Farewell Navigator: Stories

by Leni Zumas

In this dazzling premier collection, Leni Zumas shines a bright light into the far corners of a dark, dreamlike America populated by a cast of characters on the brink of survival. With the Gothic style of Flannery O’Connor, the urgent lyricism of Jayne Anne Phillips, and the quirky humor of Sam Lipsyte and George Saunders, Zumas blends a lyrical, poetic voice with remarkably original storytelling. A teenage boy finds his blind mother making a pass at his new best friend; a lonely woman works in a pillow factory by day and at night tends to a menagerie of sick animals; an aspiring witch is disillusioned by her spiritual shortcomings; a girl from a town so small it doesn’t exist on any map runs away with a rock band. The odds stacked against them, these lovingly rendered outsiders find redemption in the unlikeliest of circumstances. Zumas so skillfully intertwines the utterly fantastic with the absolutely believable that the reader has no choice but to follow in fascination and wonder. Even the most surreal moments take on a surprising familiarity, and the bleakest moments are imbued with unexpected hope. To become engrossed in Zumas’s world is a strange and beautiful delight.

Farewell navigator --
Dragons may be the way forward --
The everything hater --
Heart sockets --
How he was a wicked son --
Thieves and mapmakers --
Waste no time if this method fails --
Handfasting --
Blotilla takes the cake --
Leopard arms

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, Novels

168 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 2008

About the author

Leni Zumas is the author of RED CLOCKS (Little, Brown, 2018); THE LISTENERS (Tin House, 2012); and FAREWELL NAVIGATOR: STORIES (Open City, 2008). She lives in Portland, Oregon, where she is Director of Creative Writing at Portland State University.

Reviews

[L.A.Weekly · Rating 5 out of 5]

By Marc Weingarten

...Many of the young folks in Leni Zumas’ stories are... trying to divorce themselves from burdensome emotional ties and consequent interference with self-actualization. It’s a testament to Zumas’ skill that the book, which contains dope addicts and stories set in loony bins, doesn’t devolve into a Girl, Interrupted for the pitchfork.com generation. She’s too smart to fall into that trap.

The title story tips us off to Zumas’ knack for crawling inside the heads of protagonists who feel trapped by circumstance. An unnamed son is living with his two legally blind parents, whom he calls Black and Blue (a nod toward some history of abuse?). This isn’t some syrupy Mitch Albom–esque triumph of the human spirit: The handicapped characters, who are usually ennobled in such stories, are creepy and venal here, capable of casual cruelty and betrayal — as when the son comes upon his mother with a teenage boy he has invited to spend the night:

Downstairs, a strand of noise from the kitchen — Blue’s voice. Please, she is saying. Oh please. Give me your hand.

Plum chutney comes up my throat. I swallow it down.

I don’t think so, says the kid’s voice.

Please touch me. Please, here —

I run in and hit the light. Yellow pours onto Blue, who is naked except for underpants. Her breasts look like puddles of dough. The kid is backed up against the stove, hands over his face, sweatpants — thank God — on.

Click here to read the rest of Marc Weingarten's review.

http://www.laweekly.com/art+books/boo...


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[Luca Dipierro · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this book a few years after I moved to the United States from Italy. I mostly read books in my mother language, Italian, and Farewell Navigator changed forever my way of reading in English, deepening my awareness of the music of the prose. It blew me away for many reasons: language, style, degree and quality of invention, and an awareness of the body through language that swings from gloom to irony, often venturing into the (alas!) not too often explored territories of the grotesque. Farewell Navigator looks at people and their solitude in a way that is both unflinchingly comical and compassionate. These stories do what great literature should do, they keep surprising and challenging and nourishing you at every sentence. It's like walking through an endless grid of streets, without knowing what's expecting you behind every corner.

[Susan DeFreitas · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fans of Carmen Maria Machado, Kelly Link, Aimee Bender, and Karen Joy Fowler, take note: You'll love this collection of quirky, feminist, speculative-ish short stories.

