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Searching... McMinnville Public Library | Rash, R. | Searching... Unknown |
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Summary
Summary
"A gorgeous, brutal writer."
--Richard Price, New York Times bestselling author of Lush Life and Clockers
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
The latest from Rash (Serena), a collection, begins with "Hard Times," in which a struggling farmer in the midst of the Great Depression tries to discover who's stealing eggs from his henhouse without offending the volatile pride of his impoverished neighbors. The present-day stories are also situated in poverty-plagued small towns whose young citizens are being lost to meth addictions: in "Back of Beyond," a pawnshop owner has to intervene when he learns his nephew Danny has kicked his parents out of their house and sold off their furniture to support his habit; in "The Ascent," a young boy lovingly tends to a couple of corpses-victims of a small plane crash. Rash's stories are calm, dark and overtly symbolic, sometimes so literal they verge on redundant: in "Dead Confederates," when a man falls into the Confederate tomb he's looting, the graveyard caretaker notes: "I'd say he's helped dig his own grave." With a mastery of dialogue, Rash has written a tribute and a pre-emptive eulogy for the hardworking, straight-talking farmers of the Appalachian Mountains. (Mar.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
Searing collection of short fiction from critically acclaimed Rash (Serena, 2008, etc.) The scourge of meth addiction ravages North Carolina's mountain communities in three of these 12 stories. For Devon, playing guitar for the wasted wretches at a funky roadhouse in "Waiting for the End of the World," it's mordant humor that gets him through the night. "The Ascent" takes a closer look at the human consequences of meth use. To escape a miserable home life with his zonked-out parents, 11-year-old Jared goes climbing and discovers a crashed plane. Pilot and passenger are dead, yet the boy finds it "snug and cozy" inside; there can be no happy ending for his fantasy about a different home. Even more devastating is "Back of Beyond," the collection's standout. Parson's customers are addicts. This doesn't bother the hard-boiled pawnbroker, but it gets personal when Parson learns that his thieving, strung-out nephew Danny has driven his brother and sister-in-law out of their remote farmhouse. There's a shocking image of the old folks huddled fearfully under the covers in Danny's trailer, but Rash knows how to evoke suffering without beating up his readers. In "Hard Times," we meet a farming couple barely making it during the Depression; tracking down an egg thief makes for high drama. "Lincolnites" goes back to the Civil War to show a young wife, alone on the farm while her husband serves in the Union army, heroically holding off a marauding Confederate soldier. The violence in both these stories is sudden, deadly and over in a blink, a Rash trademark. The end comes just as quickly and unexpectedly in the contemporary "Dead Confederates," a macabre account of a rascal literally digging his own grave. Also of note are the title story, in which a widow pays a high price for staving off loneliness, and "The Corpse Bird," which pits ancient country lore against modern medical self-assurance. A nicely varied feast from a master of the form. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
Born and raised in the Carolinas, Rash also a poet and novelist (Serena, 2008) has become known as a writer of Appalachia. Although these 12 stories are set in that region, in times ranging from the Civil War to today, they display a universality that goes beyond time or place. Rash's characters, often struggling to make their way in the world, act as they believe they must to save what is dear to them family members, a marriage, a heritage, a nation, and even a neighbor's child. In the title story, a woman widowed and remarried to a younger handyman drifter lies to protect her husband, despite what she knows in her heart. In this, as in other stories, Rash leaves the reader with thoughts of the near-inevitable aftermath and its consequences. There is a purity and precision in Rash's prose, reminiscent of his poetry, that makes these stories as deceptively easy to read as they are hard to forget. This is memorable, unflinching short fiction by a master of the form.--Leber, Michele Copyright 2010 Booklist
Library Journal Review
The stories in Rash's (Serena) aptly titled new collection burn themselves on the memory in much the same way as the photographs Walker Evans took of Southern sharecroppers in the 1930s that were later collected in Let Us Now Praise Famous Men. Rash's spare narratives are set primarily in today's Appalachia, with families decimated by poverty, drugs, and every other discernible kind of heartache. A pawnshop owner knows all the local addicts by virtue of the junk they bring in for money and becomes an unlikely hero when one of these deals uncovers a family member's disgrace. A husband who no longer knows how to talk to his wife elicits our sympathy even after he communicates his message by slashing her tires. A neglected boy with meth-addict parents finds treasure in a plane wreck he happens upon when his wanderings lead him into Smoky Mountains National Park. Verdict Rash, who has authored not only fiction but also three volumes of poetry, is a master craftsman who pares down language to its essential elements in these starkly beautiful stories.-Sue Russell, Current Science, Inc., Philadelphia (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.