Customer Reviews

Time to Go (Johns Hopkins: Poetry and Fiction)

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Stephen Dixon has not been high on my list of must read authors; just never got around to him with all the competing books dragging me hither and yon. At my library, someone had put this old-ish book of short stories on a rack near the checkout and on a whim I took it home. Holy moly, was this a surprise. There are maybe 15 or 18 stories and all of them in either larger or smaller doses have recurring characters. How and when they recur is a continuing surprise. That's only one interesting fact. Another interesting fact is that the stories are written in almost stream-of-consciousness when the narrator is thinking/speaking out loud, and when there is a dialogue going on, the reader is not always 100% sure who is saying what. It does not detract--it makes for a thrilling ride of a read. Fact number 3 is that only one story out of the whole stew didn't sustain the pace, the thrill, the excitement for this reader. My favorite contemporary short story writers are Sherman Alexie, Annie Proulx, Rick Moody, Andrea Barrett, Joseph Epstein, Nadine Gordimer, David Bezmozgis and Aleksander Hemon, to name a few. I namedrop those names so y'all can know where I'm coming from. I emailed the library to thank the anonymous library worker for putting that book out and I thank the universe privately for putting me in that spot where I could see it.