A City Equal to My Desire [Hardcover]

James Sallis (Author), Jack O'Connell (Introduction)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 10, 2004

From crimes of heart and crimes of violence, A CITY EQUAL TO MY DESIRE effortlessly guides you through the narrows of human existence in all its forms. In this selection of new stories, James Sallis, author of the acclaimed Lew Griffin series of detective novels, both entertains and engages the mind with stories that will linger in memory long after they've been experienced. "Sallis wants to take your experience of the world, mutate it to the edge of recognition, and then deliver it back before your eyes like a coin pulled from behind your earlobe. And in this way, he makes you see and feel, all over again, the meaning, the beauty-and, pointedly sometimes, the horror-of being human." Jack O'Connell from his introduction

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

This satisfying collection of dark dream parables fans out a fistful of snapshots from times and places foreign to us--yet unsettlingly familiar. Many of the stories are more like jagged fragments, or fevered REM-sleep musings. As we briefly ponder futures in which giant flying bugs drive people indoors or couples pay to live in lovingly re-created tenements complete with electronic cockroaches, it's as if we're flipping through classic Twilight Zone episodes. Imagining new ways in which our cultural decay might manifest itself--perhaps people will just start disintegrating before our eyes as they give up on life--Sallis scavenges images and tropes from his previous stories: mushroom-white skin, the fragile bloom of a cactus, and always jazz playing in the background. Some of these apocalyptic tales have the cheery tone of the old Police tune "When the World Is Running Down (You Make the Best of What's Still Around)." But others, such as "Autumn Leaves," which tracks the personal toll of a massive infectious disease outbreak, remind us to cherish what we have while we can. Frank Sennett
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Product Details

• Hardcover: 172 pages
• Publisher: Point Blank (August 10, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 193099768X
• ISBN-13: 978-1930997684
• Product Dimensions: 5.5 x 8.5 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,219,041 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A collection = to the reader's desire, December 21, 2004

By 

Gavin J. Grant "lcrw.net" (Northampton, MA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: A City Equal to My Desire (Hardcover)

Sallis. Poet. Reviewer. Cook (chef?). Writer. His Lew Griffin series is wonderful. His criticism succint, informed, generous. This collection? Suffice to say this is the book to give to your lover, your best friend, the person you suspect might be your next, should have, could have been your partner. Someone who, in the dark hours you can count on. This is the book for them. And maybe for you. Sallis's stories appear in magazines tiny and large. To have all these stories gathered in one place is a treat not to be missed.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Hitting On All Cylinders., March 18, 2008

By 

Charles Gramlich (Metairie,, LA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: A City Equal to My Desire (Hardcover)

A City Equal to My Desire is a collection of stories harking back to James Sallis's early days as a writer, although all were produced after 1998. The book's front and back cover blurbs suggest that the collection is primarily crime and mystery fiction, which is where Sallis is best known today, but many of the tales are speculative fiction and include pieces published in Asimov's, Fantasy and SF, and Talebones.

The best of the crime stories here is "Drive," which Sallis later expanded into a novella of the same name that I believe is one of the best noir thrillers ever written. For me, however, the true gems in the collection are the speculative stories, especially "Roofs and Forgiveness in the Early Dawn," about an unusual alien invasion, "Pitt's World," which tells the story of a survivor of a spaceship crash, and "Telling Lives," about a writer who has discovered a niche for himself in writing biographies of everyday people. Another great story is "Day's Heat," which features an unusually close set of triplets and which ties with "Roofs and Forgiveness..." for my choice of personal favorite.

Wonderful characters and character interactions are Sallis's strengths, but we also find lovely language and beautiful imagery here. His characters are alive and his tales stir both the emotions and the imagination. I highly recommend them.