Customer Reviews

Trouble: Stories

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The stories were great: funny without relying on stereotypes, poignant without delving into sappy. It's really rare a short story collection can sustain my attention throughout, but this one did.

TROUBLE by Patrick Somerville is a brilliant collection of stories that comes as a surprise, for until the book arrived in my slush pile I had never heard of the author. He writes beautifully in every regard, and most impressive, he doesn't parade his learning and he knows how to craft a plot that perfectly sets off his themes and his symbolism. I learned a lot about the food sciences from his tale of "Trouble and the Shadowy Deathblow," but what I will take away with me is its incisive portrait of a whipped husband and dad whose wife has the power in her eyes to make him jump up from the E-Z chair and do her bidding. He finds himself at a convention in San Francisco and then a special "Monkeys Paw" episode of Steven Spielberg's AMAZING STORIES happens to him in the men's room of his hotel, after a stranger in a wheelchair with a macaw on either shoulder sells him the secret of slaying his enemies with the eponymous "deathblow."

"The essence of trouble," Somerville has written, "is the connection of the emotional and the rational. You make decisions you would not make under normal circumstances." He is especially good at depicting young people, and his story "English Cousin" will have you crying in laughing fits at the dumb and dumber antics of exchange student Bill and his American cousin Terry. If there was an English Anti-Defamation League they'd be planting pickets around Somerville's house and office. As I say he's great with the young, it's when he ventures into the minds and hearts of older men that he's out of his depth. It must be the hardest thing being a fiction writer, having to recreate the inner life of people who are so different than you--men writing women, white writing black, rich people writing poor, whatever. I guess if you were unsure about how you were doing you might actually ask an older person what they thought of your attempts to inhabit their world. Somerville couldn't have asked very many guys otherwise he would have been told that no man has ever suffered from the complaint of Brandon's father in story one, "Puberty." It's imaginative, and might have worked in a sci fi or fantasy world, but believe me, it just doesn't happen, praise the Lord, on planet Earth. Sorry to be so coy but Amazon would not allow my to be as anatomically explicit as Somerville gets. Somerville must think it's something that happens to every guy once he hits 40. I'm here to say, no way Jose.

Other than that (and his crazy ideas about San Francisco geography) Patrick Somerville has blasted off into outer space with a debut collection that reaches for the stars like Wernher von Braun.

Being a court reporter in criminal court, I hear a lot of stories about a lot of crazy horrible things. One day on my lunch hour, after viewing exhibits of clothing so caked with dried blood it cracked and fell audibly to the table, I felt the need to go for a walk. I wandered around and discovered a used bookstore. Before going in, I checked out the bargain bins and found this book. I opened it up to the first page and read the first line. I knew right away I'd be taking it home with me.

I've come to understand that reading is a kind of treasure hunt where the gold is the human condition laid bare, not in a cruel or cynical way, but with humor and compassion. This is what Mr. Somerville's writing is. I have not enjoyed a collection of stories so much since Vonnegut.

I am very excited to have discovered this wonderful author. I look forward to reading Cradle.

Witty and humorous, yet still touches on some of the dark sides of being human. Great stories. Looking forward to more from the author.

In 'Trouble,' Patrick Somerville writes stories about restless characters trapped in a conformist's world. Midwestern rebels of sorts. Somerville has a consistent sense of humor. The kind that hangs back, then attacks in the instant before you've forgotten how effectively he can tell a joke. And good jokes at that. The kind of jokes that force you to put the book down for a minute or two, to commemorate each joke with a head shake and an audible laugh. Some stories in 'Trouble' made me feel nostalgic about events in my own life, while most of the stories made me feel nostalgic about events that had no visible similarity or relevance in my life, which is a great compliment to Somerville's ability to be compelling, even when his subject matter is alien.

Somerville achieves great versatility in this book as his topics range from the all-encompassing vulnerability of puberty in 'Puberty,' to the fantastically funny look at the pros and cons of possessing the "deathblow" technique within the corporate snackfood world in 'Trouble and the Shadowy Deathblow.' Then from the heartbraking decline of a once-great cousin amidst tragedy in 'Black Earth, Early Winter Morning,' and a middle-aged widower's unraveling despite the sexual comfort of a runaway teenage girl in 'The Cold War,' to a sweet eulogy of sorts by a young man reflecting on his deceased dentist in 'So Long, Anyway.'

But perhaps the greatest aspect of the stories in 'Trouble,' is Somerville's ability to finish a story satisfactorily. His stories have endings, endings visible enough to touch. Illuminating endings without pretentiousness, that reinforce and reward the reader for reading the story all the way through. Endings that make the reader feel as though they've done something, or learned something, vaguely important just by reading Somerville's stories.

I loved the variety of stories here--the middle-aged melancholy of "The Cold War", the kookiness of the title story, along with how well Somerville depicts the awkward nature of being a person in the world.