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Front Matter
In a dozen powerful stories, Adam Kotlarczyk debuts a forceful new voice in fiction. The evocative tales in Front Matter are of love and lovelessness, of absence and gain, of time and remembrance. They present an authentic and honest collection that lingers long after the reading.
In the tense opener, “Why Are They Gone?”, a single father struggles to raise his troubled children even as they discover love and inspiration in the unlikeliest – and most fragile – of forms. “An Age of Prudence” tells the story of four young friends, veterans recently returned from duty in the Middle East, following them on a journey as they try to leave their wars behind. The country doctor in the fantasy “The Second Kingdom” ponders the absence of war in his own time, traveling to perform a seemingly mundane duty on a warm summer evening.
A meditative doctor, an impulsive gambler, a tour guide in paradise, an aging Vietnam veteran – the unique characters populating Kotlarczyk’s fiction inhabit captivating and diverse worlds. They profoundly engage the experiences of our time, confronting timely issues of war, sexuality, and intolerance. Yet their worlds echo with more timeless allusions, from Wordsworth’s romantic poetry to Goethe’s warnings on power to the bleak modernism of Eliot and Hemingway. And the themes – love and loss, friendship and family, memory and hope – endure.
Haunting and candid, funny and penetrating, the stories of Front Matter introduce an astute and sensitive new voice in fiction. They are sure to entertain, to beguile, and to inspire.
In the tense opener, “Why Are They Gone?”, a single father struggles to raise his troubled children even as they discover love and inspiration in the unlikeliest – and most fragile – of forms. “An Age of Prudence” tells the story of four young friends, veterans recently returned from duty in the Middle East, following them on a journey as they try to leave their wars behind. The country doctor in the fantasy “The Second Kingdom” ponders the absence of war in his own time, traveling to perform a seemingly mundane duty on a warm summer evening.
A meditative doctor, an impulsive gambler, a tour guide in paradise, an aging Vietnam veteran – the unique characters populating Kotlarczyk’s fiction inhabit captivating and diverse worlds. They profoundly engage the experiences of our time, confronting timely issues of war, sexuality, and intolerance. Yet their worlds echo with more timeless allusions, from Wordsworth’s romantic poetry to Goethe’s warnings on power to the bleak modernism of Eliot and Hemingway. And the themes – love and loss, friendship and family, memory and hope – endure.
Haunting and candid, funny and penetrating, the stories of Front Matter introduce an astute and sensitive new voice in fiction. They are sure to entertain, to beguile, and to inspire.
167 pages, Kindle Edition
First published June 10, 2013
3 people want to read
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