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Further Interpretations of Real-Life Events
A dazzling new story collection from brilliant, young, award-winning writer Kevin Moffett, Further Interpretations of Real-Life Events illuminates the intimate experiences of characters caught between aspiration and achievement, uncertainty and illumination, inertia and discovery, the past and the future. Channeling unexpected, eclectic voices in a collection perfectly suited to readers of Daniyal Mueenuddin, Alice Sebold, and Dave Eggers, Moffett delivers a nuanced, powerful, humorous, and moving meditation on the trials of transitions and liminal living in today’s modern world. Richard Russo says, “the first thing you notice reading the stories in Further Interpretations of Real-Life Events is the author’s extraordinary range—of expertise, technique, imagination and wit. There doesn’t seem to be much Kevin Moffett can’t do.”
- GenresShort StoriesFiction
229 pages, Paperback
First published October 13, 2011
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 33 reviews
October 14, 2014
this book was damn GREAT. Short funny sad super real stories. Really dug the style.
"they forgot how the past moves aside for the present, and the present moves aside for the future and what that leaves you with is a ceaseless series of transitions, one after the other, alignment to realignment. It's hard! How do people not drink?"
"He lugs around his personality like a big open pail, sloshing it all over the place."
"they forgot how the past moves aside for the present, and the present moves aside for the future and what that leaves you with is a ceaseless series of transitions, one after the other, alignment to realignment. It's hard! How do people not drink?"
"He lugs around his personality like a big open pail, sloshing it all over the place."
July 7, 2012
Representative sentences: "They, he and Irene, treated time like it didn't mean anything, that was the main problem. They forgot how the past moves aside for the present, and the present moves aside for the future, and what that leaves you with is a ceaseless series of transitions. Ceaseless, one after the other, alignment to alignment. It's hard! How do people not drink? Drinking's actually the only thing to do about it. To hem all that jagged edging and make the intolerable tolerable."
I really admired the patterning of transitions from sentence to sentence and scene to scene.
The cover is also representative, particularly the texture of its paper, which I liked at first and later realized is the same used for the Best American Short Story series, which makes sense since three of these stories appeared in recent editions.
The overriding lingering impression for me was something like glinty sunstruck late-summer depression. Sentences/observations felt like passes of a trusty/world-weary cape across the path of bulls charging out of moments past, present, and future, sometimes illusory but more often really real.
Solid story reading!
I really admired the patterning of transitions from sentence to sentence and scene to scene.
The cover is also representative, particularly the texture of its paper, which I liked at first and later realized is the same used for the Best American Short Story series, which makes sense since three of these stories appeared in recent editions.
The overriding lingering impression for me was something like glinty sunstruck late-summer depression. Sentences/observations felt like passes of a trusty/world-weary cape across the path of bulls charging out of moments past, present, and future, sometimes illusory but more often really real.
Solid story reading!
May 28, 2017
The title story is the best (it's a beautiful, mysterious, and extremely funny story), but I also liked "Buzzers," "In the Pines," "First Marriage," "Lugo in Normal Time," and "English Made Easy."
Can't wait to read Moffett's next collection. Hope it's coming soon. Been a while!
Can't wait to read Moffett's next collection. Hope it's coming soon. Been a while!
April 30, 2012
I thoroughly enjoyed Moffett’s first collection, Permanent Visitors, and was happy to hear word of this second one. Moffett is a master of the quirky, off -beat and often very humorous story. Even in his oddest stories, like “The Big Finish” here, with its talking birds, Moffett still manages to be touchingly poignant and invoke great sympathy in the reader for his characters.
The 9 stories in the collection are:
1. Further Interpretations of Real-Life Events – 34 pp – A story that thoroughly deserved its place in the Best American Short Stories of 2010 collection. A writer has to deal with the enraging fact this his father, in retirement starts to dabble with writing and ends up publishing some very powerful stories in literary journals. The way the story portrays the son’s jealousy and annoyance over this is marvelous. But this turn of events, particularly the stories the father is publishing, forces the son to reexamine memories of his mother’s death and reconsider his assumption that his mother’s passing had little effect on the father.
2. Buzzers – 20 pp – A young man goes to Europe to study architecture just as he learns his ill father has died.
3. In the Pines – 27 pp – A lonely widow lives in a retirement home that looks out a on a Civil War battlefield. Because she can’t find any suitable male companionship, she begins to imagine conversations with a solider from the war.
