Customer Reviews

Troublemakers (The John Simmons Short Fiction Award)

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I ran out and bought this book after the remarkable review in the Chicago Tribune. I must say, I was *not* disappointed. These are fast-paced, intelligent, and sensitive tales of men at their moments of greatest crisis. Inevitably, they respond in ways that are as hilarious as they are heartbreaking--the husband who decides to mail the decapitated head of a dear to his estranged wife, the desperate young man who steals a trunkload of Tootsie Rolls to pay for his girlfriend's abortion, the destructive kid who spends his days trying to set his neighbor on fire with his magnifying glass. Wacky as these stories often are, McNally manages to strike the right balance of sympathy and disdain at the foibles that drive these imperfect creatures. Unlike so much contemporary fiction, these stories explore motive and consequence in equal parts. And every surprise feels like the knock-out punch we should have seen coming. This book reminds me of the bittersweet insights usually only found in the short fiction of Richard Bausch and Charles Baxter. Also, anyone who grew up in Chicago in the 1970s will recognize the dead-eye depictions of the time and place. I hope a second book is soon on its way. For now, I'm planning to reread this one.

John McNally's TROUBLEMAKERS is a remarkable book. I work in a bookstore, and so often -- but not always -- the new fiction titles can fill me with a glum despair, and all I can do is hope and wait for a publisher with integrity and guts to bring Richard Yates' wonderful books back in print. And then TROUBLEMAKERS came in, I read it, and I felt that despair lift from off my back. McNally's book of stories exists for all the right reasons: the writer cares about language, he cares about his characters, and he can tell a story. These three aspects come together in TROUBLEMAKERS, and the result is story after story that surprises, scares, entertains, and involves the reader. Above all, McNally's care for language and character helps the reader to see. This is a book that I would recommend to the aspiring writer and to the seasoned reader: there are things here to learn from, and things that will remain with the reader. This is a book that belongs on the shelf with Yates' LIARS IN LOVE, Bausch's SPIRITS, and Dubus' FINDING A GIRL IN AMERICA. The story "Limbs" alone is worth the price of the book.

If you're looking for maximum payoff from the modern short story and are the kind of person who enjoys that thrilling, terrifying feeling when your car peeks at the top of a massive rollercoaster, then "Troublemakers" is for you. This, Mr. McNally's first collection of fiction, is filled with startling moments of humanity on full display -- in pain, looking ridiculous, characters who are constantly being jolted with the fact of their own odd places in the world. McNally never looks down at his readers but seems to grant each of us the dignity and respect of telling it like it is. In one story, about a group of friends traveling to the Snaker River to watch Evel Knievel jump his sky cycle across the abyss, we view a heartbreaking scene in a local store that proves we are all, like Knievel during his jump, caught hovering over one chasm or another, trapped between meaningfulness and hope. Stories of boys, men and women who can't help but betray one another and, at the same time, regret that sad compulsion. Buy this one and hang on.

John McNally's Troublemakers sparkles with electric language and moves the heart with touching scenes faithfully depicted. Often these days, one must look widely and patiently to find contemporary fiction that rises above the level of workshop attempts to that of true literary art. McNally has shown his work to be sensitive, laugh-out-loud funny, and true to the spirit of what it means to be human. For all familiar with the plight of the college adjunct, I especially recommend "The Politics of Correct", a tale of a young man oppressed, financially and culturally, to such an extreme that radical decisions and actions are called for, and it resonates with a veracity nearly impossible to find in other works dealing with this subject. This collection is a fine example that good literary work is out there, if one looks patiently for it.

The cover photo on this book (cuffed hands) isn't quite right. This is not gritty realism or "Cops"-like docudrama. Instead, author McNally's sensibility lies somewhere between the blue-collar melancholy of Raymond Carver and the outrageous humor of Hunter Thompson. His characters (all males in their early teens to their thirties) are comically pathetic, living lives that barely hang together. Teenagers Hank and Ralph appear in three stories set on the Southside of Chicago, obsessed with girls (who are all repelled by the two boys) and spending their aimless days and nights on the ragged boundary line between adolescent angst and Big Trouble. Roger, a UPS driver, moves blankly through empty days haunted darkly by thoughts of Squeaky Fromme and Charles Manson, while a fellow worker runs a personal ad and discovers the liberating mysteries of "raw carnality." Meanwhile, romantic relationships and marriages languish and sour.

