Hall of Small Mammals

Starred review from October 13, 2014
Pierce's first short story collection is full of compulsively addictive and delightfully strange fare. Some of the 12 offerings are new, others are culled from the New Yorker, the Oxford American, and elsewhere; each takes a mundane experience and adds an element of the extra weird. In "Shirley Temple Three," the opening, a mother begrudgingly agrees to hide a cloned prehistoric miniature woolly mammoth in her laundry room as a favor to her son, who is a reality show host. The protagonist of "The Real Alan Gass" becomes jealous when his girlfriend reveals that she's happily married to another man in her dreams. "Videos of People Falling Down," which is about just that, is a funny, yet quietly poignant interconnected series of vignettes that showcase characters at their most vulnerable. Echoing an old ghost story, the wicked "Saint Possy" shuttles a couple to their wits end as the skull of a dead possum (maybe) simultaneously haunts and taunts them. In "More Soon," a dead man, quarantined and shipped around the world on a barge following a highly contagious infection, prompts his brother to contemplate where the soul resides. Pierce's menagerie of colorful characters equally inspires and amuses. The book is expertly paced (there isn't a dud in this eclectic bunch) and many of the stories' endingsâsome sinister, some melancholic, others heartfeltâprompt momentary reflection, though thankfully not always in ways that are expected. Agent: Jin Auh, Wylie Agency.

November 1, 2014
People get uncomfortably close to their primal tendencies in this debut story collection that highlights the quirky and uncanny.Pierce's stories feel like they're set within spitting distance of George Saundersville and occupied by residents whose need for normalcy is complicated by the inescapable strangeness of our natures. In "Shirley Temple Three," the host of a TV show dedicated to reviving extinct animals deposits a surreptitiously freed "dwarf mammoth" with his mother. When the host goes AWOL, his mother is forced to see how well her maternal instincts will work with the creature, and the story becomes funny but surprisingly touching as well. Pierce persistently tests the ways that creatures shed light on our own inscrutability: In "Saint Possy," an animal skull of unknown provenance unsettles a relationship; in the title story, a zoo exhibit is supposed to help the narrator connect with his girlfriend's son but does the opposite; and "We of the Present Age" is a historical tale about a naturalist who's propositioned to present his discovery of dinosaur bones as a lurid and highly unscientific circus attraction. But Pierce can stick with Homo sapiens to convey his perspective on humanity. In "More Soon," the collection's strongest story, a man awaits the delivery of his dead brother's body, which has become entangled in the bureaucracy of an international crisis; Pierce finds the dark humor in officialese ("R has been declared a biological weapon. Will call with more after Thanksgiving") while exploring the more sober tension of seeking closure after loss. Not every story is successfully provocative-"Felix Not Arriving" is a relatively conventional squabble-during-a-family-visit tale, while "Videos of People Falling Down" is an overly loose set of sketches questioning our urge to mock others' online foibles. But Pierce clearly has talent to burn. A promising debut that studies hard-luck types from new and provocative perspectives.

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April 1, 2015

Pierce, whose stories have appeared in The New Yorker and the Atlantic, offers a particularly satisfying first collection, with each story not just a glimpse but a fully developed idea often ending on a somewhat puzzled tone--appropriately, as life doesn't always easily resolve. A woman cares for the miniature mammoth her feckless TV scientist son has helped clone; a man tries to help his son emerge from his shell by taking him to the cultish Grasshoppers Camp, with uncertain results. VERDICT Quirky but real; for all readers.

Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

January 1, 2015
This very promising first collection shows writing talent across a range of styles and situations, sharing in most of the stories a skewed sense of the absurd regarding circumstances of modern life. In the title story, a young man is separated at the zoo from his girlfriend's precocious and annoying 12-year-old son and, after a futile attempt to bribe a security guard, waits outside while the boy gains admittance to an exhibit of baby monkeys. In Shirley Temple Three, the host of a popular TV show, Back from Extinction, somehow takes home a clone of a prehistoric Bread Island dwarf mammoth. The story More Soon takes on an added dimension in these times of concerns about the Ebola virus; Robert Yaw is unable to receive from abroad the coffin of his mysteriously deceased brother, Bert, when it is determined that Bert fell victim to a condition ultimately necessitating the total isolation of even his remains as a possible contaminant. In a fresh and deadpan voice, Pierce handles these Kafkaesque situations deftly.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)