[Travis · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is the worst book I've read in a long time. The stories are full of themselves, dripping with this "ooh, I'm so deep because I write about X" feeling, yet they're so fake, like the author obviously has no clue what she's talking about. A good example would be the one about a girl who supposedly comes from a town so small it's not on any map, past or present, yet the town not only has a YMCA, it had two high schools until recently! A town as small as the one this girl is supposed to come from would probably not have a school at all, much less multiple high schools. I live in a city with a population of...wikipedia says 88,000 in 2006, surely more now, and there is only one high school! [return][return]That's the point at which I almost gave up on the book. I was halfway through and getting more and more annoyed with each story. But I did see it through to the end, mainly because it's only 170 pages. [return][return]But from the very first story I was annoyed. The first story is about a boy with blind parents. The portrayal is pretty damn offensive (the dad serves dinner full of blood because he cuts his fingers when he cooks; the mom is portrayed as a pathetic loser who tries to seduce the son's friend), and also sets the tone for the fatphobia that is a running theme throughout the book. Bad people are not only fat, but described in detail as being gross and disgusting and lazy slobs who sit around doing nothing and have no lives. Also all fat people are, of course, fat because all they do all day is stuff their faces. [return][return]There are also stupid factual errors like a girl's (fat, loser) mom who watches an old program about the Challenger, except the author couldn't be bothered to find out that the Challenger exploded on takeoff, not after it had been in space. (And it's just a casual mention, obviously not meant to be an alternate universe or anything.)[return][return]Like, do you have to be lazy on top of being offensive and pretentious? Really? Meh.

[Dorothea · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of the very best books to come out this year.

[Laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

My second read by Zumas- Red Clocks being my first- and I'm hooked. Her strange mix of characters- a voyeur gargoyle, an animal rescuer wet nurse, a witch hunter/scorned husband...She has a way to pull you into these madcap protagonists'stories...three stories gave you a bit of the group home/rehab/psych institution "One Flew Over the Cuckcoo's Nest" vibe- I didn't mind. One story had the small town girl leaves her small mapless unGPSable location to travel theme- tired story line maybe but it was worth reading again because it was in Zumas' prose. It's a quick, digestable read of the usually indigestion causing what did I just read/hear/see situations that can fester behind closed doors.

[Steve Chisnell · Rating 5 out of 5]

Zumas's stories earn the praise you have undoubtedly read/heard: the literary developed world is full of angsty and despondent characters, but Zumas finds new ways into them through a kind of obscurantism and narrative filters, essentially keeping readers as off-center as her contagonists. Be patient as you approach each story: its oblique and disconnected images resolve ultimately, sometimes into surprises, sometimes tragedies, sometimes a "human midnight" (so-called in one of her stories) which we had never presumed. More, the stories in order slide us ever towards a larger canvas of comprehension which is its own reward.

[Andy Dennis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dark and strange - a lot of interesting writing here. A couple of the stories really hit home and most created the feeling of their own time, place, and space, but some missed the mark for me. Certainly unique and deeply creative, but not thoroughly enjoyable, in spite of a few really great vignettes.

[Shelby · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this collection very much. Zumas writes with precision. Her stories are delightfully idiosyncratic, and a little uncomfortable.

[Daniel · Rating 2 out of 5]

large heaps of generic misery and malaise unfortunately make reading most of these a chore

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

Everything that made me love Red Clocks is evident here. A wonderful collection of stories in which a familiar cast of outsiders (familiar because we are usually ignoring them) are given such loving, honest, and heartfelt voices that our inner outsiders can't help but resonate in exquisite outsidery bliss.

[Matt · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a bit of a pleasant surprise, actually.... I really love Open City as a magazine, which makes it so frustrating that their books often disappoint me, feeling more like gratitude to hipster friends than really good reading. This was a lot better than that, thankfully-- the stories here are "linguistically active," which is to say a good part of the pleasure of reading them is the way the sentences sound, the way they structure themselves into these sentences that you read two and three times aloud to yourself because they do things they ought not to do, in ways that you've never seen before. Shklovsky talks about deceleration, and this is an extreme example of what he meant.

The stories themselves: lots of stuff about sadsacks, a more than passing familiarity with people living on some familiar but no less real edges: punk rock musicians, small town sadnesses, eating disorders, kids not well cared for by their parents. I think in some ways this is where the book is weakest, because the territory, while well-presented, is kind of familiar, and I'm not sure Zumas has much new to say about it... The last story, told from the POV of a B'lyn gargoyle is sort of a poetics for the collection-- the goal of the stories is to scare us into a place of doing something. I'm not sure that, by itself, is enough, though.

