This is absolutely Steve Almond’s best book to date. I’ve read and loved all of his work, but this is the one you must buy and read so that you can lather in its pure brilliance. There is a maturity of theme and content, a patience to detail to his subjects’ fine points as well as their overwhelming flaws. His affection for his characters, imperfect as they may be, incites us to care about them deeply and become utterly involved in these tales.
Almond’s range helps make this new collection exciting. His stories are about ultra divergent characters, complex, who all wind up being human beings. A dark humor weaves through even the bleakest of stories. In “Shotgun Wedding,” originally published in New England Review, Carrie, an account executive for an advertising firm, visits the doctor for flu-like symptoms. She reads three-year-old Time magazines in the waiting room, indulges in one of her ongoing fantasies that blind men must be particularly good in bed because of their overdeveloped sense of touch, and goes on to fantasize about making love with Ray Charles, who asks her in “that husky voice of his” to help him find the top step. Soon his robe and her gown drop, and his “gentle, gentle” hand is resting on her arm. The doctor theorizes with a big smile on his face that instead of having the flu, she might be pregnant. Carrie so isn’t expecting this news which so doesn’t work with “The Plan” her fiancé has envisioned for the two of them, that she doesn’t get the pregnancy test right away. Instead, she calls him a quack to all the friends she immediately text messages. Suddenly everyone Carrie looks, babies pop up—in new ad campaigns, on billboards. Eventually she calls Brian on her “Corporate Torture Device” and is forced to come to terms with who he is and what it is she really wants.
In “Donkey Greedy, Donkey Gets Punched,” originally published in Tin House a psychoanalyst “in the restless leisure of his late middle age” becomes a little too enamored and has his own problems with playing poker. In walks “Gary ‘Card’ Sharpe,” referred to him by a colleague. Gary won the World Series of Poker 2003, and his wife will leave him if he doesn’t quit his addiction. Their opening dialogue: “So how’s this work? Do I hand you my checkbook now or wait until the end of the session?” “This is a consultation . . . We’re merely try to—” “Or maybe I should just dump the cash at your feet?” What follows is a hilariously sad series of appointments which Gary, always the sharp, wins at as well. The psychoanalyst is forced by his role in this interaction to say and not say certain things, to reveal or not reveal parts of his real life. Gary knows these rules a little too well and plays them like the expert he is. The story culminates with Gary discovering the good doctor has his own problems with poker, and it isn’t pretty. If this story hadn’t already included in Best American Short Stories 2010, that would have been the shock.
Do yourself a favor—run to your favorite bookstore, down the street or online, and purchase this stunning collection immediately. You’ll thank me.
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