4. First Marriage – 26 pp – A newly married couple transporting a man’s car to Florida get delayed while their cars get deodorized by mechanics because a snake had crawled into and died.
5. Border to Border- 25 pp – An Estonian immigrant who works at an Epcot Center-like amusement park called Small World swallows the crown of his tooth. Without health insurance to pay for new dental work, his taste of freedom in the new world means having to deal with the gross prospect of fishing the crown out when it comes out the other end of him. A gross premise, but a charming portrait of an innocent surrounded by people not as principled as he.
6. Lugo in Normal Time – 22 pp – An alcoholic tries, not very successfully to connect with his ex-wife and teenaged daughter.
7. English Made Easy – 27 pp – A story that blew me away when I first read it in American Short Fiction. A young mother has to deal with the death of her husband, who passed away when she was pregnant. Her days are filled with dealing with a pushy sister-in-law who is excessive in her efforts to keep her brother’s memory alive and a neighbor with Alzheimer’s who almost provides a model for the young widow on how to move past painful memories. Per usual in a Moffett he mixes all this poignant, heartfelt stuff with quirky situations – here a brother-in-law who got into trouble for having sex with a puppet.
8. The Big Finish – 22 pp – A man who does bird shows on a cruise ship has to deal with an amorous boys and a pair of birds who talk to him, mostly letting him know how much they preferred their previous trainer.
9. One Dog Year – 21 pp – A sick and elderly John D. Rockefeller spends his last days overlooking the beach with his manservant and the doctor he’s paying a hefty sum to keep him alive so he can reach his goal of living to 100. He realizes a life spent saving and planning for the future left little opportunity to savor the moment – but now he wants to begin doing that, as a stunt pilot offers to give him a ride in his plane.
The 9 stories in the collection are:
1. Further Interpretations of Real-Life Events – 34 pp – A story that thoroughly deserved its place in the Best American Short Stories of 2010 collection. A writer has to deal with the enraging fact this his father, in retirement starts to dabble with writing and ends up publishing some very powerful stories in literary journals. The way the story portrays the son’s jealousy and annoyance over this is marvelous. But this turn of events, particularly the stories the father is publishing, forces the son to reexamine memories of his mother’s death and reconsider his assumption that his mother’s passing had little effect on the father.
2. Buzzers – 20 pp – A young man goes to Europe to study architecture just as he learns his ill father has died.
3. In the Pines – 27 pp – A lonely widow lives in a retirement home that looks out a on a Civil War battlefield. Because she can’t find any suitable male companionship, she begins to imagine conversations with a solider from the war.
4. First Marriage – 26 pp – A newly married couple transporting a man’s car to Florida get delayed while their cars get deodorized by mechanics because a snake had crawled into and died.
5. Border to Border- 25 pp – An Estonian immigrant who works at an Epcot Center-like amusement park called Small World swallows the crown of his tooth. Without health insurance to pay for new dental work, his taste of freedom in the new world means having to deal with the gross prospect of fishing the crown out when it comes out the other end of him. A gross premise, but a charming portrait of an innocent surrounded by people not as principled as he.
6. Lugo in Normal Time – 22 pp – An alcoholic tries, not very successfully to connect with his ex-wife and teenaged daughter.
7. English Made Easy – 27 pp – A story that blew me away when I first read it in American Short Fiction. A young mother has to deal with the death of her husband, who passed away when she was pregnant. Her days are filled with dealing with a pushy sister-in-law who is excessive in her efforts to keep her brother’s memory alive and a neighbor with Alzheimer’s who almost provides a model for the young widow on how to move past painful memories. Per usual in a Moffett he mixes all this poignant, heartfelt stuff with quirky situations – here a brother-in-law who got into trouble for having sex with a puppet.
8. The Big Finish – 22 pp – A man who does bird shows on a cruise ship has to deal with an amorous boys and a pair of birds who talk to him, mostly letting him know how much they preferred their previous trainer.
9. One Dog Year – 21 pp – A sick and elderly John D. Rockefeller spends his last days overlooking the beach with his manservant and the doctor he’s paying a hefty sum to keep him alive so he can reach his goal of living to 100. He realizes a life spent saving and planning for the future left little opportunity to savor the moment – but now he wants to begin doing that, as a stunt pilot offers to give him a ride in his plane.
