Emerging Writers Network

Book Review 2018-006: The Coffins of Little Hope by Timothy Schaffert

Book Review 2018-006
The Coffins of Little Hope by Timothy Schaffert
2011 by Unbridled Books, 272 pages

 

(I received an ARC of this novel from Unbridled Books and Caitlin Hamilton Summie)

 

So, after waiting 70 plus days into 2018 to begin reviewing, and remembering to jump in a bit during May, we've slipped to nearly halfway through the year with not too many reviews. To us, it makes perfect sense then to jump back to a book we've owned for seven years.

The Coffins of Little Hope is the fourth novel by Timothy Schaffert that I've read and I do believe he has written his best novel to date (that date being 2011). It contains many of the same elements of his earlier novels--offbeat characters, humor that sneaks up on you and a ton of empathy for his oddballs. 

The premise this time around involves a post-retirement age woman whose been writing the obituaries for the small town newspaper since her late teens, a possibly missing girl, a YA book series on the level of Harry Potter, and they all settle down on the small town in Nebraska. The "Coffins of Little Hope" of the title stems from that YA series as its to be the title of the final book in that series--where Miranda and Desiree wander Rottgut's Asylum for Misguided Girls (note  that Schaffert might also have one of the best abilities to put titles together--The Phantom Limbs of the Rollow Sisters, The Singing and Dancing Daughters of God, and Devil's In the Sugar Shop were his previous novels, and even within some of his titles.

The narrator of the tale is the obituary writer, 83 year old S Myles (the S short for Esther, or Essie, or Ess). It's a great choice by Schaffert as she's seen the town's history, as the "missing girl" story ramps up it's mainly through the County newspaper, which not only does she do the obituaries for it, but the publisher is her grandson, Doc, whose daughter Tiff also plays a large role. It also helps the novel that S is caustic and funny and gives no cares at all about how others see her.

The biggest problem I have every time I consider reviewing one of Mr. Schaffert's novels is that if I were to do a real plot description, it would be a 45 page book review. The thing is, he pulls it off every single time. His novels meander and come back on themselves and occasionally open holes that are never filled but Schaffert does this is a manner that his readers simply do not care; they are more than happy enjoying the ride so much that finding an immediate destination does not matter at all. Which isn't to say that his novels don't get anywhere or say anything because they do. I find myself seeing others in a brighter light when I'm reading his novels, or thinking about them and I believe that's  based on how he treats his characters. None of them have all the pegs lined up perfectly and in fact frequently might have less than half of them lined up, but they continually prove themselves worthy of empathy, or attention, or not looking away.

Without obviously attempting to do so, Schaffert sneaks humor into his tales, and he gets you to care about the plight of his characters. Not necessarily the aspects that the plot suggests you should (in Little Hope a woman claims her daughter has disappeared. Not everybody remembers the daughter. No birth certificate can be found. Meanwhile there are Lenorites (the girl's name was Lenore) sitting on the family's lawn. And while that seems to be a plot driver, it was never a main concern of mine reading the book--to discover what, if anything, happened to Lenore, or where she was. All of which helped make the book a can't put down novel for me. And I've not even gotten into the various relationships that the author of the YA series had and how they affect the story. 

All of which is to say, in a long-winded rambling way (albeit, one unlike Mr. Schaffert, does not read well to me), Schaffert has put together a very interesting cast of characters in a small town in Nebraska, created a plot that pulls their various story lines together yet still doesn't force that plot to move in any certain way, does so with a little humor, a little empathy, and even a little spookiness, and does so in a manner that would have left me happy had the story gone on another 500 pages had it done in the same manner as the first 200. 

National Short Story Month - Strange Love by Lisa Lenzo

Wayne State University Press publishes a series titled Made in Michigan that has published many quite enjoyable story and poetry collections. This month sees the publishing of Strange Love, a collection by Lisa Lenzo (her second, the first won the John Simmons Short Fiction Award (University of Iowa Press).

I've had the pleasure of reading the first two stories and realizing that they're linked--a divorced, single mother, Annie, raising her daughter, Marly, (8 in story one, 12 in story two) in what seems to be in the SW Michigan area. So far both stories have delved into the idea of looking for love--the first, "Still Life," with Annie considering following up on personal ads to find somebody to date, while "Aliens" has Annie come to the realization that Marly has added sexual activity to her lifestyle.

