Eyesores

by Eric Shade

These eleven interrelated stories follow strands of hope and nostalgia that bind together, or fence off, the people of Windfall. Eric Shade's fictional western Pennsylvania community is a place we all a town bypassed by the interstate, its rail line clogged with coal cars that haven't moved an inch in years. The men of Windfall still vie on the time-honored fields of contest--from bars to bedrooms to football fields--but none is sure any longer what is won or lost. Few certainties the jobs are going fast and the best women are already taken. In the title story, a group of unskilled laborers rerun memories of youth as they race against the dark to demolish the town's drive-in theater. A chain restaurant will take its place. Naomi dumps Dwight at the altar in "Hoops, Wires, and Plugs," but then Dwight fritters away the shamed agitation that could have propelled him beyond Windfall's stunting gravitational pull. In the final story, "Souvenirs," small-time hoods Paxson and Gus do what so many in Windfall can' get out of town. They're off to Pittsburgh and a contract killing they hope will kick off a more rewarding life of crime. In hands less able than Eric Shade's, Windfall's men would be caricatures, screw-ups with all-too-easy access to the makings of pills, booze, fast cars, guns, chain saws. Instead their stories give us new ways to ponder change and its consequences. Windfall stakes out a gritty quarter of the literary map shared by Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg and Thornton Wilder's Grover's Corners.

Genres: Short Stories

216 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2003

Reviews

[Marvin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nice collection of loosely interconnected stories set in a fictional Pennsylvania town. Maybe the most enjoyable I've read in the Flannery O'Connor Award series, for whatever that's worth. Some stories occasionally bog down in small-town ambling, but for the most part they reach through to the heart of things. Small moments within the big picture, or the other way around. Full of surprising, memorable moments that feel like they belong together. Prose can rely much too heavily on the run-on sentence at times, but the stories are largely pleasurable reading.

Highlights: "Blood," "A Rage Forever," "Kaahumanu," "A Final Reunion," "Hoops and Wires and Plugs."

[Lindsey · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of my favorite books of short stories