3/5 stars
What's it about? In these sometimes connected stories, people grapple with anguish, loss, and choices. David Means writes an earnest collection that wants us to feel something.
How’d I find it? I read in Harper's “Stopping Distance,” in which a man and woman connect through a bereavement group for parents who have lost children, and went out to pick up the book that contained it. Politics and Prose always has the goods.
Who will enjoy this book? This read strongly reminded me of The Sadness of Beautiful Things and will appeal to fans of Simon Van Booy. Dog lovers, the story “Clementine, Carmelita, Dog” will bring you to tears and make your day. Means did well to lead the collection with this stunner.
What stood out? Aside from the aforementioned Homeward Bound-esque tale, I enjoyed the two Harper’s stories best, the other being "The Red Dot,” about a local restaurateur who questions everything when he sees his ex-wife kayaking. “The Depletion Prompts” closes the collection, an interesting take on craft that offers context for the preceding stories. The book’s Achilles’ heel is forced sentiment that occasionally shouts from the page. I couldn’t always buy in.
Which line made me feel something? Means sure loves a long sentence, and this snippet from “The Red Dot” is a beaut: “We were both thinking, I’m sure, about the dangerous currents that ran all the way up the estuary, dug deep by retreating glaciers, or volcanic activity, a ridge meeting the sea so that the sea and the river battled each other twice a day, if you want to look at it that way, or, better yet, lovingly embraced each other in a mutual, moon-drawn embrace, running silently through the darkness of night and in the heat of day past all the human folly and abject sadness we create when we’re here, as it would when we were long gone—just bones and earth”.