Both are great stories--they're subtle, they sneak humor in when you're not expecting it, they don't have a BIG moment smacking the reader about the head three or four times--they don't need to.

I'm very much looking forward to seeing where Annie and Marly head in the other seven stories.

National Short Story Month - Karate Chop by Dorthe Nors, Translated by Martin Aitken

A short little story collection, Karate Chop by Dorthe Nors (translated from the Danish by Martin Aitken) from Graywolf Press is full of short gems. Stories that might seem like they'll be cute or simply slide toward the dark or weird.

"The Duckling" begins:

Alongside the big farm, dad ran a duck farm, and because he was a clever man he earned a lot of money from it.

A story called "The Duckling" starting off that way--how dark can it get? Well at some point the dad gives the daughter who narrates the story a duckling born somewhat unhealthy, giving her a chance to raise it. Her thought is to put it in a bowl lined with a towel and put it in the oven to keep it warm. Perhaps not so surprisingly it dies. In a nice upswing however, they have a nice father/daughter moment burying the duckling together.

Another story, "Female Killers" has a married man staying up after his wife has gone to bed and he starts wandering the internet. He ends up looking up various female killers and maybe the only thing stranger than the facts that start to pop up about the killers is the thoughts that pop into the man's head about the female killers--they're odd, they're scary--they're inspired writing. He worries for the son (given up at birth) of the serial killer that will one day find out her name and find there are over 200,000 hits for her on Google; he thinks of chimps killing bush babies with spears they've made when put in the position of being hungry.

Nors' stories are short, but not quite what I'd consider minimalist. They have big ideas and just get to them quickly. It's a very entertaining collection and one you'll read in a day.

National Short Story Month - Three Scenarios in Which Hana Sasaki Grows a Tail by Kelly Luce

The first book from the folks at A Strange Object, Kelly Luce's short story collection, Three Scenarios in Which Hana Sasaki Grows a Tail is a wonderful little object.

It is filled with ten stories, all of which had been previously published in journals such as The Kenyon Review, The Southern Review, Shenandoah, Crazy Horse, and others.

Luce brings a great sense of imagination to her stories but doesn't stop there with the great and interesting ideas--she then follows up with observations on how people live and might react to such ideas and perhaps it's the combination of having lived both in the United States and in Japan for some time that gives her a slightly unique perspective.

The story "Reunion" begins:

Over the course of that interminable weekend after Jun died, Asian lady beetles overtook our place in the shadowy Tatsuka-cho. Orange, winged bodies coated the ceiling and left yellow stains; carapaces crunched underfoot against the bathroom tile. The air smelled like rancid walnuts.

It's an opening that has me pushing forward for sure--we know somebody has died, and the odd scenario of so many beetles taking over that they're crunching under the narrator's feet as she (we find out) walks in her apartment.

The protagonist moved into a room that her next-door neighbor offers her--her own husband having recently passed away himself. He had been a vacuum-cleaner designer and there were parts strewn throughout the small apartment she offered to the protagonist. One in fact almost looked like a person the way it's puffed up bag stood, like the torso of a human, sitting atop an odd assortment of feet.

The reader finds out that Jun had just given the protagonist the news that he was finally divorcing his wife--that soon they'd be able to be seen in public together, that their relationship would become more real. She reminisces a bit about their first time out together, a fair and losing at the three shell game over and over--the evening that they first kissed. The next door neighbor leaves her to her new place alone and after an interaction with the human looking vacuum-cleaner, the protagonist apparently falls into a dream beginning with:

...and a barker called out, his voice like a hook:

One night only, for sale at cost, everything you've ever lost!

