Customer Reviews

Rancho Weirdo

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

If you are looking for a traditional and conventional short stories, something wrapped up in a cute little package and with the daring of vanilla ice cream, then this book isn't for you.

Laura Chester's prose strikes a different course. Story lines jump up from the page, dreams and reality mix and dance, the traditional structure of a story with beginning, crises and resolution are cast aside, in favor of less resolved but equally satisfying endings. More Haiku and less limerick.

When approached with an open mind, these stories have a chance to surprise and challenge a reader and as such are a breath of fresh air.

The stories in RANCHO WEIRDO are wickedly funny and Chester's free, loose writing hand is to be totally admired. YOO's marvelous drawings are sneaky weeds. They're everywhere. The discordant notes of story and image are completely disorienting. If you like not knowing where you are, I highly recommend. SB

CARNE ASADA

Rancho Weirdo by Laura Chester with drawings by Haeri Yoo exposes the nakedness of the naive and "The Baghdad Café like life" of living along the border that has a language of its own. Spanish and English are integrated in the idiom of the prose, reflecting the language of the border communities spoken and broken and the dialect of the Diaspora. Laura Chester deliciously voices this in her burnt around the edges, uncommonly clear, writing style.

It reads like all the various cuts of beef. If it's chuck or round, then you'll need to marinate and cook S-L-O-W-L-Y to tenderize it. But if it's rib, and written by a woman, it will already be tender. The outside is seared, the flavor locked in, but it's kept raw.

17 short stories are written in vivid boldness, evoking the rawness of human emotion, with the descriptive word leaving mesquite smoke to linger around like unvoiced thoughts.

This book carries the broken resonance of a sonnet with subtly instructive neorealism. It is genuine and uncontrived. Read it out loud with a friend in bed and it's funny and vividly present. Listen in between the lines to its essential ingredient of salty dialogue and it's disturbing.

The quirky magic hidden in the patterns of the ordinary. Imaginative potentialities disturbing like flesh itself.

All of this emerges in these bedtime stories for adults. They are sound bits of literature with the beat of an untainted heart.

Recommend it to lovers of speculative fiction, especially those who have a taste for fantasy and the politically incorrect.

Food and a good book. Back at the ranch, fear no gristle, but chew.

An utter delight, Rancho Weirdo, will make you laugh and think and cause you to contemplate the complexities of life and all it's ironies. Laura Chester's writing is a joy to read on every level. She is a master at weaving the ordinary with the absurd and interjecting humor and sexiness, when you least expect it!!

An evocative storyteller, Laura Chester will transport you to another time, another place, characters
and settings that are unforgettable in both their quirkiness and depth. Many of the
stories in Rancho Weirdo , deal with the complex and often taboo social and religious mores, which causes
you to utilize your intellect and reflect upon your own life circumstance, all the while having fun with it!!

Creamy and delightful on the outside, this collection of short stories are substantive and nutritious on the inside. Great reading for the mind and the funny bone!!

I loved it and I highly recommend it !!!!!
Donna DeMari

This book is a rolicking read. Everything is slightly off kilter, the humor perverse , the characters, mostly women, intense, alive, even excessively alive, burdened with hyperactive, yearning imagination. Chester has a real gift.

Laura Chester's RANCHO WEIRDO presents the reader with characters and stories that are as fantastic as the Arizona landscape, full of red cliffs, dark canyons, strange cacti, coatimundis and javalinas, and quiet, hidden water holes. Reading them through is like a night drive from Alpine to Morenci on the Beast's own highway 666, with a surprise around every pretzeled corner. Totally delicious!

Someone gave me this book as a gift and I was immediately taken with the originality of the prose. Laura Chester truly creates worlds with her gift for the absurd. The illustrations enhance the reading experience as non-literal companions, and Chester's language and imagery are remarkable. Calling all fans of beauty and decay, travel and wicked humor.

Laura Chester is so good at playing with words. The funny quirky short stories and drawings will make you laugh! I highly recommend.

This book of short stories and drawings is a really fun read, beginning with the cover. The book is characterized by an exuberance of words and irrepressible imagination. Chester's characters--mostly girls and women--are generally playful or rebellious or just plain baffled, but underneath the laugh-out-loud light tone is a longing by most of them for an authentic experience of love and trust.

Laura Chester has a way with words and a sharp wit and these stories of hers put
all of her talents on display. Forget about the economy; read this book and know
again the transporting power of words well used!