Amazon.com Review
Erik Puchner's
Music Through the Floor is a hauntingly beautiful collection of stories recounted by a diverse group of similarly alienated heroes and heroines. While the thinly veiled lesson at the end of each tale may remind some of childhood fables, Puchner's characters, whose struggles are remarkably genuine, are likeable enough to make this a welcome debut.
At times hilarious in his irony, Puchner also has a serious side that infuses many of these stories with an unexpected heaviness. Among the most memorable is "Children of God," a story about a seriously depressed young man who becomes the caretaker of two mentally retarded adults whose daily routine, while tragic, is also triumphant. "Mission" is the story of an ESL teacher whose need to please his students, and the immigrant community in which he lives, is so strong that it tows the line between heartbreaking and pathetic. In the end, a student's real heartbreak is so poignantly rendered that the teacher, and the reader, are left speechless.
Not all of Puchner's stories are created equal--some lack depth, and others can drag at times. Still, on the whole, Music Through the Floor is a mentally and emotionally rewarding read, and most will look forward to more from this talented newcomer. --Gisele Toueg
From Publishers Weekly
Alienated adults and wounded children inhabit Puchner's polished debut collection, nine bittersweet stories that capture moments of truth but too often feel like neatly packaged writing workshop fiction. "Child's Play," about adolescent male cruelty and the pull of mother-son love, climaxes powerfully with a sad, graphic act of sadism when a group of boys gangs up on a social outcast. But "Essay #3: Leda and the Swan," a confessional digression from a homework assignment penned by a 16-year-old girl—and a too-precious excuse for cutesy malapropisms—strives too hard for poignancy in its broadly drawn vicissitudes of adolescence and blossoming sexuality. A near-death encounter during a driver's ed class in "A Fear of Invisible Tribes" almost but doesn't quite unite a bisexual Berkeley teacher and a recovering alcoholic across a class divide. In "Animals Here Below," a young brother and sister suffering in the care of their depressed father conspire naïvely to bring their errant mother back into the family fold. Though Puchner delivers emotional nuance with sure-handed prose, every story turns on a loaded moment or hurtful act, a formula that becomes repetitive across the collection.
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