightly brighter, slightly sadder, certainly no less odd. Violinists play in the rain to keep swallows in flight. Strange, leaking packages tied up with string wait to be opened. In other words, Roy Kesey is a delight to read." -Samantha Hunt, author of The Seas "A restlessly inventive collection, as the best story collections so often are - comic and tender, ironic and earnest, deadpan and passionate. A distinctive new voice, from a distinctive new press." -Peter Ho Davies, author of The Welsh Girl "For those keen to know the next generation of the American short story, consider All Over, which features the loopy paranoia of Don DeLillo, the po-mo-mo whimsy of Donald Barthelme, the spooky learnedness of Thomas Pynchon, the high-minded literary sleight-of-hand of Robert Coover and John Barth, and the secret geek speak of George Saunders. Add a touch of the Brothers Grimm, Jules Verne, and the Looney Tunes, and you've got a book of a million moving parts, all of which work in breath-taking harmony to keep illusion aloft." -Lee K. Abbott, author of All Things, All at Once: Collected Stories, and five other collections "Roy Kesey's excellent All Over is all over intelligent, intense, often very funny and frequently, frankly, beautiful. Stories in this collection will imminently appear in slightly different form in the deepest, darkest corners of your mind where they will burn, very, very brightly, for hours." -Laird Hunt, author of The Paris Stories, The Impossibly, Indiana, Indiana, and The Exquisite "In All Over, Roy Kesey's postmodern parables are stunning mash-ups of style, content, characters. The book is a narrative train wreck that keeps happening of arcane jumbled juxtaposed graffitied rolling stock crashing into horribly hilarious verbal clown car kinetic sculpture." -Michael Martone, author of The Flatness and Other Landscapes, and other titles
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Sweet, sad, wonderful,
By
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: All Over (Perfect Paperback)
Loved this book. Kesey has an easy and enlightening way of telling his stories - I hope he writes another collection quickly.
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