All Over

by Roy Kesey

Roy Kesey has been hailed as one of our best young writers. All Over , his debut collection, presents nineteen of his most original stories. They first appeared in magazines such as McSweeney's, Ninth Letter and The Kenyon Review , and have been chosen for anthologies including Best American Short Stories, The Robert Olen Butler Prize Anthology and New Sudden Fiction .

Genres: Short Stories

145 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 2007

About the author

Author and translator Roy Kesey was born in northern California and currently lives in Maryland. His latest book is the short story collection Any Deadly Thing (Dzanc Books 2013). His other books include the novel Pacazo (Dzanc Books 2011/Jonathan Cape 2012), the short story collection All Over (Dzanc Books 2007), the novella Nothing in the World (Bullfight Media 2006/Dzanc Books 2007), and two historical guidebooks. He has received a number of awards for his work, including an NEA creative writing fellowship, the Paula Anderson Book Award, and the Bullfight Media Little Book Award. His short stories, essays, translations and poems have appeared in more than a hundred magazines and anthologies, including Best American Short Stories and New Sudden Fiction.

Reviews

[Dennis · Rating 5 out of 5]

It was my own fault.

See, I was only partially-prepared for the pleasure that awaited me--in reading Roy Kesey's debut story collection.

Halfway through, or thereabouts, I felt as though Gabo Marquez had gotten together with Kenneth Fearing, Kurt Vonnegut and Franz Kafka in my brain pan, for collaboration on a manifesto that not even any of those guys know where it's gonna go. By the time I finished reading, suffice it to say that I'd cracked up, misted up, scratched my head and then all 48 hairs on the back of my neck stood up, buzzing.

Now I know:

Roy Kesey does indeed possess the mad skills of a sardonically-seasoned philosopher, not to mention the absolute soul of a poet.

All Over has "Cult Classic" written all...


Well, yeah--just read the book, and you'll see what I mean. And don't forget your Boy Scouts' Motto, which applies to literature, too.

:)

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

Uproarious yet unsettling, Roy Kesey's first collection of stories combines a joshing respect for the forms he appropriates -- he has fictions based on everything from the job interview (“Interview”) to the international crime thriller (“Follow the Money”) -- w/ a phrase-coining shamelessness. Again & again ALL OVER shoots booming through the cliché barrier into the electrifying pleasures of language off the chain. He works in Americana, deadheaded & mall-worthy, & also in high rhetorical tones, almost Elizabethan here, high-Modernist there. Yet for all that the style's worth savoring, there's plenty more to gape at, amid these flash-fictions, stories of ordinary length, & novellas. That longer work includes a Best American winner, the transcendent "Wait," an epic set at an airport gate. “Wait” develops into a showpiece drama, w/ admirable complications, seductive & ingenious. It’s a picaresque that goes nowhere, an apocalypse full of hilarity (though a scene about burnt toes can fetch tears), & a transgressive romance, bashing across borders of race and more, in which its climactic marriage is also, in its way, one of convenience. Whew. Then there's “Fontanel,” another gem of some heft, working through an old-fashioned Godlike narrator in a new-fangled arrangement that makes its events all the more hair-raising. I have a few misgivings, sure, a case or two in which a bizarre framework & imaginative leaps overwhelm humbler connections. Sill if weary catchalls like "postmodern" or "experimental" have any cachet left, you'll catch its intoxicating whiff in ALL OVER. You can't help thinking, even, of Donald Barthelme, that po-mo touchstone. Kesey, overall, comes as close to Don B. as anyone has during the last couple of decades, though God knows the mad scientists of our literature have never ceased their efforts to cook up a replicant. But to suggest that the accomplishment of ALL OVER depends on any one earlier author would be to diminish what Roy Kesey himself has done: hilarious, startling, & -- actually -- gorgeous.

[Heather Fowler · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have always enjoyed Roy Kesey's narrative voice--clever and funny in turns, just as it is poignant. This book of stories was a joy to read. I'd recommend it for anyone who likes Tim O'Brien blended with Borges, blended with that special spark of style that's all Roy Kesey. For lovers of lovers and lovers of stories, I do recommend this book. Kesey had me in his hand. He didn't drop me.

[Alan · Rating 4 out of 5]

got to re-order this as they're out of stock at the amazon marketplace place.

I did buy this about four years ago, and then lost it before reading. Just came to light in the back of a cupboard, no idea how it got there, but have begun.

Being a reader and writer of mainly realist fiction (and often of the pared down Carver/Wolf type), this book was like standing at the fridge door scoffing down illicit calorific food. E.g. there’s a story about a man who makes a fully working aeroplane out of a paper clip, another features an institute that can make you perfect, but only on their terms, and another in which a psychiatric patient claims he is a guitar string. Not that there’s a lack of logic, far from it, these are stories that take it to logical extremes. In ‘Strike’ a New York dustman’s (garbage collector?) strike leads eventually to the Hudson being choked to the extent that you can walk across it, and the place is abandoned to rats and dogs; in ‘Wait’ an airport delay causes wars and romances between the passengers. There’s one about some predicted boring and enormous war, another about a seven mile long painting. Some I didn’t get. All are stuffed with a lush, at times overwhelming vocabulary. (Me at the fridge now with my face smudged with chocolate and cream).

I was going to illustrate with some quotes, but, amazingly, the book has gone awol again. I fell over yesterday on the brutal streets of Birmingham (UK) and am limping today, so the book may have fallen out of my bag then. I hope who ever finds it enjoys it. I did. Sort of. But maybe it’ll turn up again at the back of a cupboard..

[Tania · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Reading Roy Kesey's collection made me happy. Re-reading it soon after made me even happier. This is not because Kesey's stories are hopeful or optimistic. It is because this is a writer so clearly in love with language and rhythm that it is a delight to experience what he does with words – both those we are familiar with and those I suspect he invented. "...

Read the rest of my review on The Short Review.

[Myfanwy · Rating 5 out of 5]

This collection is unlike any I've ever read--a wild ride. My two favorite stories in the collection were: "Invunche y voladora" and "Fontanel".

[Tim · Rating 3 out of 5]

I still wish "Asuncion" was in this one.
http://thelmagazine.com/6/2/bookpage/...
Anyone want extra credit?

[Tuck · Rating 4 out of 5]

very good, show offy short stories. reminds me of borges and felisberto hernandez.

[Heidi · Rating 4 out of 5]

let me enthuselah for 900 years without dying all over

[Sergey Saveliev · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best short story collections I have read so far. 'Instituto' is an absolute marvel.

[Denise · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not bad. Sometimes funny.

[Scott]

I ran out of steam. I strongly recommend Any Deadly Thing over this collection.

[Laura · Rating 2 out of 5]

Way too minimalist for my taste. One of the stories (about the guy trying to achieve perfection by going to the clinic) was mildly interesting but otherwise I felt bored and anxious for it to end.

[David William · Rating 2 out of 5]

Some are not as good as others.