Customer Reviews

Johnny Was & Other Tall Tales

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This isn't just a collection of erotic stories, it's more. The excitement of eroticism is there, but more important, this is more a book of lonely hearts. The characters you will meet in these stories, a dog-walker, teenager at camp, volunteer to the nursing-home set, prisoner on death row, and more, all in one way or another are dealing with unrequited love.

Some scenes are sad, some are funny, and some just plain sizzle. Don't consider this as "porn"--it's a collection of stories about the surprising twists and turns that life takes, and how various people deal with them. I would have enjoyed even more of these stories in this gem of a volume.

Wharton dashes from the starting gate with a character who dreams of tornados. This is most appropriate to describe the central theme of the collection. Some of the people living inside Wharton's head are adulterers, victims of unrequited love, or on death row awaiting execution for being a little too intense when it comes to love. One contemplates the irony of religious persecution. It would be easy to write that Wharton takes on numerous clichés and gives them new life but the internal dialogue of his avant-garde characters keeps well off the path most traveled. In the end Wharton's collection whips into quite a finale as it sucks his protagonist up into the heart of an actual tornado. Read Johnny Was and take a look at the world from the inside of the maelstrom.