The Blessings of Hard-Used Angels (Paperback)

~ (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

"Beautifully written, crafted with care, strongly plotted, these stories are about superbly developed characters, people whose lives matter."--George Garrett

"John Cottle writes like the lovechild of Edgar Allan Poe and William Faulkner. The Blessings of Hard-Used Angels is weird and beautiful and honest."--Daniel Wallace, Big Fish

"These stories are exhilarating to read; some are breathtaking and achingly beautiful. When I finished The Blessings of Hard-Used Angels, I walked around for days seeing the world through its light. Do yourself a favor, buy this book, get in on the secret before everyone else knows what you soon will: here is the future of Southern fiction."--John Dufresne, Deep in the Shade of Paradise

About the Author

JOHN COTTLE lives on Lake Martin in central Alabama with his wife, Nancy, and an assortment of ducks, deer, turkeys, and other wildlife. His work has appeared in numerous places, including Amaryllis, Literary Potpourri, Ink Pot, Gulfstream, and in an anthology titled, Working Hard for the Money: Stories and Poems of America's Working.

Product Details

• Paperback: 165 pages
• Publisher: Texas Review Press (October 30, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1881515672
• ISBN-13: 978-1881515678
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.4 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #2,177,324 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Sound of the South, November 4, 2004

By	T. C. Saunders "Tom Saunders" (Oxfordshire, UK) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

A wonderful debut short story collection from Alabama writer John Cottle. If you love language, you'll love these stories. There are descriptions in The Blessings of Hard-Used Angels that are as lush as the landscape that inspired them. A rich cast of characters, too, their lives tragic, humorous, hopeful and ill-starred. The law is a central theme, what it takes to uphold it, break it, get used by it or simply ignored by it. There is a long tradition of great writing from the South, William Faulkner, Carson McCullers and Flannery O'Connor come immediately to mind. John Cottle's writing is of this tradition and continues it. Do yourself a favour and check this book out. You won't be disappointed.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Real Thing, October 28, 2004

By	Beverly Jackson "bevjackson" (Asheville NC, USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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John Cottle is a master storyteller. One tends to forget, in the midst of all the pseudo-fiction of today that is passed off as literature, that classic, poignant, 'real' literature is still being written. Cottle is one of those Southern writers who has stepped out of the traditions of Tennessee Williams' and William Faulkner to give us touching and masterful art in The Blessings of Hard-Used Angels. But for all of that, he is still lending his own fresh views to the plight of those men and women, the hard living, the hard working, the people we all know, mesmerizing us with prose that is so well wrought that it sweeps the reader right in. One story after another is guaranteed to knock your socks off, so I highly recommend this book. If you only buy one title this Christmas for gifts, make it this one; you can't go wrong.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Intricate , January 29, 2005

By	Ed Touchette (gloucester, ma usa) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

The Blessings of Hard-Used Angels is an enjoyable and rewarding collection of short fiction. John Cottle's stories are fresh with unique, sometimes off-beat, but always-believable characters. I have no qualms in comparing his approach to development with that of more well known Southern writers in an extremely favorable manner. I would then erase the Southern writer categorization, not wanting to represent the collection as anything other than great stories and excellent writing. Annie McGill, my selection for one of the better stories in any collection, is subtle but unrelenting as it delves into and renders an attorney's emotional response to a quandry. Simple enough, short, but accomplished in such a manner as to create a picture far more intricate than its length might indicate.