Apparition & Late Fictions: A Novella and Stories

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Apparition & Late Fictions: A Novella and Stories (Reprint) Pub. Date: 2/14/2011 Publisher: Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
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Apparition & Late Fictions: A Novella and Stories Pub. Date: 2/8/2010 Publisher: Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.

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Apparition & Late Fictions: A Novella and Stories Pub. Date: 1/28/2010 Publisher: Cape, Jonathan Limited

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Overview

A Methodist minister gone astray, a grieving trout bum gone fishing with his father’s remains, an artist overwhelmed by incarnate beauty—these are just a few of the iconic yet utterly unique characters in Thomas Lynch’s spirited collection. Set in Michigan’s north woods, in Ohio’s interior, on islands, in casinos, and in distant cities, these stories are linked by the gone and not forgotten: former spouses, dead parents, and missing children. In pursuit of love and its redemptions, these are pilgrims haunted by memory, dogged by desire, made radiant by romance and its denouements.

With the elegant prose of Frederick Busch and the Irish sensibility of William Trevor, Lynch masterfully creates a world where mirage and apparition are commonplace, where people searching for connection and old comforts find them both near at hand and oddly out of reach.

Editorial Reviews

William Giraldi

…the stories and novella here are gifts of precision, narratives with the poise to depict entire lives unstrung by the end of things. Lynch's aptitude for fiction comes as no shock; he's been a teller of tales all along, his poems and essays occupied by vivid characters siphoned from the world he moves through…Apparition and Late Fictions is both sacred and profane, as it must be: the ambitions of our spirits at odds with the appetites of our bodies, the former presumed eternal, the latter sickeningly brief.
—The New York Times

Publishers Weekly

Death haunts this underwhelming collection from essayist, poet (and undertaker) Lynch (The Undertaking). In “Catch and Release,” the shortest and best story, a fishing guide disposes of his father's ashes in an unusual way. “Bloodsport” is an undertaker's grim reflection on his peripheral involvement in the life of a murder victim. “Hunter's Moon” is a decent character sketch about a widowed former casket salesman, but as a story, it's too inward-looking and inert. “Matinée de Septembre” presents a portrait of professor Aisling Black that strands her in a lugubrious female version of Death in Venice set in a Michigan resort. “Apparition,” the centerpiece novella, is the story of Adrian Littlefield, a minister who becomes a bestselling self-help author after his wife leaves him. It's told mostly as flashbacks during Adrian's contemporary visit to the location of his ex-wife's first infidelity. Unfortunately, drawing this slight story out dilutes its promise. Overall, Lynch seems at a loss for what to do with his fictional creations; haunted as they are by deaths and burdensome back stories, his character's present lives feel contrived. (Feb.)

More Reviews (3) Fewer Reviews

Library Journal

Lynch, a published poet whose account of working with his father as a funeral director (The Undertaking) was a National Book Award finalist, presents an impressive first collection of short fiction. Focusing on the subject of loss, Lynch writes with a poet's eye for detail and phrasing and brings extraordinary emotional depth to his characters as they struggle to understand themselves, the choices they've made, and the mysterious ways in which the world works. In "Bloodsport," a funeral director mourns the violent death of a neighborhood woman he knew when she was a young girl. In "Matinée de Septembre," Lynch ingeniously updates Thomas Mann's Death in Venice. In the deeply complex and magnificently rendered "Apparition," a divorced father must finally come to terms with his life. VERDICT There is wisdom, courage, and great depth of feeling here. The pieces in this powerful, meditative collection are all beautifully drawn; the title story is a masterpiece.—Patrick Sullivan, Manchester Community Coll., CT

Kirkus Reviews

Funeral director turned writer Lynch (essays: The Undertaking, 1997) brings a soft-spoken humanity to bear on aspects of life as well as death in his debut fiction collection. Focused on the bereaved, those working in the death professions, or both, Lynch's first three stories share an overt, clear-eyed preoccupation with the subject of death. Most moving is the opener, "Catch and Release," in which a "trout bum" whose fishing expertise is a tribute to his father's love and life lessons spends a day angling, remembering Dad and disposing of his ashes. The human histories are slightly less affecting in "Bloodsport" and "Hunter's Moon." The former observes an aging funeral director as he remembers a moment of desire for the young woman, now murdered, whom he must help lay to rest; the latter offers Harold Keehn's reminiscences about his three wives. Two longer pieces share the earlier stories' realism and retrospective point of view, but they place greater emphasis on the sum of a life rather than its conclusion. "Matinee de Septembre" showcases a successful academic and poet whose unplanned vacation leads to an ecstatic, transfixing encounter. The title novella, a triumph of empathy, features the reflections of an ex-minister whose failed marriage has led him to celebrity and wealth as a divorce guru. Lynch addresses familiar themes of professional achievement, sexuality and emotional engagement as he scrupulously dissects a mismatched relationship and its aftermath. Compassion, mourning, joy and wit all play roles in this tender, insightful hefting of mortality's mysteries.

The Barnes & Noble Review

"Sex and death . . . are the only subjects worth thinking about," a widowed poetry professor instructs her students in one of the stories filled with both in Thomas Lynch's Apparition and Late Fictions. Lynch, a Michigan funeral director and poet, cited the same Yeats assertion, clearly a touchstone for him, in his wonderful book of personal essays about "the dismal trade," The Undertaking (1997). Like his essays, Lynch's fiction also concerns love and grief, which "share the one body." His characters are embalmers, casket salesmen, poets, ministers, fishing guides, and the widowed professor whose creepy infatuation with a beautiful teenager at a fancy Mackinac Island resort evokes Thomas Mann's Death in Venice. They mourn husbands, wives, parents, and young girls who are gone but not forgotten. Less fondly, they also remember exes, for whom "A little Good Riddance goes a long way."

The small-town assistant pastor in the title novella discovers his true calling only after his wife leaves him and their two children for greater excitement. After rediscovering the balm of "sex with a generous stranger," he writes a lively manifesto to "faith in flux" called Good Riddance -- Divorcing for Keeps that proposes "that some divorces, like some marriages, are made in heaven." It's a game changer in his life, much, we suspect, as being left with four small children and later publishing The Undertaking were in Lynch's. It's interesting to see some of the same themes treated with the additional elaboration and nuance of fiction, but for sheer impact, it's hard to compete with the plainspoken directness ofLynch's morbid but moving real-life tales from the mortuary.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780393042078
Publisher: Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date: 2/8/2010
Pages: 216
Sales rank: 1,219,627
Product dimensions: 5.60 (w) x 8.40 (h) x 1.00 (d)

Meet the Author

Thomas Lynch's The Undertaking was a finalist for the National Book Award. He lives in Michigan and Ireland.

Acknowledgments 11

Catch and Release 15

Bloodsport 37

Hunter's Moon 55

Matinee de Septembre 79

Apparition 127

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Apparition & Late Fictions: A Novella and Stories

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William Giraldi

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