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The Ice At The Bottom Of The World Stories [ Uncorrected Proof]
In these ten stories, Mark Richard, winner of the 1990 PEN/Ernest Hemingway Foundation Award, emerges as the heir apparent to Mark Twain, Flannery O'Connor, and William Faulkner.
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First published January 1, 1989
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About the author
Mark Richard
54 books86 followersMark Richard is an American short story writer, novelist, screenwriter, and poet. He is the author of two award-winning short story collections, The Ice at the Bottom of the World and Charity, a bestselling novel, Fishboy, and House of Prayer No. 2: A Writer's Journey Home.
Mark Richard was born in Lake Charles, Louisiana, and grew up in Texas and Virginia. As heard on the Diane Rehm Show on NPR: He grew up in the 1960s in a racially divided rural town in Virginia. His family was poor. He was born with deformed hips and spent years in and out of charity hospitals. When his father walked out, his mother withdrew further into a world of faith. In a new memoir "House of Prayer No. 2" he details growing up in the American South as a “The Special Child” and how the racial tensions and religious fervor of his home town animate his writing today.[1]
He attended college at Washington and Lee University. His first book, the short story collection The Ice at the Bottom of the World, won the 1990 PEN/Ernest Hemingway Foundation Award. His short stories have appeared in The New Yorker, Harper’s, Esquire, GQ, The Paris Review, The Oxford American, Grand Street, Shenandoah, The Quarterly, Equator, and Antaeus.
He is the recipient of the PEN/Ernest Hemingway Award, a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, a Whiting Award, a New York Foundation for the Arts fellowship, the Mary Francis Hobson Medal for Arts and Letters, and a National Magazine Award for Fiction. He has been writer-in-residence at the University of California Irvine, University of Mississippi, Arizona State University, the University of the South, Sewanee, and The Writer’s Voice in New York. His journalism has appeared in The New York Times, Harper’s, Spin, Esquire, George, Detour, Vogue, The Oxford American, and The Southern Review, and he has been a correspondent for the BBC. He was also screenwriter for the film Stop-Loss.
He lives in Los Angeles with his wife Jennifer Allen and their three sons.
Mark Richard was born in Lake Charles, Louisiana, and grew up in Texas and Virginia. As heard on the Diane Rehm Show on NPR: He grew up in the 1960s in a racially divided rural town in Virginia. His family was poor. He was born with deformed hips and spent years in and out of charity hospitals. When his father walked out, his mother withdrew further into a world of faith. In a new memoir "House of Prayer No. 2" he details growing up in the American South as a “The Special Child” and how the racial tensions and religious fervor of his home town animate his writing today.[1]
He attended college at Washington and Lee University. His first book, the short story collection The Ice at the Bottom of the World, won the 1990 PEN/Ernest Hemingway Foundation Award. His short stories have appeared in The New Yorker, Harper’s, Esquire, GQ, The Paris Review, The Oxford American, Grand Street, Shenandoah, The Quarterly, Equator, and Antaeus.
He is the recipient of the PEN/Ernest Hemingway Award, a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, a Whiting Award, a New York Foundation for the Arts fellowship, the Mary Francis Hobson Medal for Arts and Letters, and a National Magazine Award for Fiction. He has been writer-in-residence at the University of California Irvine, University of Mississippi, Arizona State University, the University of the South, Sewanee, and The Writer’s Voice in New York. His journalism has appeared in The New York Times, Harper’s, Spin, Esquire, George, Detour, Vogue, The Oxford American, and The Southern Review, and he has been a correspondent for the BBC. He was also screenwriter for the film Stop-Loss.
He lives in Los Angeles with his wife Jennifer Allen and their three sons.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 107 reviews
July 18, 2021
Nuevamente, la inagotable América profunda en un gran libro de relatos, dolorosos algunos, humorísticos otros y durísimos los que son una mezcla de ambos.
La primera mitad del libro me entusiasmó; la segunda mitad lo hizo algo menos aunque en ella encontré mi relato preferido de todo el libro: Niño pez.
November 4, 2012
This collection starts with a BANG!
