Customer Reviews

Creamy Bullets

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

 

 

Creamy Bullets is the first full-length collection from Portland publisher and small press icon Kevin Sampsell. Arranged in three sections, small, medium and large, Creamy Bullets is a whirlwind of fantastic prose. Magic realism blends with a diabolical attention to detail that makes this one of the most exciting debuts. This book will hold your attention. The characters will break your heart. The end will make you want to read the entire collection again. A book of nearly delectable treats!

Short fictions of various lengths, ranging from 1-page "sketches" to longer character-driven studies. There's a lot of material here and a few of the pieces miss the mark. But overall, it's a rock-solid outing of well-crafted, slightly-surreal contemporary prose -- sometimes poignant, sometimes absurd, but always engaging. There's an intriguing undercurrent of memory and loss (lost childhood, lost innocence, etc.) that really resonates, especially when considering the collection as a coherent whole. Sampsell reads like a more down-to-earth and accessible Gary Lutz with a dash of punk rock thrown in -- and that's a good thing. Probably more like 4.5 stars.

Yet another story collection from the current crop of young writers who seem to be taking their literary cues from short, formless indie rock songs rather than hunkering down to learn the real business of plot, pacing and structure. And it shows. Basically, these stories go absolutely nowhere. Calling them "magic realism" just because they are strange and kinda daft is to totally overlook the fact that the roots of magic realism (ala Gabriel Garcia Marquez, say, or Bruno Schulz) go deep into the history, geography, social mores, religion, etc. of a community -- whereas here, the magic is texture only, it never really goes beneath the surface. Perhaps that particular quality is supposed to be indicative of the shallow uncertainty of our era -- but I still say it's the writer's job to tell us a story, which Sampsell seems too lazy or hesitant or immature or solipsistic to do here.