And at this point she notices a stuffed animal on the table--one that she lost when she was a very young girl, it had fallen off the back of her mother's bike and even though she'd made her mother re-trace their steps close to a dozen times, it was never found. She places money on the table and takes the stuffed animal. She then sees other things she's lost over the years--socks, hair ties, a boot--and buys them all back. It's a strange scenario and seemingly adds a little more to the imaginiative side of Luce's writing. However she ends it in a powerful manner:

The last table held just one thing, a fist-sized, crimson lmp that shivered and thrashed like a fish out of water. I stared until it became a red blur. No price tag. My wallet was empty anyway. I turned away, my arms full and an empty feeling in my chest, a feeling like three shells and a realization--no ball, there never was a ball--and listened for a voice, any voice, to bring me back.

Having read the bulk of this small collection I'm happy to say that Luce continues doing this--finding new and interesting scenarios to dig her way into being able to write about every day ongoings. Not only having something to say, but doing so in an interesting way that maybe hasn't been done before. She definitely had me more than willing to start each new story just as soon as I finished the prior one.

And because a) I skimped out on Poetry month in April and b) I'm always happy to find a way to link to Hobart, here is a Chicago Cub Sestina written by Ms. Luce.

Novella Month - Source of Novellas - Melville House Books

Maybe it's just me, but there some publishers that I don't think you should be allowed to celebrate Novella Month if you're not willing to mention them. One is Mud Luscious, but I'm saving the for later in the month as I hope to have it coincide with something else. One that makes perfect sense to me to mention is Melville House Press. For one thing, they have a whole series of books titled "The Art of the Novella." There's also the "The Contemporary Art of the Novella" series that includes fabulous work like The North of God by Steve Stern.

If I understand properly, as somewhat of a rebel press, they have an affinity for this somewhat of a renegade art form, and I'm very happy that they do. I've picked up and read a fair amount of the titles, both classic and contemporary and never felt slighted once.

They do many other great things over in that little blue house, but when I think of them I usually think of novellas first.

A Book the EWN is Looking Forward to - Paul A. Toth - The Airplane Novel

Coming in July from Raw Dog Screaming Press comes Airplane Novel from Paul A. Toth, whose previous novels Fishnet and Fizz, we've enjoyed.  This promises to be a 911 novel completely different from any other--for one thing, it's told from the point of view of the South Tower of the WTC.

From the publisher's description:

Toth employs the South Tower as his narrator, a crucial conceit that allows the tower's computer infrastructure, height and thousands of windows to provide the first truly-panoramic 9/11 novel. Rather than focusing on a single family or individual, Airplane Novel pursues the WTC's past and future to the moment of their collision. Yet the narrator also follows characters representative of all that it has and will endure.

Adding yet another angle, the South Tower addresses its audience as readers of "airplane novels" in flight to various destinations. The distance between readers and the center of the catastrophe thus decreases until all must answer a key question: Are they reading a fictional account of a historical event...or participating in that event?

The book does have its own website, upon which you can enjoy the first chapter, via video:

 

Source of Lit - The Postman!

A couple of slim packages were in the mailbox this afternoon.  One from Magic Helicopter Press contained Jen Gann's back tuck, a collection of sixteen stories that I believe are all three pages or less in length.  I actually don't remember if I knew it or not but per the back page it's a limited edition first printing, with this being number 25 out of 75 copies.  I'm always a little curious if those are mailed out in order--does that mean that after maybe an author copy and publisher copies that I was the 25th person to order a copy? It's really a nicely put together chapbook with a harder stock of paper for the cover, nice end pages inside and then the stories laid out very well with some images occasionally popping in as well.  For $6 it seems like a bit more than a nice job.

I also received issue 13 of The Quarterly.  Once this latest rash of purchases I've made all arrive I'll have the first 25 issues of this pretty incredible journal.  This one had a surprise or two in it.  It opens with a story by Tim O'Brien and he's just not somebody that pops into my head when I think of this journal.  There's also a story by A.M. Homes that I'm trying to remember if I've read before.  The issue also includes some newer favorites from other issues of The Quarterly like Patricia Lear and Michael Hickins.  There are also a couple of poems by John Rybicki!

Lastly, perhaps the most exciting item.  This was also in the Magic Helicopter Press envelope as they are a publisher that participates in the Mudluscious Press Stamp Story program.  The story they sent me is by Elizabeth Ellen and it begins:

I have trouble sleeping in open spaces, I say.

There you go, even more reason to pick up one of Magic Helicopter's great chapbooks.