November 9, 2011
In the first story in this magnificent collection a writing professor instructs his students to place characters in short stories in pivotal situations, but not to have them reach conclusions That, he says, is the work of the reader. Malloy follows his own dictate in each ensuing story. The reader is placed into a moment in time that is challenging and transitional for each character, then left to interpret the clues and form his own conclusion as to how the character will fare in the future. In fact, in one story observation is made that "his future was separated from his past." "InThe Pines" tells of a woman always used to being admired by and listened to by men, which is how she has gauged her happiness. At 74 she finds herself uprooted by well meaning relatives to another state, to a retirement community. Her future is completely uprooted from her past. Some of the situations, while familiar (a father trying to adjust to life on the fringes of that of his daughter, a single mom coping with loneliness and responsibility), but the handling here is truly original. Highly recommended.
October 17, 2014
I get nervous I've read all the contemporary fiction I'll like and then a book like this comes along and is the best thing I've read in a year and I stop being so paranoid. A huge variety of voices. How did one guy come to write this rich vibrant society? I believed in all of them. They were all real. I could see them on the street. The sort-of senile millionaire was just as solid as the widow with denial issues. I wasn't bored by a story about a woman who'd been relocated to a retirement village. That's a remarkable thing he accomplished. Pretty much six stars. The writing is so good. I could quote nearly any line as an example of how perfect it is. Why not this one?: "These were the words with the strongest aftertaste. If they weren't heroic, they were at least- no, they were definitely heroic. He savored them after Paula left. He let himself savor the thought, however delusional, of her savoring them."
March 29, 2012
It’s been a while since I came across a collection of short stories quite so inspiring. After the opening story of a young, struggling writer, Moffett branches out, exploring an astonishing array of characters. From a (possibly) senile old woman, to a young Estonian immigrant, to a dead-beat, middle-aged divorcee. By this description, one would think that he’s spreading himself too thin, exploring facets of life he can’t possibly know. But that’s where the brilliance lies. You will find yourself immersed and wrapped up in the well-being, in the small victories and disappointments, of these characters. I wanted to crawl inside these stories and curl up. Let them wash over and envelope me. “First Marriage” particularly stuck with me, and I was unable to get it out of my head for days afterward. I promise, you won’t be disappointed by Moffett’s genuine talent and quirkiness.
October 6, 2020
I read Kevin’s book after working with him in workshop. To say his voice shines rough in his collection of short stories is a gross understatement. Reading his collection of story stories is fun, and feels like hanging out with your wittiest old friend.
October 13, 2020
Totally incredible. Funny, humane, weird, unsettling.
March 22, 2018
I enjoyed reading these short stories
I stumbled across this book and it was a pleasure to read. I look forward to reading more from Kevin.
I stumbled across this book and it was a pleasure to read. I look forward to reading more from Kevin.
October 11, 2022
The first story (the title story) was the best of the bunch. Nothing else was quite able to match it's pitch, though some others came close. An okay but altogether forgettable collection.
March 13, 2023
Fav stories: "Further Interpretations of Real-Life Events," "Lugo in Normal Time," and "English Made Easy"
December 12, 2014
Short stories generally puzzle the crap out of me, and those in this collection by Moffett (whose first collection, Permanent Visitors, won the Iowa Short Fiction Award) are no exception. While I understand that a short story is an inherently different beast than a novel, why is it that nothing happens in a short story? Ever! As in many other short story collections, Moffett’s characters are probably quite unlike anyone you’ve ever known. Among others, there is a cut-rate cruise ship bird trainer and a 74-year-old woman named Alta who feels whole only through relationships with men. These folks, even the newly married couple delivering a smelly Volvo to Jacksonville, think about things that I’ve never quite thought about: algae blooms, the dental health of Eastern Europeans, wooden back scratchers. They do this for a few pages, with some dialog, perhaps repartee, and it’s great. But man, there’s no action‚ no explosions, no car chases or notable sex scenes. Not even a game of darts. Why? Is there some unwritten rule that certain subjects are too pedestrian for the wilds of shortstoryland? It’s a fine collection, and readers will come away feeling happy that they discerned themes, like that you can confront some random, mystical unfamiliarity through the filter of another’s psyche. But if the most dynamic aspect of a book is its cover‚ this one looks like it’s a how-to treatise on back scratching‚ then you may as well spend an hour on YouTube checking out old Marty Feldman videos.
Find reviews of books for men at Books for Dudes, Books for Dudes, the online reader's advisory column for men from Library Journal. Copyright Library Journal.
