The Tzer Island book blog features book reviews written by TChris, the blog's founder.  I hope the blog will help readers discover good books and avoid bad books.  I am a reader, not a book publicist.  This blog does not exist to promote particular books, authors, or publishers.  I therefore do not participate in "virtual book tours" or conduct author interviews.  You will find no contests or giveaways here.

The blog's nonexclusive focus is on literary/mainstream fiction, thriller/crime/spy novels, and science fiction.  While the reviews cover books old and new, in and out of print, the blog does try to direct attention to books that have been recently published.  Reviews of new (or newly reprinted) books generally appear every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.  Reviews of older books appear on occasional weekends.  Readers are invited and encouraged to comment.  See About Tzer Island for more information about this blog, its categorization of reviews, and its rating system.

Entries in Jack Earley (1)

Friday
Dec052014

Mr. Tall by Tony Earley

Published by Little, Brown and Company on August 26, 2014

Generally set in Appalachia (primarily in Tennessee and North Carolina), the stories collected in Mr. Tall are surprising, funny, and moving. Protagonists have rich personalities while eccentric background characters contribute to the sense of realism that each story (except the last) conveys.

My favorite in the collection, "Haunted Castles of the Barrier Islands," is a sly domestic drama. Daryl is no longer tolerant of his wife and doesn't understand why his sweet clingy daughter, now in college, is no longer sweet or clingy. I particularly enjoyed Daryl's contemplation of his marital duties: "Find me a Hardee's. Find me a room. Stay with me until I die. It was all the same thing, really." Daryl's wife, on the other hand, makes it clear during the couple's weekend away that her first husband was infinitely superior to Daryl. The story is both an amusing and a biting look at a marriage gone sour that invites an obvious question: How do couples stay together when the only glue that binds them is mutual animosity? The answer turns out to be unexpectedly practical.

"Mr. Tall" is a wit-driven story about a young woman who bears the guilt of abandoning her family when she allows the only boy who ever chased her to catch her. Her introduction to marriage, sex, mules, and hillbilly living is hilarious. Even funnier is her adventure with her neighbor, Mr. Tall, although the humor is ultimately overtaken by an intense scene that explains why Mr. Tall is a recluse.

The background characters in "The Cryptozoologist" are a fugitive who bombed an abortion clinic and a skunk ape (a version of Bigfoot) but the protagonist is a woman who only begins to understand her husband years after he dies. The poignant story illuminates the importance of appreciating one's life partner as a unique person, rather than appreciating a shared lifestyle.

"Yard Art" is an achingly heartfelt story about the importance of the ordinary -- because what is ordinary to everyone else can be extraordinary to one person. "Have You Seen the Stolen Girl," a good story that is nevertheless weaker than the others, tells of an aging woman's reaction to news that a girl disappeared on her block.

"Just Married" consists of four compact descriptions of aging, sometimes damaged people who are or once were married, and of the memories they carry of their younger lives. The last of the four ties the first three together, neatly and sweetly.

The final story is quite different from the others. The Jack in "Jack and the Mad Dog" is the Appalachian version of the once-famed Giant Killer, but his best days are behind him. He fears he has come to the end of his final story, "his mind free from the embarrassment of exposition, the regret of flashback, the dread of foreshadow." He's in pretty much the same boat (albeit a magic boat) as his rival, Tom Dooley, who also lacks cultural currency. After so many stories mired in self-indulgence with no regard for the farmer's daughters who surround him, can Jack develop a new narrative? The story is a contemplation of the slow death of Appalachian storytelling and a reminder of the power stories have to teach us about life (and death). We are, after all, characters in our own stories, just like Jack ... at least until the book is closed.

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