'Strays' is one of the best short stories I've ever read.
Just listen to this. Mom runs off. Dad goes after her leaving his two young sons in the care of Uncle Trash. (Yep. That's right. Uncle TRASH.) During a poker game, Trash proceeds to fleece the boys out of ALL their belongings, including underwear, then heads into town for a drink. "Don't y'all burn the house down!" he admonishes. I'm not telling what happens next, but it's the stuff of urban legends.
After such a great first story, I was REALLY stoked to read the rest of the book, and then...Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz...
What the hell happened? It's not that the rest of the stories are bad, but...
They are forgettable. Seriously forgettable. I read one story a day from this book, and I can't remember what happened in the one I read yesterday, much less the one I read last week. They're a big, foggy blur.
So, if you can get this from the library, read Strays. Then take the book back, and get something better.
'Strays' is one of the best short stories I've ever read.
Just listen to this. Mom runs off. Dad goes after her leaving his two young sons in the care of Uncle Trash. (Yep. That's right. Uncle TRASH.) During a poker game, Trash proceeds to fleece the boys out of ALL their belongings, including underwear, then heads into town for a drink. "Don't y'all burn the house down!" he admonishes. I'm not telling what happens next, but it's the stuff of urban legends.
After such a great first story, I was REALLY stoked to read the rest of the book, and then...Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz...
What the hell happened? It's not that the rest of the stories are bad, but...
They are forgettable. Seriously forgettable. I read one story a day from this book, and I can't remember what happened in the one I read yesterday, much less the one I read last week. They're a big, foggy blur.
So, if you can get this from the library, read Strays. Then take the book back, and get something better.
August 10, 2011
***1/2 stars. I picked this up this because Alan Warner reveres the guy and spoke in awed whispers about this collection, but nothing here is close to the level of Warner's own outstanding 'Morvern Callar.' Richard can certainly turn a phrase and his acrobatic & sometimes hallucinatory prose slots snugly between Dennis Johnson and Barry Hannah. But it's only his images that stick, not the stories themselves which tend to awkwardly lurch and ramble. Only 'Strays' hits a permanent bull's eye and the book is worth checking out just for that small masterpiece. The rest - with the possible exception of 'This Is Us, Excellent' - I don't expect to remember a few months from now.
July 25, 2008
Recommended by a mildly cantankerous professor friend. And holy hell all mighty what a fine thing to recommend. Richard (pronounced the French way) is, without argue, the wielder of a sense of language and atmosphere that squarely kicks the nuts of any other contemporary writer I've read. Overwhelming sadness simmering with pips of sharp and sparkling wit. Again, there is this kind of elevated redneck aesthetic running through the whole of the book; coke addicts, white trash, abused children and my all time favorite, the quintessential, ever-unshakable drunk.
January 12, 2018
A host of great writers (including, first, Pamela Ryder, and then, Dawn Raffel, Brian Evenson, Peter Markus, Brian Kubarycz, and George Singleton) recently sang the praises Mark Richard's The Ice at the Bottom of the World to me, and it didn't disappoint, to say the least, its odd comedic capers and its lyricism, full of funk and fury and outrageous Southern Gothic weirdness, often reminiscent of the writing of Barry Hannah and Padgett Powell and William Faulkner.
May 21, 2008
Reading this guy's stories are like reading something in a whole new language, one you've never learned but somehow know. His stories are haunting and very strange. Brilliant.
February 6, 2016
Mark Richard's voice in this gut-punch collection of stories recalls Breece D'J Pancake's Appalachian darkness (but not its pacing), and McCarthy's inebriated river-sloshed wordplay in Suttree. Of the 11 impressive shorts, "This is Us, Excellent" delivered the most powerful blow; a batterer compensates for his bursts of violence by taking his wife and two young boys to a pizza arcade. It is narrated from the disturbing perspective of the eldest child who, long exposed to abuse, is nearly entirely inured to it. This childhood indifference sheds subtle and interesting light on his long-suffering mother.
September 14, 2013
Skin dies and changes a lot over not so much time, but if I think for even a little bit of time about "Her Favorite Story," it doesn't matter what skin I'm in because I'm straight away trembling and for a while too.