Find reviews of books for men at Books for Dudes, Books for Dudes, the online reader's advisory column for men from Library Journal. Copyright Library Journal.
May 21, 2012
I received this book as a Goodreads giveaway.
This book is very well-written, with a wonderful flow and almost musical quality to much of the language. In that way it was great to read, but, I just did not like the characters in the book. Well, that's not entirely true. I liked Maxim in "border to border", but like all of the other people in the book, he seemed very lost. Perhaps I liked him because he seemed to, by the end of the story, have enough of an identity to make a difficult decision. Other than that, I enjoyed reading about Chick and Tara, the birds in "the big finish". They paid attention, and seemed to be the only characters the genuinely care about someone else in the run of stories.
I can certainly see the appeal in the book, but for me, the stories are mostly forgettable. In one case, I had to put the book down mid story, and when I came back the next day, could not remember the first couple of pages. I believe that others will enjoy this series of stories, but I prefer something where my characters are more defined. I know too many people in real life who muddle through in a fog of confusion and depression, I do not enjoy reading about fictional ones.
Overall, beautifully written, but not stories that appeal to me.
This book is very well-written, with a wonderful flow and almost musical quality to much of the language. In that way it was great to read, but, I just did not like the characters in the book. Well, that's not entirely true. I liked Maxim in "border to border", but like all of the other people in the book, he seemed very lost. Perhaps I liked him because he seemed to, by the end of the story, have enough of an identity to make a difficult decision. Other than that, I enjoyed reading about Chick and Tara, the birds in "the big finish". They paid attention, and seemed to be the only characters the genuinely care about someone else in the run of stories.
I can certainly see the appeal in the book, but for me, the stories are mostly forgettable. In one case, I had to put the book down mid story, and when I came back the next day, could not remember the first couple of pages. I believe that others will enjoy this series of stories, but I prefer something where my characters are more defined. I know too many people in real life who muddle through in a fog of confusion and depression, I do not enjoy reading about fictional ones.
Overall, beautifully written, but not stories that appeal to me.
January 20, 2016
I don't know what to say about this collection of short stories. Really. They were odd little vignettes of strange, and often sad, lives. The stories conveyed here seemed to come in at the middle of a story in progress, and the final words came before much resolution. In a way, that was frustrating or at least disquieting. But, it also made it interesting to wonder what will become of these characters. That component really distinguished these short pieces of fiction from longer narratives, and the writing kept me on my toes, often surprised at a turn of phrase or curious about the origination of the author's ideas.
October 3, 2012
A collection of well-written short stories. I wanted to like this book more. The characters and settings felt real. The author has a strong voice and good prose. The tone was just off for me. I found the stories alternately bleak, uncomfortable, and sad. If there had been any resolution to some of the stories, I think I'd feel differently. While left unsatisfied after reading this, I am interested in seeing what else Moffett writes.
April 17, 2012
This book is full of charm. Although I enjoyed some stories more than I did others, my overall experience was positive. I also thought the writing was really great, and I would reread some sentences just because I liked the way they made me smile and how they rolled off my tongue. The stories were humorous, while still being sad at the same time, which I could appreciate.
March 31, 2012
This is a collection of nine short stories that are a slice of life for the characters within them. There isn’t a resolution within the stories, but are written to make provoke the minds of the reader. Brilliantly written, but none stand out for me and are soon forgotten after finishing the book.
May 28, 2012
Looking forward to the novel.
March 12, 2012
A confident, sparklingly funny and poignant debut collection. Every story is terrific, and worth sharing with anyone in reach.
December 5, 2012
A new favourite!
April 14, 2012
My two favorite stories were the title piece and the John D Rockefeller inspired One Dog Year. Moffet's stories are equal parts hilarious and depressing, but there is wisdom in every tale.
June 7, 2012
some great quotes... the rest, eh.
July 19, 2012
I love short stories so much, it's always a pleasure to read an interesting collection. Hard to quantify why Moffett's style is so appealing - maybe it's the vulnerability.
July 7, 2012
Stories always left me hanging which I do not really enjoy in books but the stories told were quite interesting. It was a good way of passing time, but nothing special about it.
February 25, 2013
The stories were interesting but you won't like the book if you're not willing to think. They all end fairly open-ended and you have to think about what you just read.
November 29, 2012
Haven't ventured into the short stories genre for a while. Liked "In the Pines," but the others were just bizarre.
September 18, 2012
the first story, especially, is amazing.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 33 reviews