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Copy Cats (Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction)

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When one reads Copy Cats it is little wonder why Mr. Crouse was selected to receive the Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction. In this collection he peoples his stories with characters that have one foot in 'normalcy' and the other firmly embedded on the fringe. In other words while most all of them are eccentric they are still identifiable to the reader and it becomes very easy to understand their motivations even when (if taken out of context) their actions would seem bizarre. This opens a door to the reader and lets them into a world that isn't so far removed from their own, one that lies right under the surface of their day to day lives. In my opinion this is his greatest strength as a writer.

More importantly perhaps is Mr. Crouse's dedication the form. Short fiction rarely gets its due and as a genre is flooded with works by authors established in other mediums who are merely dabbling. However from his stories it is obvious that Mr. Crouse has dedicated himself whole heartedly to the short story and is well on his way to becoming one of the champions of the style.

A winter walk with a part-time prostitute on Salisbury Beach. A confrontation with a homeless man on Boylston Street. A never-ending party with aging burnouts inside a tattered old Victorian in Lawrence.

David Crouse excels at placing his readers within the "serene suburban quiet" that makes it "feel like something horrible [is] going to happen."

In his debut short-story collection, Copy Cats (University of Georgia Press), the 38-year-old native of Haverhill presents stark stories in which the bleak and the beautiful are tethered by tender, tenuous strings - all within the outskirts of Boston. The collection of seven stories and one novella - which won a 2005 Flannery O' Connor Award for short fiction - effectively walks a tightrope between dark and light, the bleak and the bright.

-Nina Maclaughlin (The Boston Phoenix)

The characters in the seven short stories and one novella that make up ''Copy Cats" share a discomfort, a disconnect -- sometimes traceable to some defining trauma, sometimes not -- that will be apparent to readers of short-story masters from Franz Kafka to Richard Yates. There's also more than a hint of the stomach-clenching despair that marked the stories of another Haverhill writer, the late Andre Dubus.

-James Sullivan (The Boston Globe)

This collection of stories is the 2005 winner of the Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction, but don't read it just for that. Read it because Copy Cats offers eight of the most captivating, well-written, and intellect-inspiring stories you're likely to read all year.

Crouse captures people at the breaking point. People on the verge of madness, of losing jobs or walking out on them. People who ruin relationships or families. People who tell lies or appropriate things that don't belong to them. People who have lost: loves, family members, beliefs. People who have secrets they need to get out.

In "Kopy Kats," Anthony is a copy shop worker both repulsed and intrigued by an old customer he called Yorick. When Yorick falls ill, Anthony feels the need to look for him, to find him, to take care of him; the old man's needs are secondary. In "Morte Infinita," Kristen skips school to go to horror film fests with her mentally imbalanced father. To explain away his illness, her dad makes up stories: the reason her mother left, historical predictions. As his stories collide with reality in a way that is both painful and illegal, Kristen begins to see him for what he is.

The longest story in the collection, "Click," is a thoroughly captivating tale of Jonathan, an out-of-work photographer, who makes a down-on-her-luck junkie/hustler the focus of a photography study. He begins to idealize her in ways that threaten his impending marriage to the understanding, empathic Stephanie:

He hadn't planned to go by her place, but he had been in the neighborhood, and he had his camera with him, and he was worried about her. She had opened the door and smiled as if she expected him, although she was dressed in her bathrobe. He could see the curve of her breasts, the flowered trim of her white bra, and a new mark on her chest about the size of a baby's palm. He had wanted to grab her by the wrist and drag her out of the apartment and into a new life, any new life, to do something as simple and dramatic as saving her.>

In "Crybaby," the narrator-a successful, married father-returns home to help a childhood friend and finds himself drawn back into the Web of illicit substances and improper relations. One of the more memorable stories is "Code," told from the first-person point-of-view of a disturbed man. The tale begins as Michael returns to work early from a forced vacation. The man is obviously imbalanced, unable to comprehend-nor fully be a part of-reality. The intrigue is heightened by rumors going around about a "list": names on the company's list of downsizing targets.

I found a Post-it note stuck to my terminal saying that the vice president of something wanted to see me. I didn't recognize the handwriting. A cartoon in the upper left-hand corner showed a fat orange cat sleeping in a hammock, an image that seemed completely incongruous. The more I looked at it the more sinister it became, and I had to force myself to put it down. I fished my socks out of the wastebasket, put one in each pocket, and headed toward my destiny.

In "The Ugliest Boy," Justin spends a not-quite-blissful summer in the home of a girl he believes himself to be in love with. He succeeds in getting to know her disfiguringly burned brother-previously known as Barbecue, henceforth as Steven-and in admitting his own shameful truth. Finally, in "Retreat," Carol confronts her husband Nicholas' destructive habits by creating and then destroying something she holds dear.

All of us have, at times in our lives, been driven to the breaking point. That we have survived-that we have managed to keep at least one toe firmly in the soil-makes reading a collection such as Crouse's all the more entrancing. This could have been me, we will likely think during one story or another, before turning the page and feeling smug and warm inside our homes. And still, we keep turning the pages.