January 12, 2012
I have never read anything like the writing in this book. It's written like high-art poetry, while at the same time the perfect echo of, say, the voice of an excited child. This book is the opposite of dark humor - it's a smear of color and light and lyrical language, but then in the corners and the background and the periphery of your eyes is a crippling sadness that will shake you. This book is why people write, and why people read. It is fucking gorgeous.
September 16, 2025
Recopilación de relatos de 152 páginas, publicada en 1989. La madre, loquita, se escapa y el padre se marcha para sacarla de la cárcel, mientras el tío Basuras se queda con los dos sobrinos y los despluma a las cartas. Un huracán provoca la caída de un árbol que destroza la casa de un matrimonio, hay una crecida, cogen al perro y huyen en la canoa por un río embravecido. Vic no sabe leer ni escribir, les tiene alquilada una casa junto al río en sus tierras que le pagan con trabajos, Vic tiene mujer, varios niños, dos perros y su viejo caballo Buster, al no saber leer le echa unos polvos equivocados en la comida al caballo, que empieza a cocear y hiere a uno de los dos amigos. Los diez relatos se desarrollan en los pantanos de Louisiana. Se trata de historias de Red Necks, blancos marginados. Y, aunque está bien escrito, encuentro un exceso de frases subordinadas que se hacen interminables. Pero lo peor, y la razón por la que no recomiendo su lectura a los amantes de los animales, como yo, es su exceso de maltrato animal.
June 23, 2018
Bloody hell, 'short' stories that are not short to read. You really, REALLY need to get into it; a skim, brisk overview will not do. Here is the opening sentence of the short story 'Fishboy', get ready: "I began as a boy, as a human-being boy, a boy with a secret at sea and sentenced to cook in Big Miss Magine's stone-scoured pot, my long fish body laid, tail flipping, into that solid stone pot, scales ripped and skin slipping from my meat tissue-threaded in the simmer, my body floating from my long, fish-boded bones, my bones broiled through and through down to a hot bubbly sweet steaming broth, lisping whispers of steam twisting to the ceiling, curling in your curtains, speaking to you in your sleep". By this story, having already read several before it in the book, you would think I would be accustomed to Richard's style of prose, the colloquialism, jargon. No, I was not. Multiple re-reads of a single sentence became expected. I am curious to see how Richard's other work compares, but I only have one life and it is too fleeting and arbitrary and venture into this literary blackhole.
I found this title recommended by a photographer on a random podcast I happened to be listening to at work, the title, story structure (love a short story), and cover imagery made it a Must Purchase. Two stories in this collection are excellent. 'Strays', the first story sells the book- the description of the two children, their Uncle Trash, whiney boney dogs, the fire is great and the language Richard's uses suits the story so well. Another story, 'This is Us, Excellent' similarly told from a child's viewpoint and therefore the language works: kinetic, active and on the move, is devastating. It depicts some broken cycle of abuse-victim-taking it out on something else and repeat.
I would say my general thoughts about the book are: rivers, snakes and colloquialisms. The other stories are okay, kind of weak and not like the two aforementioned. Jesus, it took such a long time to finish this book.
I found this title recommended by a photographer on a random podcast I happened to be listening to at work, the title, story structure (love a short story), and cover imagery made it a Must Purchase. Two stories in this collection are excellent. 'Strays', the first story sells the book- the description of the two children, their Uncle Trash, whiney boney dogs, the fire is great and the language Richard's uses suits the story so well. Another story, 'This is Us, Excellent' similarly told from a child's viewpoint and therefore the language works: kinetic, active and on the move, is devastating. It depicts some broken cycle of abuse-victim-taking it out on something else and repeat.
I would say my general thoughts about the book are: rivers, snakes and colloquialisms. The other stories are okay, kind of weak and not like the two aforementioned. Jesus, it took such a long time to finish this book.
