Customer Reviews

Voodoo Heart

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3 star:		(1)
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I first read Scott Snyder in 2002. The story was "Blue Yodel" in Zoetrope:All Story. Much like the man in that story, I started following the blimp of Scott's writing, eagerly picking up anything he'd written. In reading fiction, there are certain stories that stand out in my mind. And then there are some stories that make me stop and say, "Wow, this is why I read fiction in the first place." Scott's stories are like that. His characters have been described as dark, but they are also normal in a lot of ways. They are the kinds of people we have known or the kinds of people we could have easily become had things not gone a different way. When the narrator in "Voodoo Heart" says:

"Some kind of mistake has been made; you shouldn't be here with them. But they're keeping you here, keeping you from your real life, which is happening somewhere else, with someone more attractive, someone wilder; not in this car, not here, in this line of people waiting for a traffic light, listening to the tick, tick, tick of your own turning signal. And so you hate this person all of a sudden. You want to smash them. Because their face is a trap. Their face is a cage.
But then someone behind you hits their horn and breaks the spell."

When the narrator says that, we can feel it, too. We have been there. The difference with Scott is that he can articulate it, that he isn't afraid to tell the truth about it. You will find truth in these stories. You will find intelligence. This book will make you take a second look at the world around you. You will know these dark, frustrated people because each of us has some of them on the inside. You will walk away from this book glad that you have had the chance to read it. It will remind you of the power of fiction and why stories will always be important. Scott has The Gift, folks. And VOODOO HEART is the real thing.

"Voodoo Heart" is aptly named. Voodoo, i.e., black magic of the soul, and while Scott Snyder's seven finely-told, diverse stories, are not black magic, they are of the soul and they are magic. No other writer I know could have parlayed these stories, seven hodgepodge tales of varied character-driven plots into a work of more readable pleasure as did Snyder. As one illustrious writer has already said, "Scott Snyder's "Voodoo Heart" just blew me away." It will the next reader also. This is Americana, by Scott Snyder, and it is wonderful reading for the lucky person who finds themselves in possession of this small book, which is so big of heart.

Mr. Snyder delves into the depths of his characters with a pickaxe. He reveals the inner, hidden fears and hope and beliefs of these make-believe people, and after reading it, you might wonder how it was that he could write with so much understanding . . . about you! This, then, is the key to Snyder's success and storytelling. He doesn't just tell a story. No, indeed, he takes removes normal reasoning, puts his speculative reasoning hat on, sets his sights on sometimes darker thoughts of the normal man and woman and writes about it.

"Voodoo Heart," debut fiction by Scott Snyder, is a must read.

Scott Snyder's Voodoo Heart is the most consistently excellent story collection I've read in years. There's enough invention, narrative complexity, and stylistic nuance in each of these stories to carry a novel. An ambitious novel. But as far-ranging and joyously strange as the collection is, barreling us (once almost literally) from the nostalgia of a lookout post over World War I-era Niagara Falls to the grit of back lot security at a present-day Florida pawn shop, these stories are all of a kind. With each, Scott Snyder succeeds in mooring us to the familiar, and only somewhere along the way do we make the exhilarating discovery that what he has anchored us to is itself floating freely in the sky.

This is a book to give to anyone who has all but given up on the short story, which has too often left readers to choose between the gallingly precious and the maddeningly safe. Here's to hoping Mr. Snyder's collection rejuvenates a stagnating form as much as it did at least one long-suffering reader.

I read somewhere what John Lennon said about Elvis, that "before Elvis, there was nothing," and it's a quote that popped into my head after I read Scott Snyder's amazing story collection Voodoo Heart, and in the back of the book discovered his acknowledgment to the spirit of the King. What's great about this collection is, oddly enough, the same thing that was great about Elvis: the way that Snyder takes disparate elements and mixes them together to come up with a brand new kind of story. Elvis did it by putting Hank Williams together with gospel and blues. Snyder does it by concocting a melange of wild fantasy, wonderfully-timed comedy, and a cast of profoundly self-destructive, but ultimately sympathetic narrators.

In the brilliant title story, when Jake and his long-time girlfriend move into their dream home, a kind of creeping darkness begins to intrude on the protagonist's heart, and he finds himself inexorably pulled toward a senseless betrayal. The subtext of the narrative speaks to the inner traveling salesman in all of us, the voice that masks our fear of commitment by always promising that just up the road there's an even better deal to be had. The pieces of Jake's life - the wrecking yard where he works, the prison he obsessively monitors from his bedroom window, the empty rooms in his house - echo his ruinous compulsion, and the resulting tragedy is a work of fiction that is as compelling as anything you're likely to read this year.