I really did like this. It just feels a little lopsided.

[AC · Rating 4 out of 5]

You'll find stories set out in traditional form and some that are not. Often times when an author is trying to write a story and avoid the 'normal' way of writing (you know, paragraphs, dialog, etc), it comes off as trying too hard. Zumas' work doesn't come off that way at all. In fact the only downside to her storytelling is the occasional touch of magical realism in an otherwise normal setting--as if the story she was telling needed that embellishment. This is a good collection, the title story and 'Waste No Time if This Method Fails' are two standouts, though overall I don't think any of these stories was disappointing. It would have been nice to have less ancillary characters in 'Leopard Arms' and if the references to gargoyle training had been decreased--in fact she could probably tell the story without the whole gargoyle angle and it would have been more effective as that angle never really added to the story. 'Heart Sockets' is also a good story but the bit about feeding animals (was that supposed to be real or magical realism?) seemed out of place and certainly provided nothing.

[Lindsey · Rating 3 out of 5]

I stumbled upon this little volume at the Brooklyn Library, entranced by its gorgeous cover art, Miranda July props, and the first page of prose, so unique and lovely. That first story, also titled Farewell Navigator, was like reading magic. It was tender, subtle, tragic, and weird, all qualities I love discovering in short fiction. Heart Sockets was also wonderful, with a nice added touch of surrealism. Most of the other stories were only alright. There are no less than three that take place in institutions (as in mental hospitals/rehabs) and while "Waste No Time if This Method Fails" had a pretty unique format and I enjoyed the story itself, the whole mental patient thing got a little tired and seemed very Susana Kaysen-esque melodramatic. I also thought "Thieves and Mapmakers" had a somewhat tired subject - teenage girl runs away with a touring band - but it was nicely written. I think that overall, Leni Zumas shows incredible potential as a writer but needs to explore more varied territory, as she did so successfully in my favorites of this collection. As a side-note, I checked out her band on myspace and it is pretty okay.

[Christopher · Rating 5 out of 5]

These stories read like wonderful gifts to the lonely, lovelorn, isolated outsider teen/young adult we all were. Maybe we're older now, but from word one, we're swept back into that precarious void between teen and trying to be adult, and damn, if it isn't skin crawling funny, sweet, romantic in the way only an unrequited crush bearer knows-all the beauty and tragedy of people isolated from their heart's desire, from the world, from themselves.
I was reminded of the Joy Division song 'Isolation' while reading the book-

Isolation, isolation, isolation.

Mother I tried please believe me,
I'm doing the best that I can.
I'm ashamed of the things I've been put through,
I'm ashamed of the person I am.

Isolation, isolation, isolation.

But if you could just see the beauty,
These things I could never describe,
These pleasures a wayward distraction,
This is my one lucky prize.

Isolation, isolation, isolation...

Zumas shows us people who are ashamed but whom still see a beauty that can't be described, that isn't usually seen as beauty.

[Rikki · Rating 2 out of 5]

Disturbing, grotesque, and very sad.

I was assigned "Farewell Navigator" for an English class, and while Zumas' writing was gripping enough to keep me glued and empathizing with every character, it also required three readings to really get a good feel for it. Her writing seems so typical of modern shorts: so heavy on the reach for edginess it becomes trite. The use of gratuitous gore and morbidity, for example, has become pretty clichéd. Much of her descriptions left me feeling uncomfortable, violated, and insecure, so she clearly has the ability to get in one's head, but I wasn't able to tie those raw emotions into a true bond with any of the characters. It felt more like visiting an acquaintance's house and realizing you wish you'd never accepted the invitation and feel guilty for wanting to never see them again.

[Keith · Rating 4 out of 5]

In this debut novel published by Portland’s Tin House Books, a woman in her 30’s mourns the death of her sister, the loss of her first love, and the dissolution of her almost-famous punk band. The narrator of The Listeners is an unattractive, anorexic, hirsute, chain-smoking, hard drinking vegetarian with synesthesia. She hangs out with people named: Fod, Mert, Cam, Geck, Jupiter, Dagger, Riley a.k.a. Coyote, Pine, and Uncle Seven. The games she plays include: Nakedies, Curious, and Wake The Sister. She uses child-like slang (spark, nidget, pettles, and neezle) and after a bad gig, compares her band to “the polka unit at the Penis Oaks Retirement Village.” Ouch.

READ FULL REVIEW HERE: http://frontpsych.com/2012/07/05/zuma...

[Dylan · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book blew me away when i finally got to reading it. The way she weaves odd, strange characters into situations that are at once interesting and make you feel better about your life and make me as a writer want to explore the unconventional side of charactering that much more.
Stylistically the language is poetic and original, the lack of quotation marks i found refreshing, and she experimented as well in plot developing and what to focus in on.
My favorite stories in the collection: leopard arms (epic, told from a gargoyle), the one about the girl and the rockstars, and the one with the witch.

[Jael Orellana · Rating 5 out of 5]

I had the privilege of meeting Leni Zumas in a creative wriing class and I led the discussion on this work. Zumas is a really good writer, on her way to becoming something more by creating more original work that could fall into a category all its own. What I do remember from her Q&A is that she just collected a group of short stories, I believe these were all she had written at the time, and agreed to have them published to make the book. The recurring themes throughout were not realized by her until later on. It's one of my favorites, and if you ever get the chance to take one of her classes at Hunter College, go for it!

[kim · Rating 2 out of 5]

I probably would've liked these stories more if I'd read them separately instead of in a single volume. There were a few I liked, but mostly I found it difficult to differentiate between the characters from story to story, because most of them were screwed up teenagers of indeterminate gender. And I know that my opinion of the book was immediately swayed by the Miranda July (ewwww) quote on the cover (swayed to the point where I almost just didn't read it). I really like Leopard Arms, though. I just wish that I hadn't read a bunch of other stories that I didn't like before it.

[Leilani Clark · Rating 4 out of 5]

Grotesque and gorgeous writing with an Angela Carter flair. In the first story, the son of two blind people eats his own scabs and suffers shame when his mother makes a pass at his only friend. The story captures the loneliness and familial obligation in a powerful manner. At times I was uncomfortable with the images in this collection, a good thing. Zumas is willing dig equally into the ugly and the beautiful mines of life.

[Charl(ie|es) · Rating 5 out of 5]

I heard the author read from the book at Elliott Bay around a year ago. I really enjoyed it and regretted not buying it but fortunately I recently found a used copy. It was as good as I remembered. Pretty much all the short stories end without a resolute resolution of conflicts or a dénouement, things are still a little up in the air for the characters. I could see how this might bother some people but it worked well for me.

[Arielle · Rating 3 out of 5]

Currently, I'm actually a little disturbed by this book. Much like Miranda July (who's quoted praising this book on the cover), the characters are disturbed, have things like compassion and coherence missing from their personality, and come of a bit sociopathic a lot of the time. That said, I know I enjoy those types of characters.
Ah well. Let's see how it goes.

[William Reichard · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an odd little book, but overall, a delight. The stories feel a bit like fairy tales, but slightly off kilter. The narrators aren't always the most reliable people, and the situations in which they find themselves are always just on the thin edge of the fantastical, but that's what I like about them. They're fresh, unexpected.

[Erika · Rating 4 out of 5]

i was supposed to be reading 'something else' when this lunged for me yesterday. i took a moment with it and put all else on hold. the first three stories are so incredible that even sebastian's self help book must wait.

[Iliana · Rating 4 out of 5]

This collection of ten short stories deals with misfits and the misunderstood. My favorite story was Blotilla Takes the Cake. You can read more of my thoughts on this here (http://www.bookgirl.net/?p=997)

[Brianna · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the most beautifully written books I've come across in a long time. Deeply profound and poetic, Zumas constantly draws close to the border of the uncomfortable but knows when not to cross it. Among my favorites.

[S · Rating 2 out of 5]

Listen to this, she says. This is marvelous. Dragons have such peculiar diets! The seafaring ones eat starfish only. The ones in caves eat bats and mold. And the meadow-dwellers are thought to survive entirely on honey bees!
Amazing, I say.
Amazing, she agrees.

[Oriana · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gorgeous devastating stories.

[Angela Stubbs · Rating 4 out of 5]

So far, I'm loving this.