Book Review 2011-001 - The Mimic's Own Voice by Tom Williams

Book Review 2011-001
The Mimic’s Own Voice by Tom Williams
April 2011 from Main Street Rag, 97 pages
(This Arc sent to me by the author)

Tom Williams’ novella, The Mimic's Own Voice, is short enough to gobble down in a single reading. I don't advise that though. While I was enjoying the book quite a bit when I was forced to stop a little less than halfway through. When I'd had 24 hours to think about it before finding the necessary time to pick it up again, I found myself thinking about aspects of the story that I hadn't really been focusing on while reading those initial 40 or so pages.  Having these thoughts rolling through my mind as I read the rest of Williams' story in a second sitting allowed more aspects to jump out at me and I was able to realize just what a nice job Tom Williams has done in this, his first book.

For one thing, in a relatively short space, Williams gets his reader thinking about race and identity (the protagonist comes from a mixed family racially), as well as our current culture and how we view the famous, and last, but not least, he is able to sneak in some views, satirical in nature, about academia.  And he does this all through a unique combination of an autobiography (written in second person), and a fairly omniscient narrator's look at how the autobiography is viewed, as well as how the author of said autobiography was viewed during his life.

"Myles's manuscript, housed now at The Pratt-Falls Center, Dr. Greene's home institution, excited layman and scholars at first, for all suspected it had been written for publication. Yet no contract exists among Myles's papers (and, as the reader shall see, he was quite the saver), nor can one be found in the files of any publishers. This increased speculation that a bidding war for its rights would take place, though after the manuscript's seventy-three handwritten pages were initially read, no offers, save for the Pratt-Falls's, were forthcoming. From its curious usage of second person, to its enigmatic opening and closing lines, "Your name is Douglas Myles . . . . They never really listened," it does not divulge entirely his secrets, while it raises mysteries all its own. Still, there are a host of details which offer, for the first time, a definitive glimpse into his early life."

The author of the autobiography is Douglas Myles, the mimic of the book's title.  A fascinating idea by Williams, to use one whose entire celebrity was based on his ability to use other people's voices as a mouthpiece for the ideas presented in the book--seems like a mighty unreliable narrator to me, allowing the reader to decide for his or herself as to what to come away with.  Myles was a mimic long after the days of mimics behind popular; comics had become observational, seemingly allowing everything to potentially be funny.  Myles however had a talent perhaps beyond simply copying voices he heard, at times even speaking out in another's voice before having heard them speak, or what their response to a question might be.

Williams' writing itself has a flair to it--the combination of almost academic phrasing with the second person nature of the autobiography that definitely has its own voice, the frequent usage of parenthatical remarks and lengthy, almost list-like sentences--it takes a few pages to get used to, and is really another example of where I looked back and realized that reading the novella over two sittings was a positive aspect.

Williams finds just the right combination of rags to riches to possible rags with a story that rotates back and forth from sad to mirthful.  And coming up with a mimic as his protagonist certainly earns him points for creativity.  It's absolutely a book I recommend you track down and enjoy.

4.5 stars

New Books!

Two new titles became available yesterday, both in print and eBook form, from Dzanc or imprints of Dzanc:  Jeff Kass' debut story collection, Knuckleheads (Dzanc Books), and Stacey Levine's The Girl with Brown Fur: Tales & Stories (Starcherone Books).

For Jeff Kass, the term "knuckleheads" is neither an insult nor a term of endearment, but something in between—a boy who wants to become a man but stumbles along the path to getting there, a man who can’t forget his boyhood and wants to understand why he can’t let it go, a male searching, somehow, with an unquenchable sense of dumb hope, for something he can’t quite get his hands on.

These ten stories are populated by wrestlers, ballplayers, comic book worshipers, bench-pressers, struggling fathers, husbands, mentors and lovers—knuckleheads all, wanting vaguely to be better than they are, unsure how to navigate the tricky world of females, unsure how to navigate themselves but trying, trying to find their way.

