Hush Hush

Starred review from August 6, 2012
Barthelme’s new book is less a set of linked short stories than narratives that cohere with thematic chiming. Protagonists in similar predicaments advance an idea and play upon one another from tale to tale: a narrator faces the impending death of his father, and in the next story, a character deals with a father figure’s death. A man named Quinn recurs: in “Interview,” he leaves his comfortable job and wife in favor of fixing cars back in Texas. In “Coachwhip,” Quinn’s son, in the midst of a fistfight, considers his father’s failings. In “Acquaintance,” Quinn flies to Boston to attempt to find a signed copy of his deceased mentor’s failed novel. Quinn’s struggles reflect those of others, people on the outs, either clinging to or running from a lost idea or person. Stylistically, the stories’ range from traditional to the experimental flares in an alienated child’s neologisms in “Siberia” and the disorienting admission of a nonfiction writer’s fabricated facts in “The New South.” What makes this so solid is, no matter Barthelme’s approach, the strong sense of humanity that remains. With great humor and insight, he explores the psyche of desperate people striving to connect, with others and with themselves.

August 1, 2012

In his second collection (after And He Tells the Little Horse the Whole Story), Barthelme breathes life into characters who act on instinct, often surprising themselves in the process. Readers familiar with Double Down: Reflections on Gambling and Loss, which Barthleme wrote with his brother Frederick, will find similar territory here; for example, in "Claire," a long-time loser in the casino and in life finds it within himself to quit while he is ahead--by $16,000--for the chance of reconciling with the woman he loves. In other stories, the protagonists take chances, like leaving a lucrative job and a wife and taking work as a car mechanic, that seem crazy, even to themselves, but turn out to be a step in the right direction. VERDICT Barthelme has a sure voice and a respect for the narrative arc as it reveals itself. These stories are relatively short, but they always end at just the right place.--Sue Russell, Bryn Mawr, PA

Copyright 2012 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

October 15, 2012
In his first collection since And He Tells the Little Horse the Whole Story (1987), Barthelme firmly establishes his reputation as a master of the short form. Teeming with hope and despair, the characters in these 20 tales are driven to recklessness or new beginnings. Brothers fall for the same girl. A lawyer abandons his life in Atlanta for Austin, pursuing a job fixing cars and a girl he met 10 years earlier. A compulsive gambler who borrows money from his ex-girlfriend is left irresolute when he finds himself up $16,000 at the casino. In the rousing title story, a cantankerous loner is begrudgingly reunited with his long-lost daughter, taking an unsettling interest in her only after she begins dating a coworker. But Barthelme is at his finest in his shorter, voice-driven experiments, such as a five-page demystification of Siberia by a precocious 10-year-old. Barthelme's prose often evokes that of Padgett Powell in its syntactical precision, but his post-Southern style is distinctive and surprising, animated by stray cats and flawed humans seeking new lives.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2012, American Library Association.)