December 4, 2014
"At night, stray dogs come up underneath our house to lick our leaking pipes." That's the first sentence of Mark Richard's story "Strays" from his 1989 story collection The Ice at the Bottom of the World. Reading that sentence now I still feel the same thrill I felt when I first read those words many years ago when the story appeared in Esquire. As an opening hook, it is an image ripe with possibilities, and I love the Beowulf-esque alliteration that ends the sentence. Here's the second sentence, with more of the same: "Beneath my brother and my's room we hear them coughing and growling, scratching their ratted backs against the boards beneath our beds." "Strays" is an amazing story. I don't want to give too much away for those who haven't read it yet, so I'll just say that the dogs are not the only strays in the story. It's comic, heartbreaking in a sly way that catches by surprise, and the language is startlingly original. I read this story all the time, have for years, and am still blown away with the words. Here's another taste; notice the syntax and diction in this long sentence:
Every story in the collection shows this command of language. If you're a writer of stories and don't have the book, you have a gaping hole in your collection.
I tell my brother that making so much noise will keep the stray dogs away, and he believes it, and then I start to believe it when it gets later than usual, past the crickets and into a long moon over the trees, but they finally do come after my brother finally does fall asleep, so I just wait until I know there are several strays beneath the bed boards, scratching their rat-matted backs and growling, and I stomp on the floor, what is my favorite part about the dogs, stomping and then watching them scatter in a hundred directions and then seeing them one by one collect in a pack at the edge of the field near the trees.
Every story in the collection shows this command of language. If you're a writer of stories and don't have the book, you have a gaping hole in your collection.
January 7, 2019
Mark Richard has a gift for the rambling, underclass voice from the coastal South--he understands its poetry and its frustrations. Yet, despite Richard's ability to turn this into poetry, these stories are not easy reads: the narration is jangling, run-on, and monologic. Often the narrators are not so much operating in a stream of consciousness mode, but a rant. This leads to a somewhat frustrating reading experience in his adult narrators--one of the reasons why the child narrated stories work better--is what is normalized for them is not normalized for the audience. Often, you are reading a long and beautiful sentence and hit a detail and go, "Wait, what?" Then you must backtrack and read for the subtext you missed. Richard gets atmosphere and voice though in ways that many writers don't, and he seems to believe in the plot too but never giving it directly. It feels like high modernism, but for the blue-collar drunk. Richard's voices and elliptical work particularly well with child narrators where the gaps and hints seem to make sense more clearly--both "Strays" and "This is Us, Excellent" benefit from this and thus also have both humor and profound pathos in Richard's work. Whereas other stories such as "Genius" and "Fishboy" are mostly about character and atmosphere and effectively have no plot, and thus how much you relate to voice will determine your response. The last two stories are very strange, "The Theory of Man" which seems to about the dangers of drug running and the final "Feast of the Earth, Ransom of the Clay" is about a cat-skin wearing lunatic. Richard's fascination with the down-out and is love of the odd-ball voice makes this compelling, but not entirely easy, reading.
February 18, 2016
Richard is an assured writer, I'll give him that. This short collection of stories is deeply grooved with the cadences of his distinctive voice, which bubbles up from the bayou and the shorelines of the South full of poverty, hillbilly canny, and black humor. He's clearly referencing Faulkner in many ways, and several of the stories have a rambling, backwoods storyteller tone that is masking very controlled and technical use of language. However, that often capped my enjoyment in reading, as Richard's sentences often feel belabored or overworked in my opinion. It's hard to lose yourself in the worlds they create when the hand of the creator rests so heavy. Despite that, there's plenty to enjoy here, including strikingly macabre images, emotional melodrama wearing a mask of nonchalance, and humor aplenty. Definitely worth a read but not among my favorite collections. I'd peg this one at 3.5/5.
November 14, 2017
Los cuentos de Mark Richard no funcionan en cualquier momento. A pesar de que en muchos de ellos domina una narración en primera persona que gusta de desbarrar, de dejarse ir; a pesar de que los protagonistas son de la clase más baja del sur de los EE.UU., siempre atrapados en la miseria y el alcohol; a pesar de todo eso, uno tiene que estar bastante despejado cuando se enfrenta a esta lectura.
