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Elephant: Short Stories and Flash Fiction
 
 
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Elephant: Short Stories and Flash Fiction [Paperback]

Jim Breslin (Author)
4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)

Price: $14.98 & eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping on orders over $25. Details
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Book Description

April 26, 2011
In this debut collection of stories, Jim Breslin explores the soul of suburbia; the disenfranchised and the desperate. The characters in these twenty-one stories struggle to mend relationships and find redemption. A man is tempted by memories when his drunk ex-wife pays a surprise visit. A couple wrestles with their fruitless attempts to have children. An eccentric homeowner issues a series of comical concerns to his lawn care company. A husband tests the reciprocity of his wife’s love only to find himself in the throes of a dangerous free fall. Sometimes funny, often sad, the unsettling stories in Elephant portray the suburban landscape of loneliness and hope.

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Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Jim Breslin's stories have been published in Think Journal and Metazen. He was nominated in 2011 for a Pushcart Prize. Jim is also the founder of the West Chester Story Slam. He lives with his wife and two sons in West Chester, PA.

Product Details

  • Paperback: 168 pages
  • Publisher: Oermead Press (April 26, 2011)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0615460356
  • ISBN-13: 978-0615460352
  • Product Dimensions: 8 x 5 x 0.4 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 8.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,054,304 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Jim Breslin was born in Philadelphia and grew up in the suburban town of Media, PA. His first collection of stories, Elephant, is a mix of short stories, flash fiction and prose poems about the loneliness and hope found in suburbia. His fiction has been published in Metazen and Think Journal. Some pieces appeared on Fictionaut in slightly different form. Jim is also the founder and emcee of the West Chester Story Slam, a monthly storytelling event in downtown West Chester. He lives in West Chester, PA with his wife and two sons.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Kindle Edition
This is a really strong collection of short stories - most of them deal with the everyday life and experiences of 'normal' people, and work towards some quiet epiphany. The influence of Raymond Carver seemed strong, although most of Breslin's characters seem slightly more middle-class and contented. But despite this there are fault-lines in their lives, and these stories expose them with great skill. The writing style is strong and varied, moving between realistic dialogue and poetic imagery easily. It's always a sign of a good writer when you find yourself rereading individual lines of proses because they're so good, and I did that frequently here.

For me, the only slight flaw in the collection as a whole is that maybe the stories are too similar in theme and tone - some of the best stories, like 'Elephant' itself are those where Breslin seemed to expand his technique slightly, adding an nice edge of surrealism to the realism. But this is a small gripe, and readers who like their collections of short stories to have a strong feeling of belonging together would probably disagree with me. And there is an agreeable sense here of reoccurring themes and a distinct vision across all of these tales.

Very much recommended. Short stories as they should be done.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
Got this book the day before the rapture, so naturally flipped to the middle and started with Rapture, a short story about a young boy and his abused mother who flee trouble in search of salvation. I'd read a couple of Breslin's short stories before, so was familiar with his taut writing and often humorous take on the dark underbelly of relationships and suburbia. What I hadn't counted on was how quickly I'd get sucked into reading every last one, nor how varied they'd be.

Breslin is spare with details, and so the ones he does include feel almost poetic. He develops his characters quickly and deeply, exposing their flaws in an honest way that makes you care what happens to them. These stories are human - as funny as they are sad, haunting as they are hopeful.

My favorite stories were Portrait, Turbulence and The Pasture. The first is about a young man who squanders his college fund to see the world and finds himself with an unlikely travel companion. The middle one shows a career woman and mom-to-be struggling to deal with her mentally deteriorating mother who lives across the country. The final is an older man's heartbreaking reflection on love while on family vacation at the beach.

I find myself thinking of these and other characters from Breslin's collection days afterwards...a sure sign of a deeply satisfying read.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
A Welcome New Voice May 3, 2011
Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase
Jim Breslin's Elephant contains some haunting stories--not in the Edger Allen Poe scary sense but in the sense that they stay with you for a long time and keep gnawing at you even after you've put the book down. For me, "Egg Shells," "Two in the Bush," and "Elephant" itself are particularly haunting in this way.

Breslin's language is compact and tightly fitted. There's nothing extraneous in it, so the details he does decide to include-- "Men with bad breath," from the story "And Then the Heat Broke"--convey volumes of information. At the same time, the details and the actions he chooses to include also have a way of bringing our attention to the very words and topics that are not being discussed overtly. We're very aware of the conversations that are not taking place. So, between the attention to explicit details and the attention to implicit details, these short, sometimes almost slight, stories take on a larger stature that keeps them rattling around in my head.

Oh, and some of them are painfully funny, too. I wish "Dear Lawn Care Co." were longer, but Breslin likes his stories short.
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