And that's just one story. The book never lets up, and taken as a whole, it's nothing short of revelation. After I finished, I went right ahead and read it again. Maybe this is how all those folks in Memphis felt when they first heard "That's All Right Mama" on their radios and kept calling in to hear it again and again. That's how I feel about Scott Snyder's Voodoo Heart - more please!

When you get right down to it, a story should deliver on this very basic level: do we want to know what happens next? Scott Snyder delivers on that fundamental level in a very deft, almost disarming way--and on many other levels, too.

Snyder's style is refreshingly crisp, as is his pacing. There's a lot to like in his vivid similies and descriptions, but what really deepened my appreciation was his thoughtful development of uniquely American themes. In the story "Wreck," he weaves an archtypical romance of a Hollywood star for a likeable loner Everyman into a critique of America's star-struck obsession with physical attractiveness and the difficulty we have in truly connecting with other people.

In "Dumpster Tuesday," Snyder takes an absurdist ride through America's underbelly of ersatz "authenticity" via a New York hotshot's obsession with a low-end country-western star who stole his sophisticated fiancee's heart. Is this plausible? By the end of the story, I was thinking, hey, this is America; this kind of over-the-top, media-fueled stuff happens all the time. To capture the excesses of our culture--and the sadness buried beneath the zaniness--so entertainingly is no small feat.

This collection will reward anyone seeking an entertaining read, and offer further rewards to those who delve into its explorations of deeply American themes.

My only knock on Scott Snyder's short story collection, Voodoo Heart, is in the order of the stories. I enjoyed each one more than the preceding one, and I fear that some may give up on this charmingly disturbing book before they reap the rewards of spending more time with Snyder's fascinating, damaged characters.

Snyder displays two strengths here. One is making his characters dear to the reader, especially so that once they display the fault that somehow limits or harms them it is all the more heartbreaking. The other is writing exceedingly well about oddities and asides. It marks his work as unique and vital; there are elements that add texture, are 'stranger than fiction' and yet fit perfectly into the lives with which they intersect. These strengths create stories that speak to human weakness and resiliency in unique and entertaining ways.

I'd also mention that the missus (a better writer and reader than me) thought that Snyder struggled with the endings to these tales - a common fault in short stories. I didn't have a problem with it, and in fact found it to work really well with Snyder's themes...we drop into and out of these characters' stories, sometimes with but sometimes without a tidy resolution.

Scott Snyder's new story collection, VOODOO HEART, is in most places beautifully written. The male protagonists are always finding love in weird, unorthodox situations. In one story, a recluse young man courts a maimed female celebrity. He's the only one, it seems, who doesn't know her celebrity status under the facade of her scars. The story unfolds from there. In another story, a successful yuppie gives his life away to move to Florida and find a new love. The way Snyder deals with this protagonist's inner consciousness, is gratifying, and it makes the reader feel sympathy in the end.

These stories aren't fancy, but the prose is well-worked out. Snyder knows his metaphors; he knows his style. I recmmend this book to anybody interested in reading the stories of a new, young talent: Scott Snyder.

Characters with unattractive professions from the corners of modern life -- girl who works as a wax museum doll during the day; boy who helps to save suicide jumpers on Niagara Falls; a ticket clerk at inflatable rubber house in amusement park in dreadful suburbia of Orlando; manager of a car wrecking yard; pilot from 1919 on a barnstorming trip -- serve to populate this collection of short stories.

The plots are suspenseful and captivating, the dynamism of what is happening makes the reading unburdened, it also helps by building easy affinity to the struggles of the characters.

His writing is beautiful, and most of the stories I found highly original. I thought this was a great debut that left me wanting more, specifically from some of the stories. Many I felt could be developed into full length novels, and all roped you in almost immediately. I did feel some of them ended rather abruptly, but I can only assume that was the writers intent. He's someone to watch.

A promising debut collection from Mr. Snyder. Not all the short pieces work (he seems to have a trouble composing endings that satisfy) but the title story is one of the most remarkable tales I've read since Richard Ford's near perfect "Rock Springs". Flight is a theme that recurs frequently--sometimes literally (planes and airships), sometimes more obliquely and metaphorically, people on the run, even it's from themselves. The book is blurbed by Stephen King and I note that in his "Acknowledgments" the author offers thanks to King's son, Owen (another young up-and-comer). There's a hint of nepotism there that makes me cross. Nonetheless, VOODOO HEART could mark the beginning of a distinguished career in letters. Mr. Snyder has all the makings of a author with a bright future...including, it seems, friends in high places.