Mi consejo es que si llevas unas pocas páginas y no te estás enterando muy bien de la película, pares y empieces en otro momento, quizás al día siguiente. Es importante sintonizar con la temática, con el tono. Puede que por eso mismo también sea recomendable dejar tiempo entre cuentos. Al menos esa ha sido mi sensación y ese ha sido el modo en que su prosa me ha llegado.
En esta época de la inmediatez, en la que nos tragamos temporadas enteras de series de TV en un día, es posible que el reposo que exigen estos cuentos sea justo lo que necesitamos.
Mi consejo es que si llevas unas pocas páginas y no te estás enterando muy bien de la película, pares y empieces en otro momento, quizás al día siguiente. Es importante sintonizar con la temática, con el tono. Puede que por eso mismo también sea recomendable dejar tiempo entre cuentos. Al menos esa ha sido mi sensación y ese ha sido el modo en que su prosa me ha llegado.
En esta época de la inmediatez, en la que nos tragamos temporadas enteras de series de TV en un día, es posible que el reposo que exigen estos cuentos sea justo lo que necesitamos.
November 2, 2012
"Thank you, you bastards."
June 27, 2013
The Birds for Christmas is one of my favorite stories, ever.
December 26, 2020
Basura blanca, poesía sureña
November 16, 2023
I am utterly baffled as to why this stunningly mediocre short story collection won the coveted PEN/Hemingway Award. Mark Richard is too much of a belabored stylist, a feeble mimic of dirty realism. He's one of those writers who tries too hard because he doesn't have an authentic and emotional voice. Take the opening sentence of "Genius": "Genius thinks his big belly fits Carol's lumbar the way the Gulf Stream runs hot and close up the back spinal curve of the Carolina coast." That is bad writing. An overwrought metaphor that Mark Richard probably typed and said to himself, with a smug aura, "Yes, that's rather clever! The body as geography!" Or consider the disastrous "Happiness of the Garden Variety," with its desperate stream of hyphenated words: "many-childed wife," "good-deal railway ties," or "air started to hiss out of Buster's mouth like a nail-stuck tire." There are some people who should never be allowed to write, particularly when they are this obnoxious about it. And Mark Richard is one of them. But the literary motherfuckers gave this mealy-mouthed dunce an award for this purple prose! Augggggggggghhhhh!
December 20, 2021
Although there were one or two short stories that would rate a 5 star score, the collection as a whole has some week stories, the themes seem redundant, the language choking up the narrative. One of the reviews (from the late 80's) announce Mark Richard as the next Faulkner or O'Conner, yet I'd never heard of him before my friend sent me this collection. So maybe not? Nothing felt forced, but it also didn't seem urgent or prescient.
February 20, 2022
Award winning short story collection, and for very good reason. These stories cannot be skimmed; they have to be read with intent and concentration. Rolling between desperation and finely honed humour Richard tackles poverty and abuse with finely crafted prose. "This is us, excellent" is my must read selection.
July 1, 2011
It's tough to go into a book where the author is heralded as "heir apparent to Mark Twain, Flannery O'Connor, and William Faulkner," but after reading these stories I'd say that's pretty accurate. There was really only one story that fell flat to me. The first 3 are absolute knock-outs. Also, a nice feature is that these are truly short stories so I could read them on the park & ride bus and be completely immersed in bizarre worlds. Richard has a really strong ear for the rhythms of language and trusts that his reader is intelligent to follow where he leads. This was the perfect interlude after East of Eden.
April 21, 2015
A book like this is why Goodreads exists, so I can remember to tell anyone I have any respect for that they must, MUST, read Mark Richard's stories. This is southern surreal gothic that will break your heart and give you a new language. I dare you not to fall in love. I double dog down dirty dare you.
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January 24, 2012Mark Richard does things with sentences that not many people can do, and not in the way that is elusive and difficult to hold on to. Richard, who studied with Gordon Lish, doesn't make you work, he's slicker than that. His sentences are as smooth as they are surprising.
February 8, 2015
Richard totally depicts the skeevy and relentless chiselers of Virginia Beach and the northern Outer Banks.
January 24, 2023
I bought this book with high hopes, given Chuck Palahniuk’s frequent praise of it on his Substack, Plot Spoiler.
I don’t know; I just didn’t connect with this one. Richard’s writing style is off-putting. Page-long paragraphs are made up of single sentences, each sentence caked in with so much detail, I forget what I’m reading about. Also, and this is in no way a jab at Richard, I found it hard to relate to the characters in these stories — all of whom are more or less poor-to-working-class folk from the Bayou.
And yet there are moments where Richard’s talent shines through. His descriptions, though seemingly off the cuff, very intentionally ground the reader in the “realness” of the story: in The Theory of Man, Richard describes coal as “the earth’s dead heart mined into shiny black pieces” (woah, remind me to never bring coal as a gift to a Mark Richard party); in Feast of the Earth, Ransom of the Clay, he describes the act of a character shaking his fist in a way akin to “that way worn-out men will, pouring some kind of anointment into the air.” Chuck P calls this tactic “On the Body,” and Richard offers a masterclass of that skill.
Strays and The Theory of Man sucked me in, and This Is Us, Excellent chewed me up and spit me out, crushing my heart a thousand times over. Despite my rating, in my opinion these three stories makes it worth ploughing through The Ice At The Bottom of The World.
I don’t know; I just didn’t connect with this one. Richard’s writing style is off-putting. Page-long paragraphs are made up of single sentences, each sentence caked in with so much detail, I forget what I’m reading about. Also, and this is in no way a jab at Richard, I found it hard to relate to the characters in these stories — all of whom are more or less poor-to-working-class folk from the Bayou.
And yet there are moments where Richard’s talent shines through. His descriptions, though seemingly off the cuff, very intentionally ground the reader in the “realness” of the story: in The Theory of Man, Richard describes coal as “the earth’s dead heart mined into shiny black pieces” (woah, remind me to never bring coal as a gift to a Mark Richard party); in Feast of the Earth, Ransom of the Clay, he describes the act of a character shaking his fist in a way akin to “that way worn-out men will, pouring some kind of anointment into the air.” Chuck P calls this tactic “On the Body,” and Richard offers a masterclass of that skill.
Strays and The Theory of Man sucked me in, and This Is Us, Excellent chewed me up and spit me out, crushing my heart a thousand times over. Despite my rating, in my opinion these three stories makes it worth ploughing through The Ice At The Bottom of The World.
February 7, 2025
2/5
Tinc clar que El hielo en el fin del mundo no és un llibre per mi. No tant per la temàtica o el contingut —he llegit cròniques dels Estats Units més foscos, de poblacions desarrelades i famílies desestructurades, històries lletges, amanides de pobresa, drogues i maltractaments—, com per la forma. Simplement, no empatitzo amb l'estil narratiu de Mark Richard, no hi entro i em costa horrors seguir-li el fil. N'aprecio la valentia, el risc, l'experimentació, però l'autor juga clarament en una divisió en la qual no em sento còmode. L'únic relat que he gaudit plenament és Genius i aquest bagatge, en un llibre de relats, és molt minso per donar-li un aprovat general.
Ara bé, val a dir que l'editorial Dirty Works manté una notable coherència en el seu catàleg i això és un punt a favor. Aquest llibre té molts punts de contacte amb un altre que vaig llegir, El amante de las cicatrices, que, tot i que no em va apassionar, com a mínim no vaig patir. Si heu llegit algun altre volum de l'editorial i us ha agradat, endavant, llegiu aquest El hielo en el fin del mundo. Suposo que aquesta literatura no està feta per mi, i això em neguiteja perquè encara tinc dos volums més sense llegir de l'època pretèrita en què el tsundoku era el meu passatemps favorit.
Tinc clar que El hielo en el fin del mundo no és un llibre per mi. No tant per la temàtica o el contingut —he llegit cròniques dels Estats Units més foscos, de poblacions desarrelades i famílies desestructurades, històries lletges, amanides de pobresa, drogues i maltractaments—, com per la forma. Simplement, no empatitzo amb l'estil narratiu de Mark Richard, no hi entro i em costa horrors seguir-li el fil. N'aprecio la valentia, el risc, l'experimentació, però l'autor juga clarament en una divisió en la qual no em sento còmode. L'únic relat que he gaudit plenament és Genius i aquest bagatge, en un llibre de relats, és molt minso per donar-li un aprovat general.
Ara bé, val a dir que l'editorial Dirty Works manté una notable coherència en el seu catàleg i això és un punt a favor. Aquest llibre té molts punts de contacte amb un altre que vaig llegir, El amante de las cicatrices, que, tot i que no em va apassionar, com a mínim no vaig patir. Si heu llegit algun altre volum de l'editorial i us ha agradat, endavant, llegiu aquest El hielo en el fin del mundo. Suposo que aquesta literatura no està feta per mi, i això em neguiteja perquè encara tinc dos volums més sense llegir de l'època pretèrita en què el tsundoku era el meu passatemps favorit.
June 29, 2017
I have always been partial to short stories. I am in awe of writers who can tell me about a whole world with just a few pages. Richard is one of those authors. I first encountered him through his autobiography, House of Prayer No. 2: A Writer's Journey Home. In this book, Richard is telling fiction.
Although I am not sure these stories are fiction. Richard has lived a weird life – maybe some of these things happened to him or to people he knows. I have lived in Virginia for almost 35 years – weird things are normal around here. However, if Richard took this stories to a NYC editor and said they had occurred, I suspect that he would have been locked up in the nearest mental facility.
So, I will take the author’s word that these are fiction. That does not mean that truth is absent from these tales. There were times while I was reading that I stopped and thought about what was being said. The characters in these stories have experienced life, sometimes in ways that are hard. Sometimes in ways that are funny. I was always glad I had met these people.
If you like Southern literature, short stories, great writing or just want to be entertained, I recommend Mark Richard’s tales.
Although I am not sure these stories are fiction. Richard has lived a weird life – maybe some of these things happened to him or to people he knows. I have lived in Virginia for almost 35 years – weird things are normal around here. However, if Richard took this stories to a NYC editor and said they had occurred, I suspect that he would have been locked up in the nearest mental facility.
So, I will take the author’s word that these are fiction. That does not mean that truth is absent from these tales. There were times while I was reading that I stopped and thought about what was being said. The characters in these stories have experienced life, sometimes in ways that are hard. Sometimes in ways that are funny. I was always glad I had met these people.
If you like Southern literature, short stories, great writing or just want to be entertained, I recommend Mark Richard’s tales.
July 25, 2018
The characters in this collection of short stories all come from coastal Virginia and the outer banks of NC. They are poor and will leave you with haunted memories of neglected children, battered wives, a dirt-eating hermit wearing a homemade coat of domestic cat, and a storm-split tree shattering the roof at night. But they will also make you laugh and some of them will stay with you well after reading. The writing is fluid and often poetic, full of imagery. Here is the opening line from the first story. Take note of the alliteration the author uses at the end of the sentences.
"AT NIGHT, stray dogs come up underneath our house to lick our leaking pipes. Beneath my brother and my’s room we hear them coughing and growling, scratching their ratted backs against the boards beneath our beds.
If you like short stories and want to read a master story teller, I highly recommend this collection.
"AT NIGHT, stray dogs come up underneath our house to lick our leaking pipes. Beneath my brother and my’s room we hear them coughing and growling, scratching their ratted backs against the boards beneath our beds.
If you like short stories and want to read a master story teller, I highly recommend this collection.
July 11, 2023
Very peculiar style, Richard's stories are always told in the first person perspective, past or present times, in a pretty confusing order and composition. This writing choices make it so the "narration" seems as realistic and natural as it gets, but at the cost of being hard to approach or appreciate for either non native English readers or generally speaking folks not accustomed to the specific American slang used by Richard. As for the stories themselves they are pretty fluctuating, some of them are beautiful and bone chilling (Her favorite story), some are just plain sad and others are a mixed pot. The theme is mainly the obvious representation of the tragic, at times ignorant, cruel but also beautiful and magic life in the low-middle class outskirts of post war America, but some stories delve more into man's kinship with nature and their surroundings. Very good Read.
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