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Eighty-Sixed

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Reminiscent of Hemingway (and in particular the story "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place"), Brian Ames writes taut, muscular, yet lyrical prose. These are short, short stories, most of which are in the range of the Hemingway classic of four pages. The title story of this superb collection is, in fact, less than a page. Ames avoids turgid descriptions and unnecessary details. Instead his writing is sharp and agile with a poet's precision and economy.

Ames deftly explores the psyches of his usually male and "hapless" protagonists in these stories. We meet a man who is so obsessed with Jimi Hendrix that he sees and hears everything through the prism of the great "Left-Handed-One..." There is the aberrant, otherworldly woman who can't connect with person or place. A "cut-up man" who walks into a diner bruised, bloodied, and lacerated. The arborist who may have met his arboreal match. The politician who is starting to come undone by the antics of protestors and anarchists.

Enter the world of eccentrics, lost-souls, and peripheral characters down on their luck in "Eighty-Sixed." It is a world sketched and colored by the pen of a gifted short story writer.