Customer Reviews

Why the Long Face?

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From the very first page of Ron's fantastic collection, you know you've stumbled into a strange world. This is a book where people open museums devoted to toast, do art projects involving meat, walk on high wires between apartment windows. Who wouldn't want to be transported to a place where such fantastic things happen? I loved this book for many reasons, but especially for Ron's beautiful language and the spare, haunting imagery in his prose. This is a book where you want to underline all the sentences you particularly like, then realize there wouldn't be much left un-underlined! If you like contemporary fiction, especially with an experimental bent, do yourself a favor and buy this book.

The fifteen stories in Ron MacLean's superb collection examine life through a variety of prisms. In some stories, the constraints of the physical world are heightened or tweaked, while others evoke the altered reality associated with dreams. What remains consistent throughout these stories is MacLean's ability to create compelling and sympathetic characters. From the grief-stricken father and daughter in the moving "Aerialist" to the troubled couples in "South of Why," MacLean's characters are driven by loss, and by their yearning for escape. Maps and geography figure prominently in many of these stories, and the experience of reading them is similar to that of taking a road trip: the reader turns the page with breathless anticipation, wondering what might be lurking beyond the next mile marker, and reaches the end of the road having learned as much about herself as she learned from the characters encountered along the way.

I find myself throwing this book into my bag to carry with me, reading short excerpts aloud to others... Each story inhabits its own quirky world, peopled by characters who seem familiar and slightly bizarre, as if we could suddenly see inside the couple who lives two doors down. The real gift in these stories is that they are entertaining and yet deeply serious. Buried among the pages are deep truths about life, grace, silence and relationships that made me stop reading, mark the page, close the book, and simply dwell within a phrase.

"...prose real prose really great written prose..." (Gertrude Stein)

Miss Stein's phrase is a perfect description of Ron MacLean's work. Perhaps she would thank me for borrowing it. How often does she get to enjoy Vegas with a vampire slayer and one of Ron's many laid-back, observant narrators/guides to America? His voice in these stories breathes slowly, connecting to the world, showing readers how familiar a surreal world can be, and how surreal the familiar world really is. Reading one of his stories means wanting to read the next one. Bring your desire for creativity and maybe a tissue. Expect the weather around you to change.

In a world of prequels, sequels and "based-on"s, where art often imitates TV, it's hard to find an original voice. Ron's storytelling is quirky, insightful and thoroughly engaging. Like the tightrope-walking daughter in his first story, he beautifully balances humor and poignancy, with an off-kilter rhythm that keeps you on your toes and delivers many story-turning surprises. A "must read" for any adventure-seeking reader!

Fine sentences, ordinary people squeezed open in unique perspective, redemption earned and shared. MacLean's work is more than good; it's why we read.

If you're a fan of short stories, you'll appreciate the fresh treatment that Ron MacLean brings to the form, and you'll wish more writers would push boundaries in order to free their characters and plots from convention. If you're new to short stories, then pack a lunch, throw out your compass, and prepare to take an astonishing tour through a world that you will often recognize, but one that MacLean will help you see anew, through the eyes of his beguiling characters. You will in turn be charmed, saddened, shocked, and delighted. Back in your own shoes, you will appreciate your own journey more for having sojourned awhile through MacLean's singular world.

I've lost sleep reading Ron MacLean's new book, Why the Long Face?--savoring his uncanny ability to make the surreal seem normal and the normal surreal. In offerings of 10 to 20 pages MacLean conjures characters and moods that other skilled writers use entire books to develop. There's an honesty, directness and intimacy to his story telling that strips away the deceits we use every day so our lives seem to make comfortable sense. But MacLean's genius is to disrupt our usual ways of seeing, while making it seem entirely normal and that we're in it together. The stories in this collection seem to hover at the edge of consciousness, subtly changing the way I see the world days after reading.

I am a reader who picks up a book in short bursts - when the baby is sleeping, right before I go to bed, or waiting in the car for someone. What a delight to find a series of short stories to feed my habit! This book is full of colorful characters in entertaining scenarios - the only problem was that I was so hooked on looking into these characters' lives, that I read through it too quickly and longed for more!

A great set of stories and unique characters most dealing with separation, loss and the struggle to find the way forward. The situations that these characters find themselves in range from the fantastic (tightrope walking daughters, museums of toast, and pipes through the head) to the mundane (snow storms, missing fathers) told with unconventional structures and a clear voice.