Customer Reviews

The Dead Fish Museum

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

 

 

From beginning to end this collection of stories was funny, moving, and soulful, especially the stories: "The Screenwriter" and "The Bone Game", which were so strange yet loving and compassionate.

D'Ambrosio's "Dead Fish Museum" is realist fiction collection that manages to be well crafted without being predictable, and stylized without being pseudo-poetic. Each story inhabits a fully realized world, both physically and emotionally, whether a typewriter repair shop in downtown ("Drummond and Son"), a crowded hunting cabin in the wilderness ("Up North"), or a mental hospital ("The Screenwriter"). The sentences are beautiful, and the rhythms and diction seemed appropriate to the character and setting. Though most of the action in these stories happens on the interior of the characters - or if it is exterior, is often downplayed or held secret - the crafting is strong enough to give the interior lives and subtexts adequate "oomph" to carry the stories through without a need for anything too gratuitous. I highly recommend this for lovers of contemporary "New Yorker"-esque short stories.

A voice of his own, deeply melancholy but capable of setting up characters in intriguing situations with deeply felt human conflicts. Not as funny as Boyle, but who is?