Customer Reviews

Ghosts of Chicago

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4 star:		(1)
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Person and place, past and present, living and dead, all intertwine in this nearly flawless collection of short fiction. These Chicago-centered narratives of hope and despair feature famous figures and regular nobodies trying to find their way. "The Goose," "Creature Features," and "Planetary Danger," are standouts. "Contributor's Notes" is another hilarious excoriation of academia from the author who brought us the polemic "Politics of Correctness" in his 2000 collection "Troublemakers." If you haven't read John McNally, you're missing out one one of the most artful and resonant writers today.

This is probably my favorite book of the entire year. Yep, that's right. I said it. There is so much to like about these tender, heartrending, perceptive stories.

Right off the bat, the first story, "Return Policy," is one of the best ones in the whole thing. A recently divorced man attempts to return everything he's ever received from his ex-wife to the friend or relative who originally gave them. Some more favorites were "Creature Feature," "I See Johnny," "The Mortals," and "Remains of the Night." "Remains of the Night" was really an outstanding story. I've never quite seen an author invent such incredible super heroes and villains, give them sidekicks with real emotions, paint a classic love triangle, give them all real life desires and motivations and set the whole thing up as a story within a story... seriously, I'm not even a fan of comic book fiction, but I can appreciate how hard it must have been to pull that off, and McNally does it masterfully.

I'm from Chicago, so I have to admit that I especially liked reading about places and characters I'm familiar with - Nelson Algren, the Fridge, Payton, Belushi, Wicker Park, etc. But I can't say that the fact that it centered around Chicago was my favorite part. For me, great fiction begins and ends with the characters. Sure, McNally's characters are sometimes warped or menacing or wounded or confused, but that's the good stuff, man, that's the real goods... That's the stuff that makes us human and any good literary writer worth his salt will go right at that stuff without any fear. You'll find a character (perhaps many) in this book that you've known, someone you can relate to, and you may just realize that you've learned something about yourself and your own fragile, "mortal" tendencies along the way, too.

McNally just continues writing beautiful stories that stand toe to toe with the very best stuff out there.

A beautiful short story is about much more than what happens next.

A really beautiful short story manipulates its reader. One minute, you're laughing out loud. On the next page, your shoulders slump as the wind gets sucked out of you.

In Ghosts of Chicago, John McNally has managed to pull together seventeen short stories that aim for--and hit--high literary art.

A divorcee who goes about returning all his wedding gifts. An eight-year-old obsessed with monster movies learns he's not going to be the only child in the family anymore. John Belushi walks hand-in-hand with his girl through acres of pot plants. The butler of a creepy superhero, The Silverfish, goes bowling with the hired help of his boss's arch nemeses.

None of these stories are what they seem to be. And that's what makes them great.

I loved Troublemakers, John McNally's first story collection, but with Ghosts of Chicago, he's cemented himself as one of the contemporary masters of the short story form.

John McNally's new story collection GHOSTS OF CHICAGO is full of portents, mysterious circumstances and haunted people. McNally has the ability to get to the essence of his characters and allow them to LIVE their stories and just like real life, they are full of unexpected events and comic turns. There is ravaged beauty, bits of magic and hopefulness in these stories.

The book opens with "Return Policy," a very affecting story about Mark Timbers, whose wife had left him after 18 years of marriage. Mark gathers up all the items in his house that were given to him as wedding presents and sends them back to their givers, because he felt that he no longer deserved them. Along the way, he attracts a stray dog, a dead cat, a deadbeat neighbor and the sales girl from a department store that is going out of business. How the story ends, demonstrates how people come together in times of grief. It brought tears to my eyes.

In "I See Johnny," a young woman, known to us only as Miss Betsy, is the host of a successful local children's TV show. The titular Johnny is the boy Miss Betsy dated when she was 16, who was killed in Korea. The title refers to a segment in her show where she holds up a hand mirror (with the mirror removed) to the camera, and calls out the names of the children who have written letters to the show, "I see Martha! I see Jim!" What seemed strange to Miss Betsy is that even though there are lots of mail, she never sees Johnny. There are no little boys named Johnny. Every week she looks for Johnny, whose very name evokes some nameless longing in her.

Who hasn't tried to play detective and try to track down somebody from their past? In "The Immortals," Rudy is sitting in an El train when he glimpses a woman standing outside who he recognizes but whose face he can't place. The woman sees Rudy, recognizes him and calls out to him as the train leaves the station. Too late, Rudy remembered who this woman was: Leila, his ex-wife whom he hadn't seen in 15 years. Leila took all their photo albums when they divorced after a brief marriage, telling him that it will be easier for him to forget her if he can't remember what she looked like. A year after this chance encounter, Rudy picks up another lead on the whereabouts of his ex-wife, who is rumored to have been decapitated...