"Kass’s remarkable stories are honest, observant, utterly believable. Poignant and funny, the stories pull the reader into their vortex, where the light is pleasingly bright and disorienting at the same time. Knuckleheads introduces an important writer, one whose work I didn’t know I was so desperate to read." —Laura Kasischke, author of The Life Before Her Eyes

"Howlingly funny, engrossing, and culturally observant, these stories unfold effortlessly with ambient ferocity and compassion. By the third paragraph of the first story I knew I’d go anywhere Jeff Kass wanted to take me." —Lewis Robinson, author of Waterdogs

"Knuckleheads is a high-octane protein shake, equal parts heartbreak and hilarity, a thing of both sweat-reeking adrenalin and nostalgic, time-stopping beauty. Kass achieves what all fiction writers want—he makes us believe and makes us care. Even those of us who stayed as far away from the jocks as possible will want to cheer." —Steve Amick, author of Nothing But a Smile

In her first short fiction collection since My Horse and Other Stories, Stacey Levine gives us twenty-eight new, feral, untamable stories, in myriad modes, from laugh-out-loud funny, to Kafka-nightmarish, to lyrical, elegiac, and philosophical.

 

Rooted in the quotidian and often mundane details of everyday life, these stories turn our expectations upside down. Levine, the author of, most recently, the novel Frances Johnson, again shows why many consider her a genius of contemporary fiction.

"It is kind of a shame that Stacey Levine's stories have to be published in the form of a book. It's not that they should appear in e-books or anything so mundane as that. Rather, I wish it were somehow possible to hire elfin booksellers to sneak into your home and hide Levine's stories in odd places—inside a cereal box, tucked into a pair of swimming trunks, taped to the back of the oven—so that you could discover them at random and, perhaps, inopportune times. Levine's stories are rare and mysterious things, and confronting them in a book makes them feel less wondrous somehow." —Paul Constant, The Stranger
 
"Reading The Girl With Brown Fur: Tales & Stories is like exploring a city not your own in a robot submarine. Prepare for Stacey Levine's sentences or they will eat you. Take time off work, call in sick, give yourself a week. Like all good vacations, it's easy to move from weddings to wolves to sausages so quickly that all significance is lost, coalescing into one massive beast in your tinny mind—all because you're in rush. Slow down. Make soup. Kidnap sal bugs. Each tale requires its own moment." —William Gallien, Alice Blue Reviews

"Amid alarming depictions of domestic misery and perversion, strange metamorphoses, and imperiled nature, as well as the occasional triumphant escape or alliance, Levine declares the death of myth and anticipates the collapse of civilization. But for now, she subtly acknowledges that however deluded, poisoned, and impaired we may be, we will continue to tell and cherish tales and stories as we struggle against lies, brutality, and alienation."—Donna Seamen, Bookforum

"The inhabitants of Stacey Levine's stories attempt each of these things and more, with no more success than people who have extramarital affairs or people who buy sports cars. Thankfully, Levine's stories have a refreshing lack of respect for reality." —The Believer

"Levine's crisp stories similarly find excitement and transformation as they chase down their fantastical plots. The Girl with Brown Fur won't be everyone's cup of tea, but the adventurous will enjoy following Levine's breadcrumb trails, even if that means getting a little bit lost." —A.N. Devers, Time Out New York

“Levine’s work is, at least technically, ‘surreal,’ but like much of the best writing that maps the borders between dreams and conscious life, its subtle disjunctions create a zone that often feels more real than “reality” itself...  [I]t is not because we’ve seen this landscape in other fictions, but maybe in a half-remembered dream.”—Stephen Beachy, San Francisco Bay Guardian

J.A. Tyler - One Confident Author

Just how confident is J.A. Tyler in his own work?  If you take a chance on it, and don't like this particular book, he'll take it back and rewrite you a new one inside those covers.  Direct from the man himself:

"If you don't like my book I'll write you another book on the inside of that book. Order it, read it. If you don't like it, ship it back to me & I'll write a new book for you on the inside of that book. Yes. This is how much I believe in these words. A MAN OF GLASS & ALL THE WAYS WE HAVE FAILED"

Now, I just received my pre-ordered copy yesterday and cracked it open last night.  My personal guess is that you'll never take J.A. up on that offer, unless maybe you buy two copies just to see what he'll write inside that 2nd copy.  You'll want to keep that first one pristine so you can keep revisiting it down the line.