Corpus Christi: Stories (Hardcover)

by Bret Anthony Johnston (Author) "AS HURRICANE ALICIA DRIFTED NORTH-NORTHWEST up the Gulf Coast from Veracruz, Mexico, Sonny Atwill stood outside McCoy's Lumber hanging NO PLYWOOD signs in the windows..." (more)
Key Phrases: Phillip Bundick, Edwin Butler, Corpus Christi (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
In his promising debut collection, Johnston travels through time and across socioeconomic divides to present a series of nuanced portraits of middle-aged, middle-American loneliness in all its permutations. All 10 of these astutely observed stories are set in or near Corpus Christi, Tex., a small Gulf Coast city that, in addition to getting hit hard and often by passing hurricanes, is subject to more than its share of emotional storms. Encompassing dusty old horse corrals, private yacht marinas, a naval air station and a run-down motel, Johnston's Corpus is America in microcosm. But it is the emotional landscape that interests the author, not the physical, and, without lapsing into sentimentality, he evokes a peculiarly American brand of abject loneliness and tentative optimism. When his wind-buffeted and storm-scarred protagonists revisit the past, they do so not in the flattering, fire-lit glow of placid old age but in the caustic light of bitter revisionism. A now-grown son recalls the night his father torched their well-tended family home in order to pay off his debts with the insurance settlement. A young man brags to co-workers about reaching 120 mph in his new Lexus, failing to reveal that he did so on his way to visit his wife in a psychiatric hospital. And an elegantly constructed novella in three stories finds a dying mother grappling with the knowledge that her grown son/caretaker "would survive this, rebuild a life that she would never see.... Shouldn't this please rather than terrify and anger her?" In Corpus, memory summons loneliness rather than banishing it, and "calm [is] born not of hope... but of hope's absence."
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From Booklist
According to this debut collection of stories, Corpus Christi is a very depressing place to live. Children, parents, and spouses all die with alarming frequency. When they don't die or lose their loved ones, people suffer from depression or psychosis. In the title story alone there is a miscarriage, a fatal car crash, a divorce, a mother with Alzheimer's, and two people committed to a mental hospital. The high point of this collection is the three stories spread throughout the book that together form a novella and a complete picture of a touching mother-son relationship. Each individual story overcomes its tragic subject matter to deliver an honest and nonpatronizing view of the mainly lower-middle-class characters. However, trying to read these stories in one sitting may require an antidepressant. Marta Segal
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 272 pages
• Publisher: Random House; 1 edition (June 15, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 140006211X
• ISBN-13: 978-1400062119
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.6 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.1 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,060,128 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Superior craftsmanship!, July 18, 2004

By	S. Kay Murphy "Heretic" (Mt. Baldy, CA USA) - See all my reviews

Years ago I stopped buying short story collections as I found it to be like buying a CD by a favorite band: There would be the one, popular, Top 10 cut, then the rest of the music would be filler. I was encouraged by a writer-friend to read Corpus Christi and I have to say honestly that each and every story is a gem. This book made me laugh and weep and sing and dance--and weep again--sometimes in the sadness of the story, sometimes in joy at the gift of Johnston's writing. Long ago it seemed the literary world lost the vision of a short story with beginning, middle, end. Here the skill in such craftsmanship is reborn. Bret Johnston deftly chisels every sentence out of the substance that is his beloved medium: the written word.

Thank the muses!

If you love the short story as an art form, buy this book! You won't be disappointed.

8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Stunning, June 25, 2004

By A Customer

A wonderful book.
Sumptuously written with dialogue and detail that remind you of the beauty that is life. There are no "heroes" among these characters and stories...just people who bravely face their surroundings, not just physical (the inevitable hurricane) but emotional as well. There is loss. There is regret. There is everything that memory assails us with; but these stories also tell of what memory rewards us with. This may not be a book for the faint-hearted, for these characters are certainly not. They face their shining moments and imperfections with a grace and courage that makes you glad to know their stories.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An Exquisite, Powerful Debut, November 25, 2005

By	Daniel Olivas (West Hills, CA United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

One of the biggest literary errors made by new (and even some veteran) writers is to trumpet THE BIG, EMOTIONAL EVENT. Not so with Bret Anthony Johnston's exquisite, powerful debut collection, "Corpus Christi." Whether dealing with madness, a father's violence or broken marriages, Johnston uses both restraint and often humor to paint characters who are as real and flawed as any in modern literature. "Corpus Christi" brings us to places plumbed by Annie Proulx and Dagoberto Gilb but with Johnston's own remarkable imprint.