Dog Run Moon
Stories
گزارش تخلف
کتاب های مرتبط
- اطلاعات
- نقد و بررسی
- دیدگاه کاربران
نقد و بررسی
November 9, 2015
In this debut story collection, Wink stakes his bold claim to Big Sky literary territory, the terrain of Thomas McGuane, Norman Maclean, and Jim Harrison. Most of the stories feature men who find themselves in sticky situations, providing surprises for readers. In the title story, a sawmill worker goes on the run with a dog he has taken from a local businessman. A teacher from Montana with a problematic love life vacations in Texas, where he impulsively takes a job working on a ranch (“Exotics”). A college dropout training to be an EMT falls in love with an older woman with two children (“Runoff”). In “One More Last Stand,” a Little Bighorn reenactor playing the part of Custer has an affair with a Crow Tribe woman who plays his killer on the battlefield. In “Off the Track,” a young man sent to prison for manslaughter inherits his grandfather’s house and the memories it contains. And in the longest and best story, “In Hindsight,” the author charts the history of a veterinary assistant who, nearing the end of her long life, learns it’s never too late to find grace. A fly-fishing guide in Montana, Wink suffuses every page with his love of the land. No matter what their circumstances, he never condescends to his characters, who all suffer from longings that cause them to make decisions they don’t quite understand. But through the transparency of his writing, at once delicate and brutally precise, the author gifts us with the wonderful feeling of knowing someone you’ve only met in a book. Agent: Peter Steinberg, Steinberg Agency.
Starred review from December 1, 2015
A collection of stories set mostly in Montana, where life tends to be hard, money short, the land gorgeous, and relations between lovers and kin troubled. A man performing in annual re-enactments of Custer's Last Stand also sleeps each year with an Indian woman from the show. He remembers to call his wife, who is being treated for breast cancer, and comforts her while his lover listens. The proximity of wife and lover recurs in the disturbing "Breatharians," in which a man's wife continues to live on his dairy farm while his hired teen helper becomes his lover. Caught in this psychological mire is the young son who learns too much about cruelty. In the title story, a gem of pacing and menace, a man who frees a chained dog thinks of a recent breakup while he's fleeing naked in the night from the dog's owner, Montana Bob, and his strange sidekick, Charlie Chaplin. "In Hindsight" takes a woman from 20 to 73, through a rough marriage, solitude, a love affair, and the final settling of a feud, all linked masterfully by her relation to animals. In another complex narrative, "Sun Dance" moves its main character from an accidental death on a construction site to a vision in a sweat lodge of one Indian's fall from grace on a basketball court and then to a kind of redemption in the brutal dance of the title. Wink doesn't deal in the romance of the Old West or dwell on the frontier past, yet both myth and history color these highly satisfying fictions about the way men and women struggle to shape their lives.
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Starred review from February 15, 2016
The setting for Wink's debut collection of nine provocative stories, two of which appeared in The New Yorker, encompasses the small, stagnant towns of rural Montana and Wyoming. The author writes with humor, authenticity, and sympathy for his characters, everyday people caught in the vagaries of life. In the title story, which opens the compilation, a mill worker named Sid is running naked through the woods, trying to escape town bullies Montana Bob and Charlie Chaplin after Sid steals their neglected dog. "Breatharians" is a moving story about August, whose father gives him a job to kill feral cats on their dairy farm, but it also clarifies what drove his parents to live in two separate houses built by his grandparents on the homestead while Lisa, the hired girl, sleeps with his father. "In Hindsight" has Lauren living on a ranch as she cares for her animals and constantly battles her dead husband's son, Jason, who thinks nothing of killing one of her steers and dragging it up on her porch. VERDICT Wink is definitely not a writer of half measures; each of these stories demonstrates his ability to lay life bare. A significant collection highly deserving of the spotlight. [See Prepub Alert, 8/17/15.]--Donna Bettencourt, Mesa Cty. P.L., Palisade, CO
Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
September 15, 2015
Not every newbie writer sells two stories to The New Yorker, as Wink did with "Dog Run Moon" and "Breatharians," the latter selected by Elizabeth Strout for The Best American Short Stories. Just-named Stegner Fellow Wink spends his days as a fly-fishing guide in Montana, and the American West echoes in his stories, e.g., a Wild West reenactor maintains an enduring affair with the Indian woman who "kills" him on the battlefield each year.
Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
February 15, 2016
The setting for Wink's debut collection of nine provocative stories, two of which appeared in The New Yorker, encompasses the small, stagnant towns of rural Montana and Wyoming. The author writes with humor, authenticity, and sympathy for his characters, everyday people caught in the vagaries of life. In the title story, which opens the compilation, a mill worker named Sid is running naked through the woods, trying to escape town bullies Montana Bob and Charlie Chaplin after Sid steals their neglected dog. "Breatharians" is a moving story about August, whose father gives him a job to kill feral cats on their dairy farm, but it also clarifies what drove his parents to live in two separate houses built by his grandparents on the homestead while Lisa, the hired girl, sleeps with his father. "In Hindsight" has Lauren living on a ranch as she cares for her animals and constantly battles her dead husband's son, Jason, who thinks nothing of killing one of her steers and dragging it up on her porch. VERDICT Wink is definitely not a writer of half measures; each of these stories demonstrates his ability to lay life bare. A significant collection highly deserving of the spotlight. [See Prepub Alert, 8/17/15.]--Donna Bettencourt, Mesa Cty. P.L., Palisade, CO
Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
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