18 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Not who you think you are. . ., January 31, 2004
This review is from: Fitting Ends (Ballantine Reader's Circle) (Paperback)
This is a fine collection of stories by a young writer whose intuitive grasp of life's ambiguities combines with a well-developed storytelling ability to give the reader much to enjoy and ruminate on. Mostly set in a small town in western Nebraska, these stories have youthful protagonists who are often at a loss or are simply lost. Their lives have veered off course, somehow, or gone into a stall, and they're like the recovering young alcoholic in "Going Out," who is sober but bewildered, losing ground, finally walking down a dark country road in his boxer shorts, startled by the ghostly face of a curious cow.
There is the mystery of identity that runs through many of these stories, from the young man in the first story "My Sister's Honeymoon: A Videotape," who ponders his sister's personality change when she gets married, to the high school student in "Transformations," whose older brother has revealed himself as not only gay but a female impersonator. In "Fraternity," a young man discovers that a fraternity brother injured in a car accident is no longer the person he once was. A girlfriend in "Rapid Transit" tells a young office worker, "You're not who you think you are."
Meanwhile children struggle to understand their parents. In two stories, the mothers have histories of mental illness. In another, the title story, a young man puzzles over a wayward older brother whose life seems to take a fatal turn after the telling of a lie. The richness of how circumstance alters and often diminishes identity is particularly well drawn in this story. The protagonist, on a visit home, reflects on how the loose threads of lives may come together for a moment in the mind's eye or the heart, like the neat ending of a short story, but because life is not art they unravel again.
While all this may sound a bit bleak, it is not. The stories leave you with uncertainties about the characters, whose lives are often tentative and touched with unresolved regrets, but there is a lightness and a degree of irony about them that make their ambiguities linger afterward in a way that's nicely gratifying. For another collection of well-written stories with a rural setting, I recommend Kent Meyers' "Light in the Crossing." Also, set in a small town not far from Chaon's fictional St. Bonaventure, Nebraska, there's Kent Haruf's fine novel, "Plainsong."
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Great Short Fiction, September 10, 2009
This review is from: Fitting Ends (Ballantine Reader's Circle) (Paperback)
In this varied collection of short stories Chaon proves he is a master of the medium. All the stories are highly readable, I never found myself skipping forward with some stories to see how many pages I had to the end. My enjoyment from this collection reminded me of reading the old Story magazine for those of you familiar with that magazine.
One curve ball for some readers might be the first story "My Sister's Honeymoon: a videotape", which of all the stories is the most atypical. Initially it seemed a bit episodic but give it a chance, the theme emerges slowly. Most of the stories revolve around small towns in Nebraska but they never seem repetitive. Over the course of the book the reader is introduced to a cast of widely divergent characters.
Some might find the stories a bit dark but I find a wry, sardonic aspect that is somehow satisfying and saves the writing from that uniform bleakness typical of writers affecting a post-modernist pose. The stories are about people who are in difficult circumstances but there is an honesty to Chaon's writing that compensates for the melancholy mood. The last story "Fitting Ends" is probably the most potent of the collection but its moodiness is not gratuitous. It really gives you a lot to think about which ultimately is the reason I love Chaon's writing.
At the end of the book there is an interview with Chaon which will be of interest to those wishing to know more about his motivations and methods.
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5.0 out of 5 stars
Great short story collection, December 12, 2009
This review is from: Fitting Ends (Ballantine Reader's Circle) (Paperback)
"Fitting Ends" was an excellent collection of short stories. The stories were a bit depressing, but real.
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