Far from being bleak, the wonky dialogue and cock-eyed situations in these stories had me laughing out loud. In my favorite story, a debt-ridden young English instructor is beleaguered at work by witless students and an annoying, politically-correct faculty and then harassed at his new home by a neighborhood bully. All comes unglued for him at a faculty party where he gets entirely too drunk. Only the last longer story, "Limbs," shows McNally stretching himself into something more novel-like, as he explores the disintegrating impact of a murder on the lives of several small-town people, and here there are few laughs, just a dizzying descent into confusion and rage.

I love this book. It is both disturbing and fiercely entertaining.

Eleven stories make up this solid collection, and three of them are related ("The Vomitorium," "Smoke," and "The Grand Illusion"), starring a kid in the eight grade named Hank and his sometimes goofy, always strange adventures with Ralph, his dangerous deliquent of a friend. All three are excellent, and they make a logical progression, offering nice closure at the end of the third story.

The remaining eight are a mixed bag. "The New Year" is fantastic, but "The End of Romance" is not. "The First of Your Last Chances" seemed a bit too crafty, but I ultimately loved the story, which features a hilarious S&M vignette and a real cute ending. "The Politics of Correctness" was a wonderful story all the way through, my favorite in the collection. "The Greatest Goddamn Thing" didn't do it for me -- it all seemed too forced, and I didn't buy the narrator's voice. "Roger's New Life" just never seemed to go anywhere (a detached 3rd person pov, reminiscent of Raymond Carver), while "Torture" was strong from start to finish, though I'm not sure if it's a story that has a real direction. And the last and the longest, "Limbs," is a winner.

I wouldn't consider any of these stories as bad -- they are all finely written, and McNally's got a very nice, easy style. Many of the stories were very funny and thoroughly enjoyable.

I have been extremely concerned about the state of the contemporary short story and their writers for the last year or so. Nothing of interest has been coming out. Now, I can lay my fears to rest and I have Mr. McNally to thank. These stories are funny and straightforward, but what makes them truly outstanding is how they haunt your thoughts long after you put the book down. I think we have the makings of one the finest writers in the country here - buy this book and try to tell me I'm wrong.

Anyone with a sense of humor will find these funny, fresh-mouthed stories about guys on the brink a total blast. In between the comic moments, McNally offers some serious insights on the nature of father/son and man/woman relationships.

McNally's first collection of short stories is sad, funny, and haunting. His prose is spare, but so full at the same time. From the first story, The Vomitorium, you will be hooked. He creates relatable characters and amazing dialogue. Some stories may hit close to home, but that's what makes them so enjoyable. If you like short stories, you need to get this book. And be sure to check out his other books as well. He's one of the best writers that barely anyone knows about.

The eleven stories collected here range in setting from Chicago's south side to small towns in southern Illinois, but are all thematically linked in their exploration of confused and often angry lower-class white males. The stories are also generationally linked, in that their characters all appear to have come of age in the early to mid-'70s. Indeed, the three best stories are set in the '70s and follow the same junior high boys through a trio of episodes ("The Vomitorium,'' "Smoke'' and "The Grand Illusion''), which include a trunk full of stolen Tootsie Rolls, and the forming of an "air band", and a homosexual advance. These three stories share much of the humor and angst of Chris Furhman's excellent novel The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys, and Tom Perrotta's collection Bad Haircut.

In "The New Year", "The Greatest Goddamn Thing" and "Torture", the narrators are teenage boys, whose primary role in each is as sidekick or witness to another person's pain. In the first story, a cuckolded and abandoned father takes an axe to a deer. In the second, a brother just out of jail leads him into an all night bar party complete with gun, fire, and sex. And in the third, a neighbor is stranded on his roof by an irate wife, and no one calls for help. In each case, there's a kind of sad desperation to it all. Desperation is also present in two stories ("The End of Romance" and "Roger's New Life") that follow a UPS driver with a flaccid marriage, two kids, and a shaky grip on sanity. These are the most distant of the collection, as the protagonist is clearly cracking up and it becomes harder and harder to identify with his tenuous grip on reality. A rather similar character is the focus of the longest story, "Limbs," sharing a troubled marriage, kid, and in this case, friends of dubious character.

Two Chicago-set stories stick out: "The Politics of Correctness" abandons the world of the unemployed and lower-class for the world of academia and a struggling young English professor who must contend with the drug dealer who menaces his home, and the uber-PC people in his department. One sense this is a very personal story from McNally, and while it's not bad, it's not particularly original or noteworthy either. My own favorite is "The First of Your Last Chances," which stands out if only because it has a happy ending. Both funny and tender, it's a welcome respite from the heaviness of the other ten stories. The collection as a whole reveals a great new talent, I'll look forward to his next work.