Customer Reviews

Losing Patience

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Joyce Faulkner, author of Losing Patience, has produced a powerful collection of short stories that explore themes such as guilt, forgiveness, misguided obedience and retribution. Her psychologically memorable characters sort through complex issues and face difficult decisions.

In "Chance," Faulkner focuses on the various aspects of passion. Chance feels like a second class person all his life. After loving and losing a woman to his own father, he grows increasingly unbalanced. Like an old Twilight Zone episode, this dark tale follows Chance into the depths of madness.

In "Andrew," two Civil War soldiers, Grover and Andrew, carry on a ghostly conversation about life, death and regrets. The old enemies come to terms with what it means to kill and what it means to die.

"Just Hold Me" takes place in 1967. Gary, a returning Vietnam veteran, is unable to make himself go home and face his mother. Having lost his way in the labyrinths of war, he turns to a stranger for solace. Filled with guilt and anger, he struggles to leave the ugly memories behind.

In "Infinity," Faulkner takes on the never-ending circle of violence against women. An eleven year old girl has been violated and meets with a rape crisis counselor who knows first hand what she is going through. "Infinity" delves into the emotional trauma such an event inflicts on victims, families, counselors, police and healthcare workers.

Human sacrifice, religious beliefs and blind obedience are represented in "The Test," a modern retelling of a Biblical story. Abe must choose whether to obey a voice that tells him to murder his beloved newborn child or ignore it. Is he hallucinating or is he hearing from God?

Losing Patience is not without humor. In "The Rubber Dome," Faulkner introduces a woman who has lost her husband. In her grief, she decides to never allow herself to care again -- but as the years pass, her longing for her lost lover becomes ever more intense. Perhaps she can find a man to take the place of her darling husband, if just for the night. Things don't go as planned. Her experience teaches her to laugh at herself and reach out to begin a new life.

The twenty stories that make up Losing Patience are engaging, mind bending and thought provoking. The collection will keep you coming back for another read to see what else the stories say to you.

Joyce Faulkner writes on multiple levels and I find each level a feast. Losing Patience should be read leisurely and deliciously, and enjoyed like a multi-course dinner.

Take out any one story. Read it at surface level and you'll have an enjoyable read. Ponder it awhile and it will seep through to deeper levels, and you will taste the different flavors of relationships, human emotions and morality.

An underlying theme is the commonality of our emotions and reactions. Not all stories are easy, but all ring true.

Joyce Faulkner provides the reader with spellbinding stories of the likes we have seldom seen since Alfred Hitchcock entered this arena. The turn of each page leads to a new and succulent morsel for the mind to devour.

In this book author Joyce Faulkner treats us to a breathtaking and eclectic collection of short stories. They range from the complexity of dealing with the challenge of modern day relationships to seduction, betrayal, murder, and revenge, from the mundane to the afterlife and the supernatural, from individuals fighting to bring to the surface the trauma in their lives and come to terms with it to those hiding terrible secrets: this book has it all.

The stories are well written and very engaging. A few are shocking in their brutal honesty and others shy away from a "happy ending." A character asks in the story "The Menagerie", "Whoever said life was fair?" another character declares in the story "Unforgivable", "Sometimes there are no good choices...only a bunch of bad ones." Often the best we can hope for is resolution and closure, and that is what many of these stories are about.

Some of the stories are structured around individuals coming to grips with feelings. Dealing with a estranged family including an ill mother (Winding Down), with the memory of an abusive father (Unforgivable), with being overweight and self esteem (Fattie Mattie), with the death of a relative (Empty House) and with returning home after war (Just Hold Me). Particularly heartbreaking and painful to read was "Infinity", where women deal with rape and its aftermath.

The stories "Lilith" and "One Chittendon Drive" deal with classical monsters while others like "Chance" and the title story "Losing Patience" deal with perhaps the most complex, terrifying, and least understood of all monsters: ourselves.

Among my favorites are: "The Brafferton", where two warriors from different ages and realms share their stories with each other. "Elizabeth Rose", where the perfect punishment for a bigot is dispensed. The humorous "Rubber Dome", where a widow decides to reactivate her sex life in a very matter of fact way but with an unforeseen result, and "In my Fashion", where a woman receives an unusual gift.

My only qualms about the book are a glitch with my copy that prevented me from navigating directly to the table of contents and another glitch where the first page of each story was displayed without the title upon clicking the table of contents. However, these did not detract from the experience of reading the book.

This book is not a "light read", it will not distract you from real life, rather it will propel you into the thick of things and make you think. If this is your mindset, then Joyce Faulkner's "Losing Patience" is the book for you.

In this collection, Joyce Faulkner manages to capture the reader's interest by plunging him or her into the world of the mysterious, the macabre and the horrific. There is something for everyone here: for the Civil War buff, for the crime story lover and for the aficionado of Americana. Faulkner handles her material excellently and in the title story, Losing Patience, gives the reader unexpected jolts that remimds me of a combination of O. Henry's surprise endings, punctuated by the grotesqueness of Franz Kafka.

A great book that will make short work of your spare time and really make you think. Eerie events decribed in vivid detail will stay with you long after you finish. Who knows? Maybe you'll relate to one of the characters and learn to conquer your own demons?