Rhymes with Useless [Paperback]

Terence Young (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 1, 2001

In 13 unforgettable stories, Terence Young examines the frailty, and bravery, of that most hapless of millennial institutions-the modern family. Simultaneously warm and chilling, Young's characters shuffle between uncertainty and memory in scenarios too real to be fiction: a hippie's close encounter with an undiscovered Joni Mitchell; a single father's obsession with an impending bee invasion; a teacher testifying against colleagues accused of pedophilia; a German boy's vengeance against his wheelchair-bound father; a professor credited with encouraging a former student's sex change. This collection is both a litany of human foibles and its sensible antidote; regret and forgiveness, suppressed desires and unleashed lust, dislocation and homecoming.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

A tender heart beats beneath the crusty exterior of this promising debut short story collection, featuring hardscrabble characters, energetic prose and the rugged territory of Canada and the Pacific Northwest. Young's characters may drive big trucks and grind up the bones of cremated bodies for a living, but these 13 stories focus on family in all its incarnations: a squalling young couple, a widowed grandmother, a pair of children bewildered by the world. In sharp, colloquial prose, Young traces the cracks just beneath the surface of familial life in his haunting, sometimes heartbreaking tales. In "Fast," a young couple meets with an investment adviser, just as the husband contemplates a dalliance with a young temp at his office: "In the dining room, Sarah was planning their future and above her head he was thinking of ways to blow it to pieces." In "Yellow with Black Horns," a young girl helps to make a pi¤ata for her brother's birthday party, while her parents' escalating fights threaten to smash the world she knows. These are fine, sensitive stories, chronicling loss and disaffection without resorting to bland generalities. As a retired professor, mourning his wife's death, realizes at the end of "Maintenance": "the real cataclysm was not that the world would end all at once but that it was ending one person at a time." If it garners a few prominent reviews and word-of-mouth publicity, this collection should attract dedicated readers, one at a time.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Product Details

• Paperback: 176 pages
• Publisher: Raincoast Books; First Edition edition (February 1, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1551923548
• ISBN-13: 978-1551923543
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.4 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #8,659,420 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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