Rust and Bone: Stories (Hardcover)

~ (Author)
Key Phrases: mean utility, Modern Magic, The Apprentice's Guide, Rocket Ride (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

A strong stomach, an open mind and a morbid sense of humor are essential to enjoying Davidson's accomplished, macabre first collection. Calamity lurks around every corner, these stories suggest, and you never know when fate will smite you—only that it will. Davidson catapults his characters (sex addicts, fighters, gamblers and drinkers) into ingeniously grim situations that test their will. In "Rocket Ride," a young man who loses his leg to the orca he performs with in a marine park show tries to rebuild his life, in part by attending meetings of the Unlimbited Potential support group, which is full of substance-abusing amputees who wonder if karma's to blame for their plights. In the gruesome "A Mean Utility," a normal-seeming couple—an ad exec and his wife, a nurse—breed and fight vicious dogs, while in the sad "On Sleepless Roads," a repo man leaves one night's job not with the camper he was supposed to reclaim, but with the destitute man's hamster and guinea pig, which he brings home to his disabled wife. Davidson, 30, is a fine young writer with a keen sense of the absurd and a bracing, biting wit, but his focus on gore may keep many readers from appreciating his obvious talent. (Nov.)
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From Booklist

Like author Thom Jones in the story collection The Pugilist at Rest 1993) and novelist Marc Bojanowski in The Dog Fighter (2004), Davidson's eight short stories home in on men addicted to action, depicting boxers, basketball players, and gamblers in kinetic, ferociously detailed prose. In the title story, a boxer mournfully chants the names of the 27 bones that make up the human hand, all of which he has broken in the course of a career that now sees him fighting in ever-seedier venues. He sees the beauty of boxing even as he admits that his fights are a matter of survival and atonement for past sins. In "A Mean Utility," ad executive James Paris, frustrated by his and his wife's attempts to conceive, displaces his paternal feelings onto his pit bull, Matilda. He overmatches her with a vicious rottweiler, then experiences a change of heart, wading into the fray to save his pup and losing a chunk of his leg in the process. Davidson matches his stellar, energetic descriptions of physical confrontation with subtle, quirky explorations of human motivation. Joanne Wilkinson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: W. W. Norton (November 14, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393061299
• ISBN-13: 978-0393061291
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.9 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,448,051 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Knockout First Book- MUST READ, January 28, 2006

By	Jeremy Robert Johnson "Ne'er-do-well" (Portland, OR) - See all my reviews

When you see a book by a young new author has received acclaim from literary heavyweights like Thom Jones, Chuck Palahniuk, and Bret Easton Ellis (and Clive Barker, and Peter Straub, and...well, you get my point), you may tend, like me, to be initially excited but then approach the work with an air of guarded skepticism. After all, we live in an era of disproportionate hype where talk show hosts sell us fraudulent memoirs and publishers care more about marketing platforms than a book's content.

But please, drop your guard this time. Forget the hype. Just buy this book and read the whirlwind opener (also titled "Rust and Bone") and try to tell me this Davidson guy isn't the real deal. And realize that the "hype" is anything but- people are excited because Craig Davidson has delivered an utter knockout of a first book.

The cover might indicate that this is a collection of hard-edged pugilistic tales, but Davidson's range goes far beyond the confines of the ring. In fact, only three of the stories deal centrally with organized combat (boxing, dog fighting, kickboxing) and Davidson proves adept at putting you right in the middle of the sweat and fatigue, the blood and the shattered bones. His delivery of the fight material is a wonderful mesh of passion and sharp technical description that had me cringing one moment, thrilled the next. And in each of those stories there are emotional conflicts that make those battles in the ring mean so much more than the pounding of flesh on flesh.

The other stories deal out different shades of conflict- a man's desire to live vicariously through his son while battling alcoholism, a man coping with losing a limb to a killer whale, magician's children dealing with an absent father, a sex addict coming to terms with his desires, and a repo man trying to reclaim the wife he's losing to a degenerative illness. Each deals with its characters in a way that renders them surprisingly sympathetic. Two of the stories, "Rust and Bone" and "On Sleepless Roads," were so emotionally effective that they lingered in my mind days after reading them.

Davidson's prose is lean and efficient with the occasional stylistic flourish (in particular when describing settings) and his story setups are intriguing. His characters-the husbands and wives and brawlers and strugglers- have heart. And the sense of hope in defiance of all struggle that Davidson leaves you with make this a Must Read.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "All I'm saying is, I'm no monster, okay?", November 16, 2006

By	Luan Gaines "luansos" (Dana Point, CA USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Rust and Bone: Stories (Paperback)

The title story sets the tone for the collection, a brilliant juxtaposition of nature's raw beauty with the harsh reality of the cost of living in the real world. In "Rust and Bone", a young prize fighter takes the punches, throwing himself into the ring, learning over the years the lure and occasional rewards of the fighter's life, disciplined and self-aware. It is unexpected loss that knocks him to his knees, his tough spirit brought low from that which he cannot control, a permanent scar that sears his soul.

A father's lifelong obsession with his talented son's basketball skills defines their relationship in "The Rifleman", the father relentless as he pushes his son toward greatness. Unfortunately, the father's drunkenness overrides everything, turning the relationship into a parody, the son angling away from his father's boozy interference, the man left babbling in a haze of memories and rationalization. The reader cannot help but squirm with discomfort, the sour breath of the father an ill wind of failure.

"A Mean Utility" is arguably one of the tougher stories, providing some harsh details of dog fighting as one man's means of comprehending fatherhood. Filled with a particular brutality, the man's comprehension is bathed in the blood of violence, an arena inhabited by a breed of humanity that is disturbing. The stories don't get any easier, Davidson taking bites out of life, spitting them back with impunity, in prose that is both difficult to read and masterfully written, a Bosch painting in language, challenging the reader not to look away. Very few writers have the skill to blend ugliness with everyday events, lifting his protagonists out of their comfort zones toward personal revelation. This collection certainly isn't for the faint of heart, but for anyone tough enough to persevere, Rust and Bone is quite an accomplishment. Luan Gaines/2006.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Eloquently disturbing, August 18, 2006

By	Keith R. Dennis (USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Gritty stories of lives on the fringe, told with deceptively sparse eloquence. I enjoyed every story and will anxiously await Davidson's next book. I expect great things to come!