-Laura Hamlett (Playback)

I think of that line, taken from a Silver Jews song, because it describes this book fully. These are real people--fringe, or whatever you want to call them. There is something true about this book that some people may not want to admit. The sometimes broken nature of our selves that plays out in unsuspected ways runs rampant through these stories--they are stories about here, about now. Buy this, you need it.

Also, look for a fun little story by Crouse in the Dark Horse Book of the Dead.

I loved every single story in this collection. My favorites were "Swimming in the Dark" and the story another reviewer mentioned, "Crybaby".

I'm not sure what the reviewer from Publisher's Weekly was going on about but if these character's are "shadowy" it is because they are complex and rendered with a subtle touch. You have to do some work "reading between the lines" with these stories but I think an intelligent reader will find a lot to like. The book reminded me of a cross between Alice Munro and Chuck Palahniuk-which is not as crazy as it sounds.

I hope this guy has a novel come out soon.

Copy Cats is an incredible read. David Crouse captures the nuaces of complex characters figuring themselves out in everyday life. In Crybaby, Crouse shows the inner workings of his characters by interlacing their present lives with memories and past influences. All of the above work to create a rich and mesmerizing story that effects the reader long after the book has been shut. A must read.

"Write what you know."

This is the gospel preached by creative writing teachers the world over. It is the regurgitated soundbite provided by best selling authors when asked to offer advice to the up and coming writer. But it is also a credo that, when taken to its extreme, can limit the creative prospects of a budding young talent. Too often the novice (and even his literary cousin, the lazy old pro) limits himself to tales about artists and writers, about professors and students, about creative, misunderstood intellectuals sipping Merlot at dinner parties whilst troubled by matters no more dramatic than whether or not they'll get tenure, than whether or not they'll get away with sleeping with their secretary. In short, the novice writer too often restricts his dramatis personae to the privileged, educated subculture to which he himself belongs, and forgets that there is a whole other world out there, waiting to be explored -- a world populated by undereducated, thoroughly average people who hide their remarkable stories behind unassuming veneers that only a truly dedicated wordwright could ever crack. And so, the general reader is left with a sense that her own story is not fit to be told, not WORTH being told. She rarely ventures into the realm of literary fiction, sticking instead to the mysteries and fantasies in whose pages she can truly lose herself, feeling as if her own true story is one that will never be told.

In his refreshingly unique debut, COPY CATS (The University of Georgia Press, 2005), David Crouse, a professor of creative writing at Chester College of New England, successfully bucks this trend. In the first line of the first story of the collection, a copy shop patron nicknamed Yorick tells an overworked and undercaffeinated clerk that, "There are real stories in this world," and it seems that Crouse himself feels charged with presenting to his reader just this sort of tale. Throughout the eight pieces included here, Crouse delves into the lives of college dropouts, prostitutes, and junior executives, steering well clear of the sort of intellectual-centric mundanity explored far too often in the pages of his contemporaries. He creates memorable, sympathetic characters out of potentially forgettable and unsympathetic archetypes. And he grounds them in time and space with solid yet selective details, setting their lives in context without ever over-muddying the waters of his crisply drawn milieu.

It is said of good writers that they are first and foremost good observers. But, with COPY CATS, David Crouse proves he is far more than that. He is not just an observer, but an explorer. Like an archaeologist, he mines the vast unmapped landscape of American life in the 21st century, probing for the greatest stories yet untold.

As some of the other reviewers pointed out, it's no surprise that this collection was awarded the prestigious Flannery O'Connor Award. These stories are beautifully crafted and are the sort that you will definitely return to again and again. Vivid and real, the characters are often almost painfully unaffected by their inability to deal with the world around them. What I like best about these stories, though, is how subdued and subtle they are. So much is boiling just under the surface of these stories, and while many of them do have extremely interesting plots, Crouse never lets plot overshadow character or language.

I really was blown away by this book! It was an absolutely wondeful read! I remained captivated through its entirety. Highly recommended!

David Crouse's Copy Cats is a book of fictional short stories revolving around characters that are on the fringes of society searching for their sense of self and struggling with truth and lies. Crouse's characters are unable to cope with reality, so they fabricate stories (or lies) to make their lives meaningful and justify their own actions. The structures of the stories are all a kind of twisted irony. The truth and reality the characters live in are presented very simply. By the end the reader is either extremely confused or distraught at the happenings of the story, or a mix of both. And yet, through all the darkness, confusion and irony, the reader is drawn to the beauty of the writing and the almost intimate, personal window given to the reader through his style of writing, allowing the reader to catch a glimpse of the struggle these characters endure.

Crouse writes modern tales in a modern world. His story Click, a novella, is filled with conflict, longing, tension building up to a slap in the face of reality. If you bought the book for this story alone you will come away feeling satisfied with the overall product. Crouse is an excellent writer that tells a great story.

The characters are dark and foreboding, with good intentions through every situation Crouse's protagonists deal with. The plots are cutting but believable. It is as if you were listening to a friend telling you a supremely odd tale tempting you to cry out, "No Way!" right in the middle of them. Stranger things do happen in the real world, and when they occur they are the things one talks about over and over again amongst friends and at gatherings.

I highly recommend this book.