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Break Away Books
Congratulations on Your Martyrdom!
Searing, troubling, and funny, these revolutionary, linked stories flit and dart among the shadows of small town life, and the touching and heartbreaking characters that occupy it. Employees use roadkill instead of faux pelts during a build-a-critter battle for mall supremacy. Former band geeks are harassed with mutilated musical instruments and then murdered. The collection is haunted by allusions to a fatal cannonball jump that crescendos in the explosive final story. An extraordinary addition to the canon of gonzo fiction, Congratulations on Your Martyrdom! introduces Zachary Tyler Vickers as an exciting new author whose unflinching prose grabs you and won t let go."
- GenresShort Stories
202 pages, Paperback
First published May 1, 2016
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
May 29, 2017
More 3.5.
This collection has certain virtues: a nice collection of absurd businesses and products (stuffed animal carcasses, and cosmetics), interconnections between characters and key events (a tornado, a boy cannonballing to his death), and a lively imagination. The only problem with this Iowa product is the too-neat conclusions to each story that are also, at times, a little too sentimental when there are so many, despite the sometimes ghoulish, and potentially creepy, elements encountered along the way.
Longer review to come, but this is a collection worth checking out for its highlights, which I imagine will change from reader to reader.
Here's the long review, which went up late May 2017.
http://www.theliteraryreview.org/book...
This collection has certain virtues: a nice collection of absurd businesses and products (stuffed animal carcasses, and cosmetics), interconnections between characters and key events (a tornado, a boy cannonballing to his death), and a lively imagination. The only problem with this Iowa product is the too-neat conclusions to each story that are also, at times, a little too sentimental when there are so many, despite the sometimes ghoulish, and potentially creepy, elements encountered along the way.
Longer review to come, but this is a collection worth checking out for its highlights, which I imagine will change from reader to reader.
Here's the long review, which went up late May 2017.
http://www.theliteraryreview.org/book...
November 5, 2024
The stories that were good were really good: clear, thoughtful, beautifully written, funny, and poignant. But there were several I simply could not manage the effort to read, and definitely plenty of moments that felt convoluted for the sake of convolution. If I would've skipped a few, I think this would be at least 4 stars.
August 11, 2016
This book had its strengths and weaknesses, but on the whole was an interesting work.
The author explores human weakness and insecurity from a variety of "camera angles" as he works in stream-of-consciousness chapter-by-chapter vignettes of different people from the same community. While the concept was clever, and the prose occasionally beautiful, the format was often disorienting. It was as though the reader was being drawn into the writer's subconsciousness where he had his own very specific inside jokes and turns of phrase that made sense to him, but were not wholly universal. Sentences were disjointed- dialogue at times lacked quotations marks- sentences started and ended without capitalization or clearly defined beginnings and endings.
The stories themselves were interesting, but tinged with over the top, but self-aware archetypes that would fit well in an indie film. The human frailty and brokenness resonated throughout the story. It was moving at times, and at time repetitive. But it definitely left an emotional impression.
It short, Congratulations on Your Martyrdom was a poem with a lovable identity crisis that kept trying to wrestle its way back into being a novel. It was neat to read, but not always easy to follow.
The author explores human weakness and insecurity from a variety of "camera angles" as he works in stream-of-consciousness chapter-by-chapter vignettes of different people from the same community. While the concept was clever, and the prose occasionally beautiful, the format was often disorienting. It was as though the reader was being drawn into the writer's subconsciousness where he had his own very specific inside jokes and turns of phrase that made sense to him, but were not wholly universal. Sentences were disjointed- dialogue at times lacked quotations marks- sentences started and ended without capitalization or clearly defined beginnings and endings.
The stories themselves were interesting, but tinged with over the top, but self-aware archetypes that would fit well in an indie film. The human frailty and brokenness resonated throughout the story. It was moving at times, and at time repetitive. But it definitely left an emotional impression.
It short, Congratulations on Your Martyrdom was a poem with a lovable identity crisis that kept trying to wrestle its way back into being a novel. It was neat to read, but not always easy to follow.
November 14, 2016
Electric Literature review:
https://electricliterature.com/how-to...
https://electricliterature.com/how-to...
October 4, 2016
This was pretty enjoyable for a debut. The stories were fun, but occasionally felt overly derivative of George Sunders stories, almost rewrites.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews