The Evil B.B. Chow and Other Stories [Paperback]

Steve Almond (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 28, 2006

Steve Almond, the man whose candy jones fueled the bestseller Candyfreak, returns with a collection of stories that both seals his reputation as a master of the modern form and risks getting him arrested. The cast of characters in The Evil B.B. Chow and Other Stories includes a wealthy family certain they have been abducted by space aliens, a sexy magazine editor who falls for a worldclass cad, and a beleaguered dentist who refuses to read his best friend’s novel. Michael Jackson and Abraham Lincoln make cameos, as do a variety of desperate and beautiful loonies, all of whom are laid bare, often literally. In these twelve stories, Almond refuses to let his characters off the hook, or to abandon them, until we have seen the full measure of ourselves within their struggle.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In this sexy, fast-paced second collection of stories, Almond, author of My Life in Heavy Metal and the nonfiction Candyfreak, takes on love and loss around the turn of the millennium, showing how average people living in big cities and university towns tackle heartbreak with humor. The title story traces the flailing love between a magazine editor and a commitment-phobic medical resident who seems too good to be true. In "Appropriate Sex," a refreshing addition to the growing genre of stories about the goings-on in undergraduate writing workshops, a writer-in-residence is treated to a parade of students who "discourse on Tristam Shandy," seduce him and get him stoned in the same office hour. "A Happy Dream" portrays the lucky outcome of a blind date on which Kate, a bike messenger masquerading as a chimney sweep, forces Henry, a cautious sous-chef, to think on his feet. While struggling with his own recent breakup, the narrator of "Skull" listens as his friend confesses how he and his new girlfriend are finding love in unlikely ways that involve her prosthetic eye. Almond doesn't dig too deep or offer up grand theories about romantic love, but his easy, natural storytelling and consoling reminders that intimacy is awkward and messy will carry readers happily along. (Apr. 22)Forecast: Almond scored a surprise hit with Candyfreak, his confessional tour of candy factories. This laid-back follow-up delivers more guilty pleasure and should attract—and satisfy—Almond's new fans. Author tour.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Booklist

Almond hit it big with Candyfreak [BKL F 1 04], his best-selling gonzo travelogue, but his debut, the funny and explicit short story collection My Life in Heavy Metal (2002), had already earned him cult status. Almond proves himself to be just as irreverent, audacious, and amusing in his new set of stories, but his subjects are more diverse, and he manages to be even more sardonic and affecting. The honed-to-perfection title story about a love affair gone wrong is convincingly told from the woman's point of view, while "Appropriate Sex," a tale about a college writing teacher drenched in his students' hectic eroticism, is all male. Going further afield, there's an eerie tale about a family convinced that aliens have tinkered with them; "The Idea of Michael Jackson's Dick," a title that speaks for itself; and an exceedingly strange and provocative vision of a melancholy Abraham Lincoln and an uneasy Frederick Douglass floating down the Mississippi getting tipsy. As out there as Almond gets, he never loses his down-to-earth tenderness and agile delicacy. Donna Seaman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 248 pages
• Publisher: Algonquin Books (April 28, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1565125290
• ISBN-13: 978-1565125292
• Product Dimensions: 7.1 x 5 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (19 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,012,468 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Almond weaves a fine yarn...., April 22, 2005

By 

Felicia Sullivan (New York, ny United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Evil B.B. Chow and Other Stories (Hardcover)

Reviewed by Colleen Hollister for Small Spiral Notebook

Steve Almond is a storyteller, and a good one, possessing a distinctively engaging voice and obviously in love with the language he uses. His bestselling Candyfreak has an incredibly rich texture, wrapping the reader in his passions for both words and candy. Almond's newest short story collection The Evil B.B. Chow and Other Stories does the same (though unfortunately, no chocolate is involved). The stories collected here reestablish his talent for engaging readers and pulling them inescapably in; readers may not know exactly what is happening, but they will be glad nonetheless to have been through such an experience.

The stories are throughout just that - an experience. They are weird but absorbing, at times slightly twisted, and in some cases perhaps not for the faint of heart. But the remarkably original ways in which they capture the fragility and absurdity of life manage to be real, heartfelt, and wholly believable at the same time.

Almond is not afraid to test the boundaries of the unusual - one story has an entire family convinced they have been abducted by aliens, another Lincoln and Frederick Douglass traveling downriver on a flatboat while discussing slavery and life - but his situations, however dramatically different, are never implausible. Once absorbed, the reader does not question - it most likely would never even occur to her to question, so easy it is to get caught up in the action, eagerly anticipating the new twists spinning from Almond's imagination.

Though twists from the normal are abundant, Almond never forgets the human element: the stories are not about the situations but the interrelationships of the people involved. The title story captures the happenings of a bizarre blind date, complete with the ridiculousness that accompanies falling in love; "I Am as I Am" first shocks with the bracing portrayal of an accident at a children's ballgame, and then spins out the nuances of its emotional consequences; in "Wired for Life," a woman develops a strange obsession with the man who fixes her computer; "The Problem of Human Consumption" beautifully relates the delicate relationship of a widowed father with his growing daughter.