In "Men Who Love Women Who Love Men Who Kill," Brandon Dawson is dating a girl who is in still love with a man in Death Row. Today, however, is the day that man is to be sent to the electric chair and Brandon goes out to buy an engagement ring. However, the fates are conspiring against him...

The Silverfish is the unlikely superhero in "The Remains of The Night," but this story is about his BUTLER. Crazy.

Author James Frey was crucified by Oprah for not being completely factual in his biography, A MILLION PIECES. In a similar fashion, in "The Memoirist," an author may have fudged his facts a little too far, and his readers are going to give him a taste of his own medicine.

In "Contributor's Notes," what seems like a straightforward biography about the author John McNally, turns into a hilarious romp with the type of punch-in-the-gut writing that shows us McNally's mastery of the short story form. I loved this story! And what's even better is the twist in the ending which was so unexpected that I was frickin' amazed at the McNally's inventiveness. It's the perfect story to end the collection. And as I turn to the backflap, and there is this photo of John, in a Chicago Bears cap, scruffy beard, peering sexily above his dark frames...Ghosts of Chicago

John McNally's 'Ghosts of Chicago' is the best collection I've read since 'Emperor of the Air' by Ethan Canin. I love how he paces the longer and shorter stories.

Few writers deliver the funny as well as McNally -- and he does it without being jokey. Take 'The Something Something' which has Gene Siskel screening a film with Roger Ebert. Siskel can't behave himself in the theater. He slurps coffee, talks and shoots spitballs at Ebert. It's a comic setup but ends with a twist.

'I See Johnny' is one of the best stories I've ever read. Comics say they killed when the audience belongs to them. I'm not sure what writers say when they write a great story -- smashed it? Maybe 'killed' is the right word and McNally did just that.

Most story collections have clunkers. Not this one. Most story collections don't drive you on to read the next page and the next like a good novel. This one does.

The lovely thing about McNally isn't just his wonderful prose style or his gift for voice -- no, it's his perspective, how he sees things.

Have you ever imagined Roger Ebert holding Gene Siskel over his head? Yeah, me neither. McNally did.

I had the privilege of interviewing Mr. McNally back in October of this year. He couldn't have been a nicer man. So humble, so helpful, and so normal that I felt I'd known him for years. His stories are dark, humorous and moving. I go to college for writing and McNally's stories constantly help me and make me discover new things. I always reread his books and it's like the first time every time.

'Ghosts of Chicago' is his latest collection of short stories - his first being 'Troublemakers'. In my opinion, he's constantly growing and getting better. His stories are easy to read, but are so layered with emotion and character development that you don't even know he's doing it until you think about it. To me, that is the sign of a great writer, or artist for that matter. There are always things below the surface.

Many stories in this collection have to do with famous dead Chicagoans. If you're from Chicago, you won't be able to frown seeing what some of the stories are about. There is Frazier Thomas, host of Garfield Goose. Walter Payton. John Belushi. 'The Something Something' is a story about Siskel and Ebert. The story is both hilarious and extremely poignant. If the last paragraph doesn't move you in some way, you have no soul.

All of the stories are equal parts sadness and humor. There is also a magical realism to the stories, a haunting halo of light that hangs above every story and makes them all the more great.

If you like great writing, get this book. But prepare to be spooked out in a different and wonderful way.

I just loved this book. I've always liked Chicago, and I'm glad to have this literary odyssey through the Windy City, which I'll take with me on my next trip there. Really very witty, and a real treat for those of you who know the city.

These stories by award-winning writer John McNally may be dark and twisted, as the last reviewer noted, but they're also, by turns, funny, literate, and heartbreaking. If you like the work of Stuart Dybek, George Singleton, or Tom Perotta, you'll probably love these stories, too. Also, you didn't need to have grown up in Chicago to appreciate these gems. I didn't grow up in Chicago, but I left this collection with a better sense of that place. It's as though Chicago itself is a character, always lingering in the stories' backgrounds. One of my favorite stories in the book is "Creature Features" about a monster-obsessed boy who goes into denial when his mother tells him that she's pregnant. (This story was listed as one of the 100 best stories of 2006 in the annual anthology, Best American Short Stories.) Anyway, good stuff!

This is a book of dark and twisted stories. I couldn't even finish it.