Rothbart, the creator of
Found magazine, self-published five of the eight stories included here under the same title. This new collection should give him the wider attention he deserves, for his stories contain an immediacy and freshness that make them instantly engaging. The stories' strength lies in their narrators, young men who are rootless, restless, and full of heart, displaying humor and sweetness even in dire situations. The young couple in the title story are newly in love and zooming across the back roads of Kansas when they espy a young boy practicing his surfing moves in a cornfield. Drawn into a family drama surrounding the surfer's fatally ill sister, the narrator is moved to remark that "the world had never seemed so beautiful and devastating, so ordinary and broken-down." Such small epiphanies are the hallmark of the collection, which also includes magical portraits of a charismatic, outrageous liar and a lonely teen transformed by the kindness of a stranger whom he victimized.
Joanne WilkinsonCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Review
"Davy writes with his whole heart. These stories are crushing."
-- Arthur Miller
"It's always exciting to discover a talented new writer. Davy Rothbart writes with such energy, wit, and heart."
-- Judy Blume
Davy Rothbart is a prodigiously talented young writer, and I would happily read anything he writes. His stories are full of a strange nervous energy in which wisdom is also, somehow, always visible."
-- Charles Baxter, author of The Feast of Love and Saul and Patsy
"I believe in Davy. He is a force to be reckoned with."
-- Ira Glass, host of public radio's This American Life
