Another Perfect Catastrophe and Other Stories

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Overview

With his keen ability to evoke characters in the South and Middle America who find themselves in reduced circumstances, Brad Barkley restores our faith in human beings to endure the ravages of time with decency and humor. Out of intense loyalty, Reed feels reluctant to leave his crippled friend when his girlfriend pressures him to move on. Mourning their baby's death, a couple takes up dancing lessons to recapture their closeness. Two drifters, Bosco and Ray, scheme to murder an old man, steal his diamonds, and pay a doctor to save Bosco's life.

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Overview

With his keen ability to evoke characters in the South and Middle America who find themselves in reduced circumstances, Brad Barkley restores our faith in human beings to endure the ravages of time with decency and humor. Out of intense loyalty, Reed feels reluctant to leave his crippled friend when his girlfriend pressures him to move on. Mourning their baby's death, a couple takes up dancing lessons to recapture their closeness. Two drifters, Bosco and Ray, scheme to murder an old man, steal his diamonds, and pay a doctor to save Bosco's life.

Editorial Reviews

Kirkus Reviews
Ten debut stories by novelist Barkley (Alison's Automotive Repair Manual, 2003, etc.), most portraying unhappy men and women working out their lives in the backwoods South. Though a good deal grimmer than Barkley's previous work, the tales feature the same resilient dreamers: half-desperate, half-visionary oddballs who persevere against the odds like characters in an existentialist novel. The title story, in a T.C. Boyle vein, portrays an unhappy menage a trois made up of two high-school chums, a sculptor and a construction worker, who cohabit with the latter's girlfriend, a business-school student ten years younger but a lifetime more mature than either of them. Many of the pieces have a mournful quality. "The Properties of Stainless Steel" depicts a distraught couple, grieving over the death of their baby daughter, attempting to reestablish some semblance of a normal married life by taking square dance lessons. "The Small Machine" shows a middle-aged husband's quiet despair at the futility of his plans for the perfect anniversary present-and, by extension, at marriage and life alike. In the Carver-esque "19 Amenities," an ill-matched couple spends a dreary New Year's Eve in a motel in the middle of nowhere while on a ludicrous dog-racing expedition that serves to emphasize their mutual isolation. The standout here is "Mistletoe," a forceful and unsentimental vignette of an elderly woman dying of Lou Gehrig's disease. In her last days, she becomes a New Age devotee and asks her bewildered son to take some poisonous mistletoe berries from a neighbor's garden to help her commit suicide. As pungent and acrid as burning rubber, managing against the odds to pull us into an unpleasant world ofspeechless despair. Agent: Peter Steinberg/JCA Literary Agency

Product Details

  • ISBN-13: 9780641689260
  • Publisher: St. Martin's Press
  • Publication date: 3/15/2004
  • Pages: 206
  • Sales rank: 564,367
  • Product dimensions: 5.78 (w) x 8.32 (h) x 0.81 (d)

Meet the Author

Brad Barkley, a native of North Carolina, is the author of the novels, Money, Love, which was a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers selection and a Book Sense 76 choice, and Alison's Automotive Repair Manual, also a Booksense 76 pick. Money, Love was named one of the best books of 2000 by the Washington Post and Library Journal. Barkley was named as one of the "Newcomers of 2002: Breakthrough Writers You Need to Know" by Book magazine. He is also the author of a previous story collection, Circle View. His short fiction has appeared in more than two dozen magazines, including the Southern Review, the Georgia Review, Oxford American, the Greensboro Review, Glimmer Train, Book magazine, and the Virginia Quarterly Review, which has twice awarded him the Emily Balch Prize for Best Fiction. His work was anthologized in New Stories from the South: The Year's Best, 2002 and again in 2003. Another Perfect Catastrophe is latest book. He has won four Individual Artist Awards from the Maryland State Arts Council, and a Creative Writing Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. Brad Barkley teaches creative writing at Frostburg State University. He lives in western Maryland with his wife, Mary, and two children.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
The Way It's Lasted 1
The Properties of Stainless Steel 27
Another Perfect Catastrophe 47
The Atomic Age 73
The Small Machine 99
19 Amenities 105
Mistletoe 123
Those Imagined Lives 145
St. Jimmy 167
Beneath the Deep, Slow Motion 175

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