Customer Reviews

Slow Monkeys and Other Stories

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Wow. This is a terrific collection of stories, set mostly in Maine, about ordinary human beings--who just might be the slowest monkeys in the kingdom, weighed down as we are by ennui, circumstance and our own foibles.

Nichols' writing, in terms of mechanics, is perfect for short fiction. There's not an unnecessary word: each character is drawn subtly, economically and realistically. But the real impact, the real delight of each story and, ultimately, the book as a whole, is its spirit: he makes the reader care. It's not just that he takes you inside his narrators--eight of the eleven stories are told in first person--but that you *know* the people he writes about, and yet can still be surprised by them. Their scars and shortcomings are familiar to a fault, and the logic behind their misdeads is dead-on. They are our neighbors, our family, us. He treats them kindly, with a simple equinimity you'd like to see from your own god.

The stories are easy to read, but they stick with you. And even the most poignant among them--the title piece, with its eager young would-be writer collecting tales among the down-and-outers at a Florida Salvation Army shelter; "C'est la Vie," whose young protagonist has been derailed from a promising college football career by a stroke of bad luck; and "Magic," about a haunted, depressive trailer park magician--are touched by a peculiarly human cockeyed hopefulness.

"Slow Monkeys and Other Stories" reminded me of Raymond Carver, with warmer bodies and smoother prose. Kudos to Jim Nichols for producing a gem of a collection; it deserves to fly off the shelves.

Susan O'Neill, Author
Don't Mean Nothing: Short Stories of Viet Nam

Attention all readers: Nichols is the real deal and Esquire and Zeotrope etc have known it all along.

This is a short story writer up there with the best of them. His work is classic. Sharp, tough, nuanced, delicate, heartbreaking, each story is, to me, the best of what short fiction can be.

If you care about short fiction, please, treat yourself to this book.

Be aware: you'll find no action heroes or epic conflicts in Slow Monkeys, a first collection from award-winning short story writer Jim Nichols. You won't come across any wily detectives or inscrutable medical examiners, any CIA agents or conniving society mavens. In short, you'll discover few of the suspects who inhabit the larger part of modern commercial fiction. Instead, Nichols levels his casual but penetrating scope on the less trodden world of trailer parks and migrant fruit workers, of bent marriages and blue-collar disillusion. But in this thrill-a-minute, Nike/Playstation/Tommy Hilfiger world, who wants to read about the troubles of ordinary Joes and Janes? Right?

Wrong. You want to read this book. Nichols voice comes clean and eerie as a loon call on a simple lake of autumn, thrusting even the most bored and ironic reader into that most epiphanic of environs-the real world. While this reviewer could hardly be described as a fan of relative minimalism, Nichols has a subtlety and style that can't help but win your appreciation. His language flows with assurance, firmly in the familiar but seldom stooping to dialect or the outright colloquial. His Hemingwayesque simplicity of phrase belies a deep interest in the rhythm and interaction of line and phrase. As a result of strong characterization and story, this sense of scansion is hardly noticeable on a first run-through, but upon subsequent or close examination, the lines emit a nearly poetic feel, like a concentricity of ripples on one of Nichols's Maine ponds, each expanding and accentuating the one before. This deep attention to craft is also evident in his controlled use of symbol. An ancient outboard motor, coins of ambiguous luck, dead fish, a stolen football: all these symbols could come across as contrived or labored in the hands of a less accomplished artisan but Nichols employs them with a light yet resolute touch, making the narrative resonate with aptness, substance and power.

Knowing that the most universal conflicts have little to do with political machinations or jewel heists, Nichols forces us to gaze upon the complexity of the human drama, where the simple wonder of a child keeps a lost man from the abyss; where in the shattered knee of a former high school football star we tease out the true marrow and eventuality of American dreams; where among tip-ups and ice shanties, closeted tendencies are not discussed openly but grunted at-or better yet, ignored-over a cold beer; where, everyday, families and individual souls bend, break, and are made whole again by the subtle heroism of diminished pride or lowered expectation. These commonplace heroes don't save the globe or perform superhuman feats, but they do save those around them from utter despair and ruin with tight-lipped compassion or a simple determination to persevere. Slow Monkeys is crammed with distinctly American characters, and with his perfect apprehension and appreciation of human frailty, Jim Nichols comes across as nothing less than the broad authentic voice of America.

Mr. Nichols has produced a uniformly accomplished collection of stories here, my personal favorites among them being: "Jon-Clod," a family piece that is somehow related to the Winter Olympics; and "C'est La Vie," featuring a quarterback with a blown-out knee.

Stories about men struggling at the bottom of the economic heap, mostly in northern New England. I bought this on the strength of the New York Times rave review and was not disappointed. It's in the "dirty realism" and minimalist tradition of Raymond Carver, Russell Banks and Bobby Anne Mason.
I thought the first and the last were the best. In "Magic" a man living alone in a trailer, afflicted by alcoholism and depression, is uplifted by a momentary contact with an autistic child. The protagonists (I can't say heroes) of the title story live in a Salvation Army hostel. The Times quoted the marvellous ending, but I can't resist doing it again. It's a masterpiece of using, and even repeating, the simplest of words. What a writer, what a genius, this is. The narrator is imagining a better life:
"My heart flutters with the idea of it all. This little kid's got a nice room with a nice bed and a thick pillow and a quilt.He's got a nice father and a nice mother. He's comfortable and he's not fat and when he lies down nothing comes up in his throat."

Oh, I loved this collection. This guy's the real deal. Beautifully crafted characters rendered with lots of heart and dry, wry humor.

One of the finest collections of stories I've read in years. Whlie I admired the finely wrought point of view and the terse dialogue, what remains with me most from these stories is their sense of place, interior and exterior, whether it's a cave where two vietnam veterans encounter each other or the inside of a jail cell or a hillside with someone sledding down it.

These are character-driven stories and their quiet epiphanies and endings are compelling, but Nichols is good at opening sentences, too:

"I was stupid for a long time, I admit it."

"One fall Paul Waterman found that he could tramp the woods again. . ." (You'll have to read the story to see just how good an opening sentence that is.)

Wonderful work. I look forward to his next collection.