What Salmon Know

by Elwood Reid

Fans of Elwood Reid's football novel, If I Don't Six, shouldn't be surprised to find his first collection full of men at the fourth down with 10 yards to go. Not literally--in fact, there's not a gridiron in sight in What Salmon Know. But Reid has a disarming gift for putting his characters into dramatically fraught situations; his sense of story is infallible. In "Overtime," a plant manager forcefully suggests that a worker skip his daughter's volleyball game to work a second shift; when the girl is abducted and murdered after the game, the manager is left with a lingering, life-changing sense of responsibility. The main character in "Happy Jack" is a YWCA self-defense instructor who finds himself playing predator to one of the very students he's meant to be empowering. And in the title story, two drunken Alaskan good ol' boys watch with horror as a pair of GI's from Kentucky fillet a live salmon. Revenge on the fish's behalf is, of course, extracted. But then, Reid's men usually do come up bloody-fisted.

In more ways than one. Workingmen all, these characters live by their hands... or what's left of them, anyway. One fellow observes a pinkie-less coworker: "Now he looks like everybody else on the job--tainted with the work. The closest I've come is a Sawzall across my forearm when some pimple-faced rookie got cocky and kept zipping through a crooked doorframe, forgetting I was on the other side pulling shiners."

Unfortunately, Reid doesn't always seem to know what to do with his tough talkers once he wrangles them into these cleverly devised scenarios. In the aftermath of tension, generalizations fly: "And now what? Hours to push through. Work and water to put under some bridge?" To use another (all too appropriate) sports metaphor, Reid steals the ball every time, but occasionally fails to convert. --Claire Dederer

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction

240 pages, Hardcover

First published August 17, 1999

Reviews

[Mbreaden · Rating 3 out of 5]

Almost all of the stories in this collection amused and surprised me with the author's perspective of manly workingman-ness, but none of them really stood out to me except for "Happy Jack." As well-intentioned as the rest of the stories were, they all seemed to come from the same narrator who is not changed throughout the novel, for good or worse. However, Elwood Reid has spare writing style and a good ear for poetic syntax and I appreciated the lack of pretense.

[AD LAND · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well done stories about blue-collar losers and almost-losers. Best read with time gaps between the stories as the same voice runs through them all.

[Kendall]

Found this collection of stories on the bargain table at the Book Review in Huntington- NY. The description on the back said Compared by critics to the work of Raymond Carver- Rick Bass- and Thom Jones- all authors I like. Nice collection- and nicely written. My biggest complaint- again- is that the endings- for the most part- elude me. I just don't get them. It's like someone hitting the stop button right in the middle of a song the way these stories end. Everything

[Cats W. Bats, Esq. · Rating 4 out of 5]

4/5

Story collections are always a mixed bag, but I liked most of the stories presented in this collection. As other reviewers have pointed out, "Happy Jack" is a standout. I also really enjoyed "No Strings Attached."

[K · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reading short story collections are not my easy picks, for some reason. But these were all evenly good and terrifically satisfying. Gut laughs and all the rest made them all worthwhile.