Customer Reviews

Charactered Pieces: stories

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This collection of stories is one of the best I've read in a long time. The short form has always been my preference. I admire when a writer can take us immediately in and then release us in short duration. When it works, it is exhilarating. Caleb J. Ross delivers this.

The stories in Charactered Pieces are dark, sometimes disturbing, and anxious. I found a theme of parental angst stream through many of them. It was enjoyable to spend some time in the mind of Caleb J. Ross, but in the end, it was more personal. I believe a story is successful when you discover something about yourself after reading it. I highly recommend this collection.

As author Stephen Graham Jones states on the back of the book, these stories are unforgettable. I'll never get that yellow hardhat out of my mind. And now the cover makes sense (read the perverse first story and it will make sense). All in all, a slim but expansive set of stories for those looking for something fresh.

The characters in Caleb J Ross's Charactered Pieces are flawed and disfigured in the most unimaginable ways possible. There's Lori who had the "underdeveloped left leg of her fetus-in-fetu sister protruding from her gut." There's the pseudo-prophet, Abel, who drank the blood of a camel. And there's the masterpiece "The Camp," my favorite story in the book, starting ominously with one of the best first lines I've read: "My mother doesn't use hangers anymore."

Caleb J Ross is not only a storyteller; he is also the invisible wildcard in a gym full of people senselessly busting each other's head off. He collects the blood in the towels. He keeps a scorecard of their loss. He realizes that that their wins are not going to last forever. He reminds them again and again. It does not matter if nobody listens.

I want his characters to suffer because they are maladjusted, materialistic, and destructive. But then, I also want them to be happy. These losers, these dredges of social failures, whose wants and excesses are so shamelessly put across -- these dysfunctional characters make me wish for them a safe journey. Maybe, that's what Stephen Graham Jones is talking about on the cover blurb for the book: "These stories change you." Maybe, in ways you don't want to be changed.

Writing that moves you is hard to find while wading through the debris of mainstream literature.

Caleb's homespun flavor of modern tragedy will move you--surely as a swan dive into oncoming traffic.

"Charactered Pieces" might be compared to being in a bad relationship: you fall deeper and deeper in love as your heart breaks over and over again. You won't forget these words, even if (for some ungodly reason) you wanted to.

All you really want is more.

Ross's work is a shining example of great modern literature. His stories all end powerfully and significantly. It is not possible to walk away from a single story in this book without feeling something a little deeper or a little stronger. He is a master of metaphor and characterization. His stories are believable, surreal and truly heart felt all at once and every technique of fiction is used expertly to make them great. Surely, Ross will provide readers with many great stories for years to come. Pick this up.

Bottom line and up front: Ross has got some serious talent.

That much becomes obvious on the first page and with each successive one. In "Charactered Pieces," Ross plays doctor on the reader, either by tugging on the heart strings or twisting the knife in your gut. Each story has an intended effect, whether it's a nostalic longing or an uncomfortable self-awareness to our flaws, and Ross showcases his ability with succint accuracy and haunting wordplay. These are the kind of stories you think about long after you've read them.

I wait with great anticipation for his next.

Brandon Tietz
-author of "Out of Touch"

The stories in Charactered Pieces cover a lot of ground, such as family tension, personal identity, aging, depression, strangers, death...and oh yeah, a fetus-in-fetu. In other words, the hallmarks of good literary fiction.

But wait, there's more. Ross doesn't write dull, self-congratulatory literary fiction. His sentences are lean, stripped of the unnecessary, leaving only words that bring the characters to life.

The characters are wonderfully flawed (as the title suggests), their hopes, joys, fears, and cynicism bubble to the surface between what's said and what's left to the reader's imagination. Whether it's a former demolition worker watching the pillars of the past become forgotten dust or a down-on-his-luck father cleaning up other people's messes in a fast food joint, we feel their pain and frustration and it recalls familiar moments in our own lives. Each character lives in a world that's built by their idiosyncrasies as much as their decisions.

These stories are not so much about overcoming adversity or creating/solving conflict as they are about offering glimpses into other lives, lives that startle and surprise us, but that we ultimately sympathize with. Instead of spoonfeeding morals, Ross does a great job of letting the characters tell the story.

I'm really excited about this new voice in fiction, and I eagerly anticipate his future releases. Thanks to Outsider Writers Press for recognizing this superb talent and publishing the first book of what is sure to be an interesting and successful career.

In the opening story of Caleb J. Ross' new collection, the main character invents the term charactered pieces as a euphemism for diamonds with obvious cracks and flaws. In many ways Lori is a charactered piece herself - mostly due to the foot of her fetus-in-fetu sister that protrudes from her belly. Then of course there is mom, a bit of a flawed gem herself, who had half-her face blown off in a beer-commercial mishap. Yet, she seems convinced that somehow all the defects can be covered up, if only by glops of makeup.

That opening tale served as a nice introduction to the off-kilter, macabre, black-sense of humor that made me instantly like most of the stories in Charactered Pieces. The people who stumble and wander through Ross' stories, much like Lori's diamonds, have obvious flaws, glaring even. It's an ugly humanity but one that's too real to dismiss. Take the divorced, ex-drug-addict, father who slaves away as the lone gringo in a Chinese kitchen. He's too angry, too bullheaded, and too self-centered to take responsibility for his mistakes. He views them as unavoidable obstructions that he had no more control over than the snow storm that starts a series of unfortunate events. As he says midway through the tale, "Mother Nature doesn't want a person to live." Where Ross keeps this from becoming cliché is his compassion for the characters. There is beauty in the flaws, or at least humanity.

The prose is punchy and has a great rhythm to it, especially when the stories are told in first person. Ross nails his character's voices, so you can feel yourself sitting in a bar and hearing the grim tales first hand. "Charactered Pieces," "The Camp," and "An Optimist is the Human Personification of Spring" -- the best of the stories where you can't help being drawn into the lives of the narrators -- are worth the cover price alone.

Charactered Pieces is not for the meek. If you want relatable characters, stay the hell away. Ross' characters confront rather ingratiate. And that is what makes them live and breathe so well.

There is a great variety of fiction in this collection. The one thing they have in common is the power that resonates, the echo of the stories after you've closed the book. I've read a lot of stories by Ross, and this is a great compilation of his work. He's been widely published online and in a handful of anthologies, but I always enjoy his work. This is a great way to get to know his writing.

Much like the scratch-n-dent jewelry of the title story's namesake, these flawed characters make their way through the treacherous literary terrain of Ross's imagination, blasted by sandstorms and demolition crews, derided by their families and coworkers, wracked with guilt, and and seeking redemption in the fleeting margins between their text and your thumb. As seen under the cruel magnification of a loupe, these defects are but facets, however, and Ross's sales pitch emphasizes the sentimental value in knowing their complete selves.