Latest read, At the Round Earth's Imagined Corners (2013) and Dogs Go Wolf (2017) by Lauren Groff, from Florida. It's the details that make these melancholy stories about love and pain, whether an abusive father or two abandoned girls, vivid, singular, and enduring.
Terrific.
#books #ShortStory #ModernLit

Latest read, Dragged Fighting from His Tomb (1978) by Barry Hannah, from Airships. A Confederate soldier who loves horses more than men, or his own cause, slaughters a troop of soldiers.
Violent, angry, anguished.
The book I'd most cite to prove Lit isn't boring.
Amazing.

#Books #ShortStory #CivilWar #ModernLit

Latest read, Your Duck is My Duck (2018) by Deborah Eisenberg from the same-titled collection. Nick Carraway in Wonderland as a painter accepts an invitation from a glamorous couple to stay on their island. Eccentrics & eccentricities abound.
The title is a counterpoint to a Zen riddle about a duck trapped in a bottle. "It's not my duck, it's not my bottle, it's not my problem".
But it is.
Comic, modern, true-hearted.

#books #ShortStory #ModernLit

Latest read, Nirvana (2013) by Adam Johnson, from Fortune Smiles; in the near future, a Silicon Valley technician's wife is quadriplegic. He uses all his knowledge to encourage her will to live.
About our sense of self, our relationship to reality & technology.
Excellent.

#Books #ShortStory #ModernLit #AdamJohnson

Latest read, Answer When You Can by Michael Downs, from The Southern Review, Winter 2023.
Michael receives a letter meant for a stranger but addressed to him-- and from this small curiosity, are born recollections, discoveries, and a remembrance of what matters.

I loved it, Mike.

@michaeldowns
#Books #Essays #SouthernReview #ModernLit

Latest read, The Sun, The Moon, the Stars (1998) by Junot Diaz, from This Is How You Lose Her. A Dominican-American relays the story of how, after an infidelity, his relationship with the woman he truly loves changes.
𝐶𝑜𝑛𝑣𝑖𝑛𝑐𝑒𝑛𝑡𝑒. 27 pages of Diaz flies by like 10.

#Books #ShortStory #ModernLit #Relationships

Latest read, The Brown Coast (2002) by Wells Tower, from Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned. Bob Munroe has made a wreck of his career and marriage and has withdrawn to his uncle's rundown beach house, both to fix it up and sort out his life.
Smart, nuanced writing that seems to say more than it details.
#Books #ModernLit #ShortStory

Latest read, High Speeds (1997) by Chris Adrian, from A Better Angel. A highly intelligent 9 year old, Con, struggles to find happiness after his drug-running father dies, his mother begins drinking, and his kid brother convinces himself he's a Martian from Edgar Rice Burroughs' John Carter books.
I love Con, he's neither good nor bad, just hurt and too smart for the adults in his life.
Adrian's style is sarcastic, glib, immediate.

#Books #ShortStory #Childhood #ModernLit