Harare Review of Books

202 pages. Expected publication date: August 15, 2024 from Mad Creek Books. Fiction anthology.

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In The Drought, a weatherman turns into something of an Old Testament prophet, beard and all. Beachcombers in Doggerland is about a family adrift after a terrible loss. The Man Who Slept With Eudora Welty is a quirky nod to a literary figure. The Complete Miracles of St Anthony: Definitive Edition With Previously Unpublished Material was such a delightful surprise (which I can say about many of the stories in this collection). Why I Married My Wife recalls all of the stories of salesmen in small towns in Middle America that you’ve ever read. The Master of Patina is surreal on nostalgia. The Pied Piper of Fuckit is about suburban dystopia and two middle-aged men losing their purpose and their way.

Everything about this collection worked for me: the writing style, the structure, and the author’s intelligent, thoughtful voice. It’s very literary, delighting in the power of language and story. And if you’re watching for it, you start to realise that the stories are linked, mostly by objects and sometimes through people, belying what one of the characters in the last story thinks:

“None of these experiences overlap, none of his stories connect, and yet somehow, he thinks, they are all of one piece. That’s what he wants to say: that everything is intertwined like those stripes, everything is part of a pattern, everything rises.”

Many thanks to Mad Creek Books and to Edelweiss for a really lovely, five star read.

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