Friendly Fire describes how we are sometimes brought down by those we love. Kathryn Chetkovich's stories detail the lives of women finding their way in a contemporary world where the traditional maps of love, family, and community are no longer particularly reliable.
Book Description
Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com Review
Kathryn Chetkovich is an alchemist of the unremarkable. She knows that the momentous is always evident in small, suddenly decisive moments and phrases. Yet the characters in Friendly Fire can't quite figure out the secrets and codes they encounter amid the everyday. As Chetkovich's underdogs bump up against über-mensches, subterfuge often seems the only way out. In "Appetites" (which Garrison Keillor selected for The Best American Short Stories 1998 ) Amanda can't seem to stop lying to her new roommates. Then, however, she suddenly realizes that she might be able to get at the truth she's been avoiding: "I felt them looking at me, half-smiling, confused. I was almost home. 'I sent a man to the hospital once.'"
Friendly Fire is the perfect title for this edgy, arresting collection, in which family and friends can't seem to stop hurting one another. In the title story five women who share little but a wry approach to loneliness meet regularly for dinner. When one announces that she's met a new man, "around the room our hearts go hard and soft at the same time, the way they do when someone you love gets something they want." Chetkovich makes you not only hear "the lilt of the unheard question" but know instantly what it is--whether it's one a parent would rather not have to ask a grown child, or a would-be pickup line at a very odd party. --Kerry Fried
From Publishers Weekly
Although these 11 smart stories explore traditional short-story territory (e.g., the frightened emptiness of a young single woman new to the big city, the wedding of an ex-lover, the fraught relationships between mothers and daughters), they do so with unusual, plainspoken panache and twisty plots. In "Magic Acts," Daphne finds herself pregnant by an unsuitable partner. In need of comfort, she visits her sister, Lila, a lesbian, and her partner, Gwen, and discovers they have decided to become parents by artificial insemination. "It's a picture of inefficiency somehow?each person coming from a place someone else needs to go," reflects Daphne. Sadness, irony and good humor coexist throughout the collection. "It's my mother, that realist, who always puts temporary happiness in a long-term context," reflects a grown daughter in the title story. Chetkovich's sprightly prose allows an unusual display of character and situation in a few pages. Refreshingly robust, Chetkovich's stories have heart, action and resonance. They announce a young writer who knows not only how to probe her characters' lives but also how to make them entertaining. (Sept.) Writers' Workshop.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
every story is a gem,
By A Customer
This review is from: Friendly Fire (Iowa Short Fiction Award) (Paperback)
I came across a Kathryn Chetkovich story in the Houghton-Mifflin annual collection of best short stories (1998 edition), and knew I had to get my hands on "Friendly Fire" as soon as I could so I could read more of her writing. And I wasn't disappointed -- all of her stories are beautifully crafted and have an wonderfully understated wryness and insight -- you will be delighted, amused, and often moved by the perfect turns of phrase that Chetcovich finds to illuminate even the smallest incident or observation. Can't wait for more from this writer.
6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Absolute Stunner,
By A Customer
This review is from: Friendly Fire (Iowa Short Fiction Award) (Paperback)
I consider myself a reader and am usually aware of all the new books coming out. I picked this book up having heard nothing about it. I sat and read the first story of this collection and before I was even done the first page I knew Kathryn was a discovery. This is her first book and she has me for whatever else she writes. These stories about real struggle and emotional entanglements of the family. Having grown children I loved reading them. I don't usually write these reviews ; I don't feel competent ; but it is a crime to me that I hadn't heard of this book. FRIENDLY FIRE is so WONDERFUL. When I think of the books out there that receive so much attention. Kathryn is a gem. Support her work and you will not regret it!
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Sister, where art thou?,
This review is from: Friendly Fire (Iowa Short Fiction Award) (Paperback)
I admit having learned about this book only because I was looking up something on Jonathan Franzen, who happens to be Chetkovich's boyfriend since about the time of this publication. Although the amount of publicity for their respective work could not be more disparate, Kathryn Chetkovich is a talented, sensitive and perceptive writer in her own right. So impressed was I by her short but uncannily emotive stories that I would personally fire off a marketing campaign for her if she asked me to. Calling her glimpses of young women's ambivalence towards the ties with family, friendship, love and adulthood "enigmatic" or "mesmerizing" would be trite. But how she nails feelings I thought reserved to myself, moreover, why no one has brought her ability to broader recognition IS a riddle to me.Her style of accentuating the marginal while letting the essential speak for itself appeared, albeit later, in a few German women authors' stories that I liked in varying degrees (Zsuzsa Bank, Judith Hermann). Likewise, Chetkovich's stories are not all of the same sterling quality to warrant a full five stars--some are just a little too slight--, but 4.5 stars and rising.
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