The Heyday of the Insensitive Bastards: Stories (Hardcover)

~ Robert Boswell (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In this imaginative story collection, author Boswell (Century's Son) examines the limits and losses of ordinary souls with technical mastery and profound sympathy. In No River Wide, a widowed woman visiting a longtime friend in Florida discovers that their friendship is over; her story unfolds in overlapping narratives that form a startling, resonant meditation on the nature of time. Another story finds a 30-something returning to his North Dakota home to identify the body of his missing mother; what he finds instead frees him from the long shadow of his embittered father. In the title story, a gang spends the summer squatting in the home of a vacationing family, with dire consequences; in Supreme Beings, a priest's attempts to intervene in the lives of three troubled youths lead him to confront personal and professional failure. Boswell conveys the sordid but hopeful inner lives of average people with insight and care; his shorter stories (Miss Famous, Skin Deep) showcase his pleasure in language and invention, and his longer tales pack the emotional weight of a novel. (May)
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Review

"Heartbreakers from a writer who knows how to do it right." -- Kirkus

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Graywolf Press (April 28, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1555975240
• ISBN-13: 978-1555975241
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.3 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #479,661 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 Buy It, June 8, 2009

By	C. Parker Staley (Minneapolis, MN) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I'm thrilled to have this on my bookshelf, creased, thumbed, already worn-out and with more than a few stains to its pages.
There is a breadth to the stories here that can be found in few places these days--the breadth of human lives and possibilities. Too often I read a few stories from a collection and come away depressed that the stories are really just a single story, a variation on a single color of human emotion or instance or place, like a Rothko. 'Heyday' is anything but. It's a collection that seethes with life, variance, wide- and light-ness.
It's a collection by an author whose five novels exceed readability and insight, and whose stories remind you just how good literature these days can be.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars "Every family needs someone staring through its windows. It's the only thing that keeps you from seducing the mailman.", April 28, 2009

By	Mary Whipple (New England) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (COMMUNITY FORUM 04)

In this collection of stories about life's uncertainties, Robert Boswell picks up his characters like mechanical toys and winds them tight, and just when they are at maximum tension, he twists the key one more turn, guaranteeing that they will unwind noisily, out of control. Virtually all his characters are losers. A woman, having lost her disabled husband, now finds that she has also lost her best friend. A housecleaner has been abandoned by her husband. A needy young man goes broke while in the thrall of a fortune teller. A priest tries to help a pathetic family by offering a "story to have faith in, even if he cannot entirely believe it."

Though sometimes bleak, the stories are always haunting. The characters, just one twist away from the normal, the safe, and the real, feel "different," irrational, sometimes dangerous, and even frightening. They have been buffeted by fate, often inspired by their own misdeeds, and they are, as a group, naïve, thoughtless, sometimes ignorant, and lacking commitment to the larger world.

Startling stories grow from seemingly ordinary events. In "Lacunae," Paul Lann has driven two hundred miles across the desert to pick up his father, who is being released from the hospital, and drive him to his family's home nearby. Faced simultaneously with his father's precarious health and a final chance to reunite with his wife and her child, Paul must choose whether to stay or go. In "A Walk in Winter," a young man has returned to North Dakota in the middle of winter. Riding with the sheriff, he is on his way to identify his mother's frozen remains. His mother had disappeared following an argument with her husband when the boy was ten. When he sees the detached jawbone, he is suddenly shocked into understanding the missing pieces of his early life.

In the title story, a novella, main character Keen and his friend Clete, addicted to mushrooms and other illegal substances, move in with a friend who is house-sitting for the summer. Several other freeloaders, both male and female also move in, and to support their habits, they sell, one by one, the entire contents of the house. Dividing the story into an ironic ten-step program, the novella begins with a "Happier Time," and progresses through "Considering Others," and "Accepting Responsibility," to "Understanding Mistakes," and "What I've Learned." The ironies of these titles become obvious as two members of the household die and two others get married.

Boswell makes every word count here, choosing his descriptors of people and objects so carefully that the reader can instantly see the pictures the author creates. His characters, just one notch beyond normal and one notch more disturbed, are familiar and understandable, regardless of how strange they may be, and the intensity of the stories keep the reader's interest at high pitch. Ultimately, these unforgettable characters, with their haunted and damaged lives, leave the reader uncomfortable with their ironies. Damaged as many characters are, they are close enough to ourselves and those we know to feel familiar. n Mary Whipple

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The Half-Known World: On Writing Fiction

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Exceptional, August 18, 2009

By	Cary B. Barad (Baltimore, MD) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

These short stories are exceptionally good, with a fine eye for detail, well-crafted language and excellent characterizations. Writing at its best. In fact, I found several of these tales to be as satisfying as a full blown novel.