The Inconvenience of the Wings: Stories

by Silas Dent Zobal

The stories in The Inconvenience of the Wings inhabit a imaginative landscape so expansive in conception that it permeates the border between the natural and the supernatural, showing us that what seems beyond our ken is as much a part of the human experience as the tactile ground on which we tread. The situation of a ghostly mother spelling out hints and instructions to her suspicious son in “The Inconvenience of the Wings” is balanced by sharp observations of nature, as in, “A whippoorwill, hunting mosquitoes by the pond, gave the cry that gave the bird its name.” The macabre rendering of a man’s consciousness trapped by a stroke in his inert body in “The Language of Men Who Speak of What They Do Not Understand” is set against precise natural descriptions, such as, “Birch trees creak under the wind’s pressure; a chorus of hounds begin to howl and keen.” In “Outlaw,” a group of feckless friends attempts to rob a gas station and causes an explosion worthy of a Quentin Tarantino scene, yet the description juxtaposes violence with a poetic evocation of “The red maple leaves lifted skyward. Bloodgouts and furstrips and flesh hung among the branches. Then the wet sound of body parts falling….I pointed toward the blackened Japanese maples and what once had been my dog.” Trapped in a vacation cabin by a blizzard, some friends solve the problem of finding one of their company dead by placing her body in the freezing barn, necessitating the digging of a passage which is described in strangely beautiful “We shoveled. Wind harried the snow in horizontal gusts. We channeled between the house and the the snow even with my navel, the sky a vertiginous swirl, the air scented of cold.”

Genres: Short Stories

180 pages, Kindle Edition

First published April 15, 2015

Reviews

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

Most of these stories are meditations on loss, on death and more specifically dying; and on the limitations of language, the arbitrariness of words as a means to bridge the gaps between people. There is also a sort of relay effect to the collection, where each story subtly bounces off the preceding one, taking up a word or an image or a theme and running with it, with the final - devastating - story, 'The Hospital' being a direct sequel to one earlier in the book.
Zobal's writing is often elusive and slippery, groping around to get at the truth of something; his clipped sentences sometimes reading more like prose poetry. Plot doesn't interest him as such, but the stories with the clearest narrative worked best for me, a couple of others I found almost impenetrable ('And We Saw Light' is a simple story that is made confusing by the way it is told). But the best stories here ('Outlaws', 'Wretchedness', 'Concurrence', 'A Night Choral', 'The Hospital') are revelatory. And at heart they are always about people, about the human condition, so even at their most opaque his stories never feel academic or dry or like exercises.
Apparently Zobal's debut novel will be published in 2016 - I shall definitely be reading it.

[Kelly Hartwick · Rating 4 out of 5]

Silas Dent Zobal's collection of short stories in The Inconvenience of the Wings are very special and uniquely written. Zobal is a master of hooking his readers with the first sentence, and maintains this hook in his use of imagery and uncommon settings/situations. Many of my favorite stories in this collection rely on outside settings, making you feel the overwhelming winter or dry heat of summer, or the sounds of the swamp. This is evident from his use of description outweighing the use of dialogue. This also creates space to delve into emotional issues, primarily family or other intimate relationships we have. You feel alone with the characters, lost in the turmoil they are lost in.

[Rachel · Rating 3 out of 5]

Probably more like a 3.5, but I still struggle with these modern stories that end without ever making a point. I mean, the point doesn't have to be huge, but it should make me feel like something has been accomplished. The language is stunning, sometimes too much. I am interested to read a novel by Zobal; I'm curious if the language and the other story elements are more balanced in long form.

[Sky · Rating 4 out of 5]

My average for all of these stories was 3.4, and in general they were pretty hit or miss for me. However, I rounded up to four because even though I didn't really like a lot of the stories, the writing consistently through all of them absolutely blew me away, so it made the stories worth it. The Hospital by far was my favorite story, and it was a great ending to this collection.
Camp of Low Angels: 4 stars
The Bellwether: 2 stars
The Inconvenience of the Wings: 3 stars
The Archimedes Palimpsest: 4 stars
Outlaw: 2 stars
The Language of Men Who Speak of What They Do Not Understand: 3 stars
Wretchedness: 4 stars
Concurrence: 3 stars
A Night Choral: 3 stars
Cosmology: 4 stars
And We Saw Light: 4 stars
Pucker Up: 3 stars
The Hospital: 5 stars

[Laura · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read most of this riveting collection of stories outside on a warm summer night. I heard the drone of cicadas in the background, their various pitches and timbres, getting louder and louder, and then a sudden silence so quiet it was intensely loud. This collection was a lot like that. Silas favors short sentences and they pack a quick punch you don't see coming. A wonderful debut.

I'd LOVE to read a co-authored collection with the dazzling Catherine Zobal Dent, who wrote Unfinished Stories of Girls. Their house must tremble with the pressure of keeping hold of so much talent.