Short stories that all take place in the town of Corpus Christi, Texas.
Critic Reviews
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Favorable
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LA Weekly Michael Hoinski
This novella of sorts is achingly beautiful, if a bit overwhelming when coupled with Johnston's already absorbing accounts of marginalized persons personifying the Middle American blues.
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Favorable
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Library Journal Cheryl L. Conway
Johnston's evocative descriptions of events, feelings, and Corpus Christi itself connect readers to his characters and their dilemmas and reactions to tragedy. [15 May 2004, p. 118]
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Favorable
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Los Angeles Times Mark Rozzo
The 10 stories that make up Bret Anthony Johnston's auspicious debut collection attempt to map Corpus Christi, Texas, and its environs, "where the heat is wet and exhausting, and the land feels as wide open as the ocean." It's hurricane country, and Johnston's exquisitely drawn men and women are riders on the storm, coping with an iffy emotional landscape that mirrors Corpus Christi's own, where the past is too easily washed away and the ocean has no memory. [11 July 2004, p.R9]
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Favorable
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Publishers Weekly
In his promising debut collection, Johnston travels through time and across socioeconomic divides to present a series of nuanced portraits of middle-aged, middle-American loneliness in all its permutations.
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Favorable
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Boston Globe DeWitt Henry
These stories are relentlessly sober, large-hearted, and intense. In their pathos, to quote C.S. Lewis on Chaucer, "every fluctuation of gnawing hope, every pitiful subterfuge of the flattering imagination, is held up to our eyes without mercy" ("The Allegory of Love"); and yet their effect is spiritually bracing. We are human to the last.
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Mixed
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Booklist Marta Segal
The high point of this collection is the three stories spread throughout the book that together form a novella and a complete picture of a touching mother-son relationship. Each individual story overcomes its tragic subject matter to deliver an honest and nonpatronizing view of the mainly lower-middle-class characters. However, trying to read these stories in one sitting may require an antidepressant. [May 1 2004, p. 1545]
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Unfavorable
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Kirkus Reviews
Lugubrious reading, more like workshop exercises than glimpses of real life.
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