Almond achieves the difficult balance between the strange and the entirely normal. The stories are easy to understand and easy to relate to without being at all simplistic, seeming effortless in a way that is definitely hard to create. The language possesses a strength and clarity that makes me certain it could not have been written any better; a blurb on the front cover warns not to quote from the uncorrected proof, otherwise it would be difficult to avoid quoting a fair bit of it. The stories are crystal clear, with well-chosen details, well-chosen words and characters that resound in the reader long after the story has ended. They are emotional without being heavy-handed, descriptive without being crowded, funny while still maintaining their heart. They are also, obviously, difficult to describe while still doing them justice. They would better be absorbed rather than picked apart.

A group of writers together, discussing each others' work, will all invariably end up saying "I wish I wrote this," "I wish I wrote that," "I hate you because your story is true...and because I didn't write it." The stories collected in The Evil B.B. Chow and Other Stories consistently ring with truisms that would throw strife and envy into writers prone to such things. Writers will certainly start hating Steve Almond soon; this is the mark of a good writer.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Recent Convert, August 18, 2005

By 

Megan Stewart (Loveland, CO USA) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Evil B.B. Chow and Other Stories (Hardcover)

I'm normally not a big fan of short stories. I buy anthologies and feel lucky to find one story that doesn't bore me to tears.

So I guess I wasn't too disappointed when I attended a writing conference in New York to find that "The Evil B.B. Chow and Other Stories" had sold out and all that was left was "Candyfreak." It's hard to be bored by candy.

But I enjoyed reading "Candyfreak," so I tracked down a few of Steve Almond's stories online. Well, OK, several stories. None of which bored me, and a few of which I liked. I felt I owed it to him to buy his book(s).

My personal favorites here were "The Problem of Human Consumption" and "Summer, As In Love." Almond is at his best when writing about star-crossed and otherwise failed love affairs. These stories struck me as more romantic than the ones in his first collection, "My Life In Heavy Metal," which I suspect would have a greater appeal for young men (although I liked "Valentino").

On the lighter side, "The Soul Molecule" was also weirdly enchanting.

I have only a few niggling criticisms. The ending of the title story seemed too dramatic for the story. The main character in "I Am As I Am" seemed too adult in his viewpoint (which may have been intentional). And I won't even go into stallions versus soldering guns.

These were all petty in the scheme of things.

What I really didn't get was "Larsen's Novel." I mean, I (apparently) lead a more sheltered life than Larsen, but from the excerpts I guess his book was about as inspired as my own first endeavor. Is Almond hinting at something here? Like maybe this is why I can't sell my first novel? This is more truth than I'm prepared to handle in my current fragile state.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars No Candy, Still a Treat, June 17, 2005

By 

Keith Demanche (Portsmouth, NH) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Evil B.B. Chow and Other Stories (Hardcover)

A book of short stories is like a box of chocolates. No, no, just kidding. But Steve Almond's second collection of short fiction, "The Evil BB Chow and Other Stories" certainly is a delicious treat.

Almond most recently garnered critical acclaim for his non-fiction book, "Candy Freak," a tale of one man's quest to record (and consume) the last independent candy bars in the U.S. While not fiction, the book showcased Almond's gift to mix serious and bust-your-gut funny scenes into one narrative. A talent that has blossomed since his first collection of stories, "My Life in Heavy Metal.," which was more autobiographical, full of self-depreciating humor and well worth a read.

In "The Evil BB Chow," he now uses humor to even better effect, catching the reader off guard with hilarious phrases and insights, making the sum of his scenes equal to more than their parts. He has upped the ante for his characters as well, creating intimate portrayals of everyday life that delve into very difficult situations, with dire consequences.

In the title story, we learn how a smart, savvy woman falls for a schlub, only to regret it. "Appropriate Sex" is the story of a college teacher's flirt with disaster, in the form of a student who isn't "interested in appropriate sex." In my favorite story, "The Soul Molecule," the narrator, Jim, finds himself being initiated into a family of "abductees" over brunch. At the point when the family has laid it all out, and Jim realizes they are not kidding and are waiting for him to accept their truth, he stops and notes, "It was that look you get from any kind of true believer, this mountain of pity sort of wobbling on a pea of doubt."

There are disturbing stories here as well: "I Am As I Am" is about a teenager who accidentally smashes a catcher's head with a bat in pick-up ball game; "The Problem of Human Consumption," in which a widower and his daughter trying to move on, and "Skull," which offers much more than we ever wanted to know about a girl with one eye.

The only sour note for me was the lengthy "Lincoln, Arisen," not so much because it was hard to follow, but more because it didn't seem to fit with the collection. A period piece, albeit with a fantasy slant, and a pattern of surreal dream sequences just knocked me out of "The Evil BB Chow"'s enjoyable universe.

Overall, this is definitely a blue-ribbon book. Almond's style is incredibly pleasing, flowing from the page in a stream of clarity and carrying the reader through both the heartbreakingly sad and the uproariously funny. Almond is the kind of writer who you wish was your friend, so that, maybe over drinks at a bar, he might continue to tell you the stories that wouldn't fit in the book.