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Good Feeling: seven short stories
Good Feeling is a collection of seven related short stories by François Pointeau. “Why is the sky so bright and sunny and blue and expansive? Am I in a different time zone? It could be that my studio changed location, took the train to a different city. You shut yourself in for days on end, turn off the telephone, shut the blinds, blind the shutters, you don’t know what can happen. Anything. There are no rules. I don’t care what anybody else says.” Frank Needles, the hero of these tales, isn’t sure if he’s completely mad, or if the world around him is completely mad. Frank isn’t sure about anything, except for that last thing, the one thing.
118 pages, Kindle Edition
First published September 11, 2015
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
December 15, 2016
I wish goodreads allowed half stars as I would give this another half. I love small books of linked stories and this seven-story collection certainly fits the bill. I hope the author forgives me for assuming that in this collection he is enjoying a Kafkaesque romp, a metamorphosis not into a cockroach or some weird beetle (though cockroaches do show up in a later story), but into a navel-gazing character named Frank who thinks he’s having a midlife crisis. As I count, he’s short a number of years for that, plus a wife and several children, though he does have a mortgage and a car payment.
The first story reminds me of A Perfect Day for Bananafish with Frank as interacts with a young neighbor girl while the woman his hosts have fixed him up with sits on the patio with her nose in a book. But instead of blowing his brains out, Frank admits he’ll drink a lot of wine at dinner and make jokes about the young neighbor girl. Frank ain’t Seymour. But then, are any of us that saintly?
The character Frank Needles is full of the anger and the self-righteousness many of us felt at that age, the Life-Ain’t-Fair phase. I liked being reminded that once-upon-a-time I was just like that and, like Frank, survived on my own terms. Good Feeling is aptly named; it leaves you feeling happy you, too, merely survived.
The first story reminds me of A Perfect Day for Bananafish with Frank as interacts with a young neighbor girl while the woman his hosts have fixed him up with sits on the patio with her nose in a book. But instead of blowing his brains out, Frank admits he’ll drink a lot of wine at dinner and make jokes about the young neighbor girl. Frank ain’t Seymour. But then, are any of us that saintly?
The character Frank Needles is full of the anger and the self-righteousness many of us felt at that age, the Life-Ain’t-Fair phase. I liked being reminded that once-upon-a-time I was just like that and, like Frank, survived on my own terms. Good Feeling is aptly named; it leaves you feeling happy you, too, merely survived.
May 19, 2016
I wrote this book, and I'm really proud of it. Some of these stories have been around with me for a long time. Last year I set out to put this collection together, and rewrote every single story several times. It was a fun ride. Strange at time, to relive these emotions and characters, however totally worth it. Some of the stories were never finished, and at least one was brand new. Many stories ended up not making it into this collection, and now, I believe I am done with this period of my life, and I can move on. What a good feeling. Let me know what you think.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews