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Hall of Small Mammals: Stories
A wild, inventive ride of a short story collection from a distinctive new American storyteller.
The stories in Thomas Pierce’s Hall of Small Mammals take place at the confluence of the commonplace and the cosmic, the intimate and the infinite. A fossil-hunter, a comedian, a hot- air balloon pilot, parents and children, believers and nonbelievers, the people in these stories are struggling to understand the absurdity and the magnitude of what it means to exist in a family, to exist in the world.
In “Shirley Temple Three,” a mother must shoulder her son’s burden—a cloned and resurrected wooly mammoth who wreaks havoc on her house, sanity, and faith. In “The Real Alan Gass,” a physicist in search of a mysterious particle called the “daisy” spends her days with her boyfriend, Walker, and her nights with the husband who only exists in the world of her dreams, Alan Gass. Like the daisy particle itself—“forever locked in a curious state of existence and nonexistence, sliding back and forth between the two”—the stories in Thomas Pierce’s Hall of Small Mammals are exquisite, mysterious, and inextricably connected.
From this enchanting primordial soup, Pierce’s voice emerges—a distinct and charming testament of the New South, melding contemporary concerns with their prehistoric roots to create a hilarious, deeply moving symphony of stories.
The stories in Thomas Pierce’s Hall of Small Mammals take place at the confluence of the commonplace and the cosmic, the intimate and the infinite. A fossil-hunter, a comedian, a hot- air balloon pilot, parents and children, believers and nonbelievers, the people in these stories are struggling to understand the absurdity and the magnitude of what it means to exist in a family, to exist in the world.
In “Shirley Temple Three,” a mother must shoulder her son’s burden—a cloned and resurrected wooly mammoth who wreaks havoc on her house, sanity, and faith. In “The Real Alan Gass,” a physicist in search of a mysterious particle called the “daisy” spends her days with her boyfriend, Walker, and her nights with the husband who only exists in the world of her dreams, Alan Gass. Like the daisy particle itself—“forever locked in a curious state of existence and nonexistence, sliding back and forth between the two”—the stories in Thomas Pierce’s Hall of Small Mammals are exquisite, mysterious, and inextricably connected.
From this enchanting primordial soup, Pierce’s voice emerges—a distinct and charming testament of the New South, melding contemporary concerns with their prehistoric roots to create a hilarious, deeply moving symphony of stories.
294 pages, Hardcover
First published January 8, 2015
70 people are currently reading
3439 people want to read
About the author
Thomas Pierce
16 books73 followersThomas Pierce is the author of the novel, The Afterlives (Riverhead 2018), and the short story collection, Hall of Small Mammals. A recipient of the 5 Under 35 award from the National Book Foundation, his stories have appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Zoetrope, The Oxford American, and Virginia Quarterly Review and anthologized in
The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2014
and
The O. Henry Prize Stories 2015
. He has reported for NPR and National Geographic Magazine. Born and raised in South Carolina, he recieved his M.F.A. from the University of Virginia as Poe/Faulkner Fellow and currently lives near Charlottesville, VA with his wife and daughters.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 228 reviews
April 17, 2019
If you're even remotely interested in this book, you're probably a reader of The New Yorker or possibly a writer yourself. Literary short stories are not for everyone. They focus more on art and less on story. Think of them as a framed photograph hanging on the wall. There is a clear stencil: beautiful prose, modern characters, ambiguous endings. To many, the endings will be unsatisfying. If you're artsy, you will be able to find extraordinary meaning in the mystic conclusions. If you're not, you'll say "what the...?" and toss the book aside.
Fortunately I do appreciate artsy-minded fiction and mostly enjoyed this collection. Thomas Pierce has a keen social eye and he packs it all into small snippets of life. His stories are about real, ordinary people, and yet he adds a hint of extraordinary to dazzle the mind. "Shirley Temple Three" and "The Real Alan Gass" are great examples of extraordinary-meets-ordinary stories, and they are outstanding. He manages to establish characters with one line of dialogue or single paragraph of characterization. Writers know that this is no small feat and readers relish his brevity.
None of the stories are bad, though some pack more punch than others. The greatest contribution to American letters goes to "Videos of People Falling Down." Such a brilliant, witty piece of fiction that reading it actually took my breath away. That is the kind of short prose that you literally want to frame and hang on your wall.
OVERALL: Skip this year's "Best American Short Stories" anthology, Thomas Pierce's "Hall of Small Mammals" collection is where it's at. If you're new to literary fiction, just understand that the endings aren't going to be tied up nicely in a bow. They'll make you think. That's good.
Fortunately I do appreciate artsy-minded fiction and mostly enjoyed this collection. Thomas Pierce has a keen social eye and he packs it all into small snippets of life. His stories are about real, ordinary people, and yet he adds a hint of extraordinary to dazzle the mind. "Shirley Temple Three" and "The Real Alan Gass" are great examples of extraordinary-meets-ordinary stories, and they are outstanding. He manages to establish characters with one line of dialogue or single paragraph of characterization. Writers know that this is no small feat and readers relish his brevity.
None of the stories are bad, though some pack more punch than others. The greatest contribution to American letters goes to "Videos of People Falling Down." Such a brilliant, witty piece of fiction that reading it actually took my breath away. That is the kind of short prose that you literally want to frame and hang on your wall.
OVERALL: Skip this year's "Best American Short Stories" anthology, Thomas Pierce's "Hall of Small Mammals" collection is where it's at. If you're new to literary fiction, just understand that the endings aren't going to be tied up nicely in a bow. They'll make you think. That's good.
April 21, 2015
"My boy used to trap squirrels so he could drown them in the pool"
"My kid used to shoot a crossbow into the neighbor's yard, and one time he put an arrow in her leg. She's almost eighty! God, that was awful!"
"Alex, he's my stepson. Years ago we caught him with a hammer standing over his little sister's crib." *
Holy crap!
Don't worry. It's just some dads sharing a little chat at a father-son camping experience. (I lied. Worry.)
Ambiguous endings where the reader is left wondering what happens next? usually bug the hell out of me, but for some reason, I'm okay with the fact that not a one of the dozen stories in this book has a cut-and-dried finish. They are so well written, so involving and unusual I just hated to see them end at all. Period.
Some of my favorites were the heartbreaking Shirley Temple Three, where a woman struggles to save a cloned Dwarf Mammoth, The Real Alan Gass which features a man obsessed with his love's "dream husband" and Felix Not Arriving in which an acerbic comedian has an unpleasant visit with his young son.
Every couple of weeks, I pick a collection of short stories and read one tale each day. Sad to say, but often by the time I reach the end of the book, I've forgotten most of the stories. Not the case with this one. Perhaps it's something about all those loose ends, all that wondering about what happened or what could still happen, that keeps them churning around in my mind.
*From Grasshopper Kings
"My kid used to shoot a crossbow into the neighbor's yard, and one time he put an arrow in her leg. She's almost eighty! God, that was awful!"
"Alex, he's my stepson. Years ago we caught him with a hammer standing over his little sister's crib." *
Holy crap!
Don't worry. It's just some dads sharing a little chat at a father-son camping experience. (I lied. Worry.)
Ambiguous endings where the reader is left wondering what happens next? usually bug the hell out of me, but for some reason, I'm okay with the fact that not a one of the dozen stories in this book has a cut-and-dried finish. They are so well written, so involving and unusual I just hated to see them end at all. Period.
Some of my favorites were the heartbreaking Shirley Temple Three, where a woman struggles to save a cloned Dwarf Mammoth, The Real Alan Gass which features a man obsessed with his love's "dream husband" and Felix Not Arriving in which an acerbic comedian has an unpleasant visit with his young son.
Every couple of weeks, I pick a collection of short stories and read one tale each day. Sad to say, but often by the time I reach the end of the book, I've forgotten most of the stories. Not the case with this one. Perhaps it's something about all those loose ends, all that wondering about what happened or what could still happen, that keeps them churning around in my mind.
*From Grasshopper Kings
May 28, 2017
2/8/15 - 2/27/15
3 Stars - Recommended to fans of overly simplistic, sweetly strange short stories that have no beginning and no end
Audio: 8 hours, 35 mins
Publisher: Penguin Random House Audio
Narrator: MacLeod Andrews
Released: 2014
I listened to Thomas Pierce's Hall of Small Mammals on my commute to and from work. More and more I am finding that, though I love short story collections, they don't work well for me on audio. For starters, I'm not in the best frame of mind - I have to leave the house at 4:30 am so I'm kind of still half asleep when I start listening. I can't take notes because, well, I'm driving and it's dark out. And that would be dangerous. So by the time I park the car and walk into my office to start the day, most of what I've listened to has already begun to fade away.
In the evening, I spend the first five minutes of my drive home trying to (a) let go of all the work-bullshit so I can concentrate on the book and (b) remember what the heck MacLeod read to me that morning. Fun (not)! And kinda frustrating. Then I walk in the door, eat dinner, go to sleep, and promptly forget the story I was currently listening to.
Sigh.
While I am listening though, the book is an absolute pleasure. MacLeod has a wonderful reading voice and Pierce writes in simplistically short sentences. His characters are awkward and full of flaws, and you find yourself liking them immediately. They are ordinary people in some pretty extraordinary circumstances. You're fascinated by their dilemmas. You're rooting for it to all work out. Which is kind of fucked up because his stories, while drawing you in immediately, evolve quickly and end abruptly. Pierce, in my opinion, concerns himself much more with the 'telling' of the story than he does with the 'resolution' of the story. Then again, maybe his art is meant to imitate life. Much in life is left unresolved. Isn't it? And so, we the reader are treated as passers-by. We are given quick glimpses, experience mere slices, of their lives and are left forever guessing about how things turned out for everyone.
My favorite stories bookend the collection. The opening story, Shirley Temple Three, follows the sad and confusing life of a dwarf woolly mammoth, dubbed Shirley Temple by the man who cloned her. The final story, about a unwitting, brain damaged brother who follows his sister on a revenge mission, opens with the two of them hiding in a closet from two menacing dogs and thinking back over their own damaged relationship and the circumstances that brought them there.
Pierce has a knack for making odd situations appear completely normal through the use of well-timed snark and an absolute refusal to admit that the situations are, in fact, abnormally strange. These are stories everyone can sink their teeth into. A father and son heading off into the middle of the woods to camp out with a slightly cultish boy scout troop in Grashopper Kings. In The Real Alan Gass, a dude, after his girlfriend confesses that she's happily married in her dreams, becomes obsessed with tracking down her faux-hubby, convinced he's a real person. There's a story about a guy who takes his girlfriend's spoiled, snotty son to the zoo to see a monkey exhibit in the hopes of winning some brownie points. And another in which a strange woman updates a man on the ever changing whereabouts of his dead brother's quarantined body.
Pierce has mastered the middle of the story. Now someone just needs to teach him how to tell the beginning and the end.
3 Stars - Recommended to fans of overly simplistic, sweetly strange short stories that have no beginning and no end
Audio: 8 hours, 35 mins
Publisher: Penguin Random House Audio
Narrator: MacLeod Andrews
Released: 2014
I listened to Thomas Pierce's Hall of Small Mammals on my commute to and from work. More and more I am finding that, though I love short story collections, they don't work well for me on audio. For starters, I'm not in the best frame of mind - I have to leave the house at 4:30 am so I'm kind of still half asleep when I start listening. I can't take notes because, well, I'm driving and it's dark out. And that would be dangerous. So by the time I park the car and walk into my office to start the day, most of what I've listened to has already begun to fade away.
In the evening, I spend the first five minutes of my drive home trying to (a) let go of all the work-bullshit so I can concentrate on the book and (b) remember what the heck MacLeod read to me that morning. Fun (not)! And kinda frustrating. Then I walk in the door, eat dinner, go to sleep, and promptly forget the story I was currently listening to.
Sigh.
While I am listening though, the book is an absolute pleasure. MacLeod has a wonderful reading voice and Pierce writes in simplistically short sentences. His characters are awkward and full of flaws, and you find yourself liking them immediately. They are ordinary people in some pretty extraordinary circumstances. You're fascinated by their dilemmas. You're rooting for it to all work out. Which is kind of fucked up because his stories, while drawing you in immediately, evolve quickly and end abruptly. Pierce, in my opinion, concerns himself much more with the 'telling' of the story than he does with the 'resolution' of the story. Then again, maybe his art is meant to imitate life. Much in life is left unresolved. Isn't it? And so, we the reader are treated as passers-by. We are given quick glimpses, experience mere slices, of their lives and are left forever guessing about how things turned out for everyone.
My favorite stories bookend the collection. The opening story, Shirley Temple Three, follows the sad and confusing life of a dwarf woolly mammoth, dubbed Shirley Temple by the man who cloned her. The final story, about a unwitting, brain damaged brother who follows his sister on a revenge mission, opens with the two of them hiding in a closet from two menacing dogs and thinking back over their own damaged relationship and the circumstances that brought them there.
Pierce has a knack for making odd situations appear completely normal through the use of well-timed snark and an absolute refusal to admit that the situations are, in fact, abnormally strange. These are stories everyone can sink their teeth into. A father and son heading off into the middle of the woods to camp out with a slightly cultish boy scout troop in Grashopper Kings. In The Real Alan Gass, a dude, after his girlfriend confesses that she's happily married in her dreams, becomes obsessed with tracking down her faux-hubby, convinced he's a real person. There's a story about a guy who takes his girlfriend's spoiled, snotty son to the zoo to see a monkey exhibit in the hopes of winning some brownie points. And another in which a strange woman updates a man on the ever changing whereabouts of his dead brother's quarantined body.
Pierce has mastered the middle of the story. Now someone just needs to teach him how to tell the beginning and the end.
December 22, 2014
This is a collection of short stories, all of the genre that thinks it isn't a genre, literary fiction. Pierce is a good writer, and the stories are well-written. Many of the characters are even engaging; the reader cares about them and wants to know what happens.
But this is literary fiction, so stories don't start in medias res and some to some sort--any sort--of a conclusion. They amble along through events and problems that are sometimes interesting, and then they end in medias res. Or rather, they stop; they do not end. We'll never know what was interesting about the Pippin monkeys, or whether the father/son relationship was at all strengthened by the camping trip, or what were the impliedly huge consequences of the sideshow operator getting the fossil creature rather than the museum. We'll certainly never know what the disease was that killed Bert's brother Rob, or where it came from.
I believe this is supposed to be Deep and Significant, or at least terribly sophisticated. The world is pointless, life is pointless, Story is an artificial construct...
Yes. Yes, it is. So is written language, and paper, and the internet.
In the end, I am left frustrated and annoyed.
Not recommended.
I received a free electronic galley of this book from Penguin's First to Read program.
But this is literary fiction, so stories don't start in medias res and some to some sort--any sort--of a conclusion. They amble along through events and problems that are sometimes interesting, and then they end in medias res. Or rather, they stop; they do not end. We'll never know what was interesting about the Pippin monkeys, or whether the father/son relationship was at all strengthened by the camping trip, or what were the impliedly huge consequences of the sideshow operator getting the fossil creature rather than the museum. We'll certainly never know what the disease was that killed Bert's brother Rob, or where it came from.
I believe this is supposed to be Deep and Significant, or at least terribly sophisticated. The world is pointless, life is pointless, Story is an artificial construct...
Yes. Yes, it is. So is written language, and paper, and the internet.
In the end, I am left frustrated and annoyed.
Not recommended.
I received a free electronic galley of this book from Penguin's First to Read program.
April 26, 2015
The 12 stories in Thomas Pierce’s debut short story collection, Hall of Small Mammals, verge on the surreal in the most delightfully profound ways.
In the first story, “Shirley Temple Three,” a man who works for a TV show that clones prehistoric creatures brings a resurrected dwarf woolly mammoth home to his mother. In “Grasshopper Kings,” a group of boys learns the meaning of life on a cultish scout camping trip. In “More Soon,” the body of a man’s dead brother becomes categorized as a biological weapon as everyone who comes into contact with it dies; a mysterious woman keeps the man up to date on the investigation, ending all of her increasingly strange missives with the words “more soon.”
One of my favorite stories was “The Real Alan Gass,” in which a physicist, who is searching for a particle that is locked simultaneously in a state of existence and nonexistence, tells her boyfriend that she is married to a man named Alan Gass — but only in her dreams.
I really loved Hall of Small Mammals, and I was actually sad when I reached the end of the book. I wanted to spend more time in the weird little world Thomas Pierce has created! He deftly weaves together the strange and the subtle, telling stories that are both slightly whimsical and deeply meaningful. I highly recommend this collection, and I can’t wait to see what Pierce does next.
Read the full review on Books Speak Volumes.
In the first story, “Shirley Temple Three,” a man who works for a TV show that clones prehistoric creatures brings a resurrected dwarf woolly mammoth home to his mother. In “Grasshopper Kings,” a group of boys learns the meaning of life on a cultish scout camping trip. In “More Soon,” the body of a man’s dead brother becomes categorized as a biological weapon as everyone who comes into contact with it dies; a mysterious woman keeps the man up to date on the investigation, ending all of her increasingly strange missives with the words “more soon.”
One of my favorite stories was “The Real Alan Gass,” in which a physicist, who is searching for a particle that is locked simultaneously in a state of existence and nonexistence, tells her boyfriend that she is married to a man named Alan Gass — but only in her dreams.
I really loved Hall of Small Mammals, and I was actually sad when I reached the end of the book. I wanted to spend more time in the weird little world Thomas Pierce has created! He deftly weaves together the strange and the subtle, telling stories that are both slightly whimsical and deeply meaningful. I highly recommend this collection, and I can’t wait to see what Pierce does next.
Read the full review on Books Speak Volumes.
October 25, 2015
For me, the short fiction piece in each issue of "The New Yorker" can be pretty hit-or-miss. More often than not, it's too clever or precious or downright boring. A consistent exception, however, are the works of Thomas Pierce, of which I've read a few and have always found to be smart, darkly humorous, and engaging. "Hall Of Small Mammals," Pierce's first collection of short stories, continues this pattern of excellence.
Clocking in at nearly 300 pages, the 12 stories contained in "Hall Of Small Mammals" aren't nearly enough to quench my appetite for Pierce's work. There's not a dud in the whole bunch and I found it necessary to force myself to read only about one a day, to savor each one. Pierce's characters are sympathetic, humane, and real; his settings are vivid yet slightly alien; his endings are often ambiguous but always satisfying. Even his use of some truly goofy names comes off as endearing in his capable hands. There's nothing bad to say about this book. It's a perfect short story collection and I love it.
FAVORITES:
"The Real Alan Gass" - The husband of a physicist fights the jealousy he feels when his wife reveals she has ongoing dreams of being married to another man.
"Felix Not Arriving" - A moderately successful comedian attends an engagement celebration for the mother of his son.
"Videos Of People Falling Down" - A clever series of interconnected vignettes about the backstories of the people featured in viral online clips.
Clocking in at nearly 300 pages, the 12 stories contained in "Hall Of Small Mammals" aren't nearly enough to quench my appetite for Pierce's work. There's not a dud in the whole bunch and I found it necessary to force myself to read only about one a day, to savor each one. Pierce's characters are sympathetic, humane, and real; his settings are vivid yet slightly alien; his endings are often ambiguous but always satisfying. Even his use of some truly goofy names comes off as endearing in his capable hands. There's nothing bad to say about this book. It's a perfect short story collection and I love it.
FAVORITES:
"The Real Alan Gass" - The husband of a physicist fights the jealousy he feels when his wife reveals she has ongoing dreams of being married to another man.
"Felix Not Arriving" - A moderately successful comedian attends an engagement celebration for the mother of his son.
"Videos Of People Falling Down" - A clever series of interconnected vignettes about the backstories of the people featured in viral online clips.
May 6, 2015
This little collection of stories is remarkably varied in topic and theme. The best of the bunch in my opinion is "Videos of People Falling Down", which peers behind the electronic curtain of various YouTube videos of people falling down to find elements of touching humanity and a clever, asynchronous connection between each of the disparate characters. Some of the stories are humorous without being strictly humor pieces; most have small emotional hooks and off-kilter set-ups that occasionally verge on scifi without pushing into the speculative in favor of a more self-consciously "literary" approach. Part of that approach is a relaxed approach to plot, and most of the stories drift off somewhat dreamily without much climax of action. The stories are all written in a quietly competent style without much flash; it's the kind of good writing that doesn't sell itself too hard. That said, it's an even-keeled style without any truly amazing moments of notably beautiful prose. I don't regret reading this one but I don't think it will stick with me to any great degree.
March 22, 2017
Kind of a stinker. Surprising, too, given that I found this on the list with “Prodigals,” “The Mothers,” and “Homegoing” (and because its author was in the same MFA cohort with the author of my favorite of the bunch: “Prodigals”). Toward the end I started to realize that all of the stories seem loosely connected, all taking place in or around Atlanta, and involving many of the same proper nouns. Already disenchanted with the book, I wanted to check in to see whether this was something that elevated the book and was responsible for some charm I had been ignorant of, so I looked at its reviews on goodreads. Many of them gestured to the interconnections, but none really dwelt on them, laudatory as the reviews tended to be.
I guess it’s hard with a book of short stories, but not a one really stuck out to me. Pierce harnesses something authentically Southern, but I was left feeling like he chose to end each story at an intentionally pregnant moment just for the provocation of the act. The stories themselves lacked the magnetism that engrossing short story collections invariably possess.
I guess it’s hard with a book of short stories, but not a one really stuck out to me. Pierce harnesses something authentically Southern, but I was left feeling like he chose to end each story at an intentionally pregnant moment just for the provocation of the act. The stories themselves lacked the magnetism that engrossing short story collections invariably possess.
February 7, 2015
I picked this up because of the fantastic cover. The first few stories really held my attention. They were strange, but charming and something so different than what I've read recently. I did tire of the stories after a while. I think that there was so much untapped potential with the premise here and I was disappointed with the subsequent stories. It looks great on my bookshelf, but I won't be reading this again. Just not my cup of tea.
March 1, 2015
I'm so happy I read this book of short stories! I was really close to not reading it. Want to know why? The cover was too good. Yup. Luckily I changed my mind about not reading it after looking more into it. These stories were weird and often moving. Even when they get really surreal, deep down they're about people and their relationships with each other. AND the stories are (mostly) all interconnected very sneakily, which I always love. Here were my favorites:
1. Shirley Temple Three
A man works for a tv show where they clone long-extinct creatures from their DNA. Due to some strange rules, if they accidentally clone two, they have to kill one of them. But instead of killing an extra dwarf wooly mammoth, he sneaks it home to his mother in the south. She keeps it in her back yard. She's frustrated with the situation, but at no point is this like the weirdest thing that will ever happen to anyone ever. Watching the woman's relationship with the mammoth and her son really affected me.
2. The Real Alan Gass
I brought the synopsis of this up at work and it sparked a lot of debate. In it, a physicist alerts her boyfriend that in her dreams she has a husband. And it isn't him. His name is Alan Gass, and he doesn't exist in real life. The dreams are really vivid, to the point where she is practically just living another life with another man in her sleep. Of course, she wants her boyfriend to be cool about it. And he tries to be cool, but he can't help himself from grabbing a phone book and trying to find out if Alan Gass is out there somewhere, dreaming about his girlfriend. Very bizarre. I would not be cool, for the record.
3. Grasshopper Kings
I liked this one a whole lot. A father brings his son to a Boy Scouts-esque camping trip, only to learn that this group is a little bit cult-ish. I was so in. Even though this story is weird and kind of creepy, it's more about the strained relationship between the father and son, as well as how humans relate to each other in group dynamics.
4. Videos of People Falling Down
This story is so clever, I can hardly stand it. This story consists of many small segments that each start with a class youtube falling video name like "CRAZY WIPE OUT FUNNY" (not a direct quote, but you get what I mean). In each, a person falls. But we also get to know them and see what was going on in their lives and their heads around the time of the fall. It's hard to think about the stars of videos like these as real people with real concerns, and this story highlighted that excellently. And all the falls are interconnected, YES.
5. More Soon
A man comes to the airport to pick up the body of his dead brother that was just shipped overseas to him. Much to his surprise, the body wasn't on the plane. It turns out that it had to be reexamined. Then eventually quarantined, because they believe it holds a deadly disease. When it starts killing doctors and scientists who come in contact with it, it's classified as a biological weapon. An interesting look at and interpretation of grief and family.
--------------
My only issue with these wonderfully strange stories was that a lot of them just kind of stopped. Not an enormous amount of clear resolution. I think that was mostly frustrating to me for two reasons. 1) I felt like it was probably profound in some way, but I didn't have the energy to figure out in what way it was profound. 2) I really just did not want these stories to end.
Full review: http://outlandishlit.blogspot.com/201...
1. Shirley Temple Three
A man works for a tv show where they clone long-extinct creatures from their DNA. Due to some strange rules, if they accidentally clone two, they have to kill one of them. But instead of killing an extra dwarf wooly mammoth, he sneaks it home to his mother in the south. She keeps it in her back yard. She's frustrated with the situation, but at no point is this like the weirdest thing that will ever happen to anyone ever. Watching the woman's relationship with the mammoth and her son really affected me.
2. The Real Alan Gass
I brought the synopsis of this up at work and it sparked a lot of debate. In it, a physicist alerts her boyfriend that in her dreams she has a husband. And it isn't him. His name is Alan Gass, and he doesn't exist in real life. The dreams are really vivid, to the point where she is practically just living another life with another man in her sleep. Of course, she wants her boyfriend to be cool about it. And he tries to be cool, but he can't help himself from grabbing a phone book and trying to find out if Alan Gass is out there somewhere, dreaming about his girlfriend. Very bizarre. I would not be cool, for the record.
3. Grasshopper Kings
I liked this one a whole lot. A father brings his son to a Boy Scouts-esque camping trip, only to learn that this group is a little bit cult-ish. I was so in. Even though this story is weird and kind of creepy, it's more about the strained relationship between the father and son, as well as how humans relate to each other in group dynamics.
4. Videos of People Falling Down
This story is so clever, I can hardly stand it. This story consists of many small segments that each start with a class youtube falling video name like "CRAZY WIPE OUT FUNNY" (not a direct quote, but you get what I mean). In each, a person falls. But we also get to know them and see what was going on in their lives and their heads around the time of the fall. It's hard to think about the stars of videos like these as real people with real concerns, and this story highlighted that excellently. And all the falls are interconnected, YES.
5. More Soon
A man comes to the airport to pick up the body of his dead brother that was just shipped overseas to him. Much to his surprise, the body wasn't on the plane. It turns out that it had to be reexamined. Then eventually quarantined, because they believe it holds a deadly disease. When it starts killing doctors and scientists who come in contact with it, it's classified as a biological weapon. An interesting look at and interpretation of grief and family.
--------------
My only issue with these wonderfully strange stories was that a lot of them just kind of stopped. Not an enormous amount of clear resolution. I think that was mostly frustrating to me for two reasons. 1) I felt like it was probably profound in some way, but I didn't have the energy to figure out in what way it was profound. 2) I really just did not want these stories to end.
Full review: http://outlandishlit.blogspot.com/201...
February 9, 2017
So this collection is perfect. That's it.
Extended over-emotional review: I read a lot. I try to read even more. And I am so, so happy when I find something that delights me that is not fiction, and specifically short fiction, because I see it as something to be admired and enjoyed.
What I mean is "Hall of Small Mammals" is the kind of collection I one day hope to write, and because of that, its greatness is seriously painful - it is so good it hurts. PHYSICALLY MY STOMACH HURTS RIGHT NOW THINKING ABOUT THIS BOOK. It's the worst kind of adolescent crush and it's equally unbearable and thrilling (I also had a chance to meet the author and thankfully didn't because I think I would've melted and/or blurted something wildly inappropriate).
At any given time I have between 3 and 20 books out from the library. If I buy a book, it's used. I work in an independent bookstore and I buy outrageously few books considering how many of them are in this building - and if I do buy something, it's a cookbook or something illustrated, because god knows I have overflowing shelves of short stories. So it takes A LOT for me to buy a new book, and a HARDBACK at that (I hate 'em!), but that's just what I did with this.
It's just really fucking good.
Extended over-emotional review: I read a lot. I try to read even more. And I am so, so happy when I find something that delights me that is not fiction, and specifically short fiction, because I see it as something to be admired and enjoyed.
What I mean is "Hall of Small Mammals" is the kind of collection I one day hope to write, and because of that, its greatness is seriously painful - it is so good it hurts. PHYSICALLY MY STOMACH HURTS RIGHT NOW THINKING ABOUT THIS BOOK. It's the worst kind of adolescent crush and it's equally unbearable and thrilling (I also had a chance to meet the author and thankfully didn't because I think I would've melted and/or blurted something wildly inappropriate).
At any given time I have between 3 and 20 books out from the library. If I buy a book, it's used. I work in an independent bookstore and I buy outrageously few books considering how many of them are in this building - and if I do buy something, it's a cookbook or something illustrated, because god knows I have overflowing shelves of short stories. So it takes A LOT for me to buy a new book, and a HARDBACK at that (I hate 'em!), but that's just what I did with this.
It's just really fucking good.
December 25, 2014
The Hall of Small Mammals is at first glance, a loosely related collection of quirk and thought provoking points of view. Upon closer perusal however, as one comes to realize what it is that one is actually being called to witness. The true majesty of what is being expressed comes shining through. This is a read that allows the reader to step outside of his or her experience of what family and family time means. From the story of a mother forced to deal with her son's prehistoric mammoth, to the tale of an absentee father coming to terms with his lack of a true place in the life of his young love-child. These stories use snark, wit, and a surprising flare for the unexpected to bring their audience face to face with the both the transient nature of time and the varying forms of the familial unit. The stories found here deal with various issues such as: death, marriage, duty, etc. Whether you are one for funny, sad, sappy, or heartwarming, there is a story here to fit the bill. This volume is written in a very clear and distinct Southern voice that has a lot to say and a very unique way of saying it.
April 26, 2015
4.5 stars
“Hall of Small Mammals” would be worth reading just for the opening story alone, “Shirley Temple Three”. But fortunately, there’s plenty more. The stories in this amazing collection ranged from good to excellent. Some of them were weird, some funny, some surrealist… but all of them were smart, original and beautifully written. But even in those quirky stories about a cloned dwarf mammoth or a mysterious extremely infectious disease, the author was in fact telling us about real people, about human feelings, relationships and emotions.
A collection of stories and characters that linger in your mind days after finishing the book. As I said before, I liked all of them, but I’d like to highlight “Grasshopper Kings”, “More Soon”, “We of the Present Age” and “Shirley Temple Three”. I find hard to believe that this solid collection is Mr. Pierce’s debut, and I’m looking forward to read his second book.
“Hall of Small Mammals” would be worth reading just for the opening story alone, “Shirley Temple Three”. But fortunately, there’s plenty more. The stories in this amazing collection ranged from good to excellent. Some of them were weird, some funny, some surrealist… but all of them were smart, original and beautifully written. But even in those quirky stories about a cloned dwarf mammoth or a mysterious extremely infectious disease, the author was in fact telling us about real people, about human feelings, relationships and emotions.
A collection of stories and characters that linger in your mind days after finishing the book. As I said before, I liked all of them, but I’d like to highlight “Grasshopper Kings”, “More Soon”, “We of the Present Age” and “Shirley Temple Three”. I find hard to believe that this solid collection is Mr. Pierce’s debut, and I’m looking forward to read his second book.
May 8, 2019
A somewhat mixed bag of short stories, some pretty good, though others didn't really catch my interest. Well written though, and interesting. It's nice to see South Carolina writers doing well (even if he lives in Virginia). Many of the stories seem to revolve around broken or otherwise unusual relationships, or the attempt to forge relationships. Some had a lighter humor to them, though not quite to the order of, say, George Saunders; although many are situated in the South or seemingly populated by southern characters, they only skirt what I would call grits lit. Overall however, they were enjoyable and I will keep an eye out for other work by him.
August 30, 2015
Both the absurd and everyday coexist in this collection. The stories poke fun at a number of elements in modern life: bureaucracy, romantic jealousy, crumbling families, reality TV, and Slip ‘N Slides. “Videos of People Falling Down,” examines the situations leading up to the video clips and the lives of the people contained therein, humanizing and also taking time to consider our fascination with watching people come to harm for entertainment. The prose is written with a clarity that is economical yet complex. A whale (or mammoth) of a début collection.
June 26, 2015
3.75
Some abrupt endings that, as they piled up, kept me from investing as much as I might have otherwise. The first story "Shirley Temple Three" was wonderfully imaginative. UPDATE: after rereading a few of these stories popped it on up to a four baby.
Some abrupt endings that, as they piled up, kept me from investing as much as I might have otherwise. The first story "Shirley Temple Three" was wonderfully imaginative. UPDATE: after rereading a few of these stories popped it on up to a four baby.
January 27, 2016
Hall of Small Mammals is the best collection of short stories I have read in a very long time. The last one I remember loving this much was probably Kevin Wilson's Tunneling to the Center of the Earth and I think Pierce's wins.
March 8, 2024
The author is a great writer, but this is not a great book. I truly hate to be so blunt because Pierce has a knack for story development. Like another reviewer, Lori, critiqued, Pierce really has the middle of each story down; it’s the endings that falter. Each story feels incredibly unfinished— not just left to the reader’s imagination—it is amassed by incomplete thoughts shoved into chapters in an anthology. It was unsatisfying to read but I think I’d really appreciate Pierce’s writing if there was any sort of closure. I did appreciate the stories in which characters across stories overlapped; that really shows Pierce’s skill as a writer. I believe that I might like other works by Pierce better.
June 27, 2017
Read for In Brief book club at City Lit. I really enjoyed this collection, particularly "why we ate mud" and "videos of people falling down." There are certain plot-based threads that connect some of these stories (the froyo store, etc). Thematically, I'm still thinking about it. There's certainly something here about origins and the attempt to know them/recapture them. As always, I'm sure things will be more crystallized after my book club and as always, I'm sure I will not update this review.
April 30, 2018
A great collection, which I read on the recommendation of a favorite podcaster (Elliott Kalan of the Flop House). I particularly liked the running theme of the nature of identity - as Theodore Roethke asks in "In a Dark Time," mentioned in the acknowledgments, "Which I is I?" My favorite stories were More Soon and Shirley Temple Three. Readers of the New Yorker fiction section may remember the final story, Ba Baboon.
March 14, 2018
Loved this from page one. But I do have a thing for well written, somewhat strange short stories.
July 20, 2022
2.5 ⭐️ its okay. best stories are the fifth and ninth. the last three stories seem very amateurish and reads clunky. all the stories before that have interesting premises (except grasshopper kings).
February 23, 2018
This is a cohesive collection of lovely short stories, all of them separate but each containing a small reference to another. I loved it.
February 2, 2015
Each of the stories in Thomas Pierce’s Hall of Small Mammals drew me into separate vortexes of quirk. I was bemused by the frustrations endured by long-suffering Mawmaw when left to pet-sit an illegally rescued, formerly extinct, miniature mammoth in “Shirley Temple Three.” I was equally engaged by the conflicting agendas of scientist and showman as they wrangled over fossil bones in “We of the Present Age.” Although the skull is missing and many of the bone shards seem extraneous to the original saurian, the academy’s representative is expected to construct a prehistoric monster that will satisfy a carnival audience.
Curiously, I found myself committing most willingly to a story, which was itself a mosaic of parts that initially appeared to be only tangentially related. In “Videos of People Falling Down,” Pierce fabricated a complicated plot structure that kept me in a state of suspended gravity.
Why do we laugh when people fall down? Pierce’s characters approach this question from various vantages.
In a section called “trans/FALL,” an artist suggests that “when we watch videos of people falling down, we are waiting for the moment of impact—for a bruise, a hurt, a collision—and that expectation makes us full participants in the event. Every fall we see is our own, and all of us are falling at the same time” (171). One small segment recalls early kinetoscopic footage in which one of Thomas Edison’s assistants is caught in the act of tripping over a prank wire. “Falling down has never been the same,” says Pierce’s narrator:
"Now we can watch the same fall a hundred times. We can laugh at it. We can study it. We can slow it down. We can speed it up. We can linger on a single frame. We can see the birth of fear and panic in a human face. We can identify that moment when a person suddenly realizes that he is no longer in control of what happens next. But the simple truth is that we are never in control of what happens next." (147)
For me this passage exemplifies Pierce’s entire collection. So many times, I felt like Edison’s assistant. I’d be motoring along, feeling like I could trust the story’s trajectory only to find that the author had surprised me with a trip wire, generally near a narrative's conclusion.
I kept wanting to protest when I suddenly found that I’d fallen flat out of the frame. “What just happened?” I wanted to demand that the author account for his plot foolery. Clearly, Pierce did not want me to get too self-satisfied, thinking I’d figured my way through his tricks.
I’m not sure how many readers will forgive Pierce for dumping them out of tales without resolution, but the above passage did help me to trust in the author’s intentions. I’m not convinced he’s playing pranks for the reader’s own good. No. He’s just reminding us what falling into (and out of) story feels like.
I am grateful to First Reads for providing me with this opportunity to be pranked or jackassed or catfished or whatever we’re calling such hijinks these days. (Just hope no one was filming me as I frantically flipped pages back and forth in search of secret compartments that would tell me whatever happened to . . .
Curiously, I found myself committing most willingly to a story, which was itself a mosaic of parts that initially appeared to be only tangentially related. In “Videos of People Falling Down,” Pierce fabricated a complicated plot structure that kept me in a state of suspended gravity.
Why do we laugh when people fall down? Pierce’s characters approach this question from various vantages.
In a section called “trans/FALL,” an artist suggests that “when we watch videos of people falling down, we are waiting for the moment of impact—for a bruise, a hurt, a collision—and that expectation makes us full participants in the event. Every fall we see is our own, and all of us are falling at the same time” (171). One small segment recalls early kinetoscopic footage in which one of Thomas Edison’s assistants is caught in the act of tripping over a prank wire. “Falling down has never been the same,” says Pierce’s narrator:
"Now we can watch the same fall a hundred times. We can laugh at it. We can study it. We can slow it down. We can speed it up. We can linger on a single frame. We can see the birth of fear and panic in a human face. We can identify that moment when a person suddenly realizes that he is no longer in control of what happens next. But the simple truth is that we are never in control of what happens next." (147)
For me this passage exemplifies Pierce’s entire collection. So many times, I felt like Edison’s assistant. I’d be motoring along, feeling like I could trust the story’s trajectory only to find that the author had surprised me with a trip wire, generally near a narrative's conclusion.
I kept wanting to protest when I suddenly found that I’d fallen flat out of the frame. “What just happened?” I wanted to demand that the author account for his plot foolery. Clearly, Pierce did not want me to get too self-satisfied, thinking I’d figured my way through his tricks.
I’m not sure how many readers will forgive Pierce for dumping them out of tales without resolution, but the above passage did help me to trust in the author’s intentions. I’m not convinced he’s playing pranks for the reader’s own good. No. He’s just reminding us what falling into (and out of) story feels like.
I am grateful to First Reads for providing me with this opportunity to be pranked or jackassed or catfished or whatever we’re calling such hijinks these days. (Just hope no one was filming me as I frantically flipped pages back and forth in search of secret compartments that would tell me whatever happened to . . .
March 16, 2015
What an incredible collection of short stories!
Each is a world unto itself, and the characters and situations are completely believable, even if they include baby mammoths or ghosts or skeletons of animals that never lived.
The first tells of a woman who is living by herself, doing the best she can, when her son (a local luminary because he's on tv) leaves her with a living extinct animal that, after some hesitation, develops a taste for mixed nuts. Another tells of a man whose brother dies but continues to travel around the world, with regular updates from a helpful administrative assistant. Yet another is about a comedian who hasn't been funny for a long time.
These stories about perfectly reasonable, ordinary people make me ponder the possibility that, somehow, we're part of something much much bigger -- "…a cosmic force, the angels, Frank Sinatra, anything" .
Then again, maybe we're part of something much much smaller.
"Some part of me fears that the world as we know it only exists as a set of shared beliefs, which change and grow according to our needs and intellects. Meaning, the world becomes more complex as we do, forever outwitting and confounding us."
I suspect that these stories will forever outwit and confound as well as entertain. By turns funny and surprising, this is a collection I'll return to again and again.
Each is a world unto itself, and the characters and situations are completely believable, even if they include baby mammoths or ghosts or skeletons of animals that never lived.
The first tells of a woman who is living by herself, doing the best she can, when her son (a local luminary because he's on tv) leaves her with a living extinct animal that, after some hesitation, develops a taste for mixed nuts. Another tells of a man whose brother dies but continues to travel around the world, with regular updates from a helpful administrative assistant. Yet another is about a comedian who hasn't been funny for a long time.
These stories about perfectly reasonable, ordinary people make me ponder the possibility that, somehow, we're part of something much much bigger -- "…a cosmic force, the angels, Frank Sinatra, anything" .
Then again, maybe we're part of something much much smaller.
"Some part of me fears that the world as we know it only exists as a set of shared beliefs, which change and grow according to our needs and intellects. Meaning, the world becomes more complex as we do, forever outwitting and confounding us."
I suspect that these stories will forever outwit and confound as well as entertain. By turns funny and surprising, this is a collection I'll return to again and again.
Read
February 3, 2015Fine. Nothing wrong with it. Some stories work better than others (I liked "Felix Not Arriving" best). I did become irritated at the way these stories ALL peter out into nothingness, though. I get that it's a common trope in short literary fiction to end on some kind of liminal emotional moment, which is supposed to resonate with us and make us reevaluate our lives or something, but can we get a resolution just once? I'm pretty sure you don't sacrifice literary merit if your story actually contains a plot. I could be wrong. Maybe I'm just a philistine playing literary tourist in this rarified world. And granted, Thomas Pierce is less of an offender than, say, Rebecca Lee, where every story is about someone who works at a college who has a "moment." I liked the little touches (or generous dollops, depending) of surrealism. I guess it would be appropriate to call out the Southern Gothic sprinkled here and there. But Flannery O'Connor he ain't. The stakes are so low here as to be nonexistent.
October 2, 2016
I liked how peculiar and fanciful most of the stories were but I hated every single ending if that word is even a worthy candidate for what occurred at the conclusion of each of these stories. I also wasn't too fond of how Pierce portrayed a lot of the women's voices in these stories. It was awkward at times and they ultimately just didn't sit well with me =/.
One of the short stories in this collection is the title of this book, A Hall of Small Mammals, and oddly enough, I think that was my least favorite story; it was too strange and I found the absurd actions of all of the characters irritating.
One of the short stories in this collection is the title of this book, A Hall of Small Mammals, and oddly enough, I think that was my least favorite story; it was too strange and I found the absurd actions of all of the characters irritating.
July 5, 2017
Unable to finish after the first half. The stories were unfinished concepts. Sometimes overly detailed to where I felt I must be missing something, yet the end of each left you shrugging, wondering what you just read.
None of the stories appeared to connect on any level except that they left you curious as to why there wasn't more to each story.
I would not recommend this book to anyone looking for a plot twist or climatic revelation. However, if you are interested in weird, half told "twilight zone" concepts than this book may be for you.
None of the stories appeared to connect on any level except that they left you curious as to why there wasn't more to each story.
I would not recommend this book to anyone looking for a plot twist or climatic revelation. However, if you are interested in weird, half told "twilight zone" concepts than this book may be for you.
March 11, 2015
Charming, interesting stories by a talented writer. Particularly loved "Shirley Temple Three," which appears in this collection and was published in the New Yorker. Also, fantastic cover art, which I think is worth noting. Cheers to Thomas Pierce!
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