From Publishers Weekly
Wilderness, both physical and emotional, is a common thread in this scintillating, arresting collection. Armed with an unfettered imagination and razor-sharp prose, Ames (Smoke Follows Beauty) conjures a malevolent fictional world where violence is an ever-present threat. Largely set in rural Washington State, these stories take as their primary subjects men on the fringes—a snow-plow operator, a mechanic/hit man, a small-time drug dealer—flummoxed by fate and by their own gross flaws. In one of the best, "Ajax the God," a washed-up major leaguer shoots a six-point elk and tracks the wounded animal through the forest, ruminating as he goes on his long-lost days as a celebrated pitching prospect. Ames also shows a playful side. "Monocle," the strange account of a man born with a single, cyclopean eye, is a delight, a whimsical tale in which the author wisely plays it straight for maximum comic effect. A few of these 22 pieces feel incomplete, but even when the occasional story fails to deliver, the sheer force of Ames's imagination and the wild energy of his language will make readers sit up straight.
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Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Booklist
In 22 meditative short stories, Ames manages to lift and drag the reader over and over again, deep-sixing any remnant of happiness along the way. Pulling on Northwest roots, a la Sherman Alexie, and projecting blue-collar characters that resemble Raymond Carver caricatures seen through the lens of Robert Altman, Ames' terse and slightly sadistic stories do hit the mark. Childhood insecurities are a recurrent theme, as is haplessness. Ames prologues many stories with poetics as well as riffs on baseball; he also leans a bit on Greek mythology in his most sentimental story, "Monocle," where a contemporary Cyclops forges a life made from love. Although Ames does slip into writing-workshop mode on the rare occasion, he is an original, creating his own distinct universe of story. Mark Eleveld
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
