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Fuego Controlado/ Controlled Burn
A collection of harsh stories linked in some way to hard times of a physically or emotionally disenfranchised person, whether in a prison or an economically depressed region of America, paint a vivid picture of a world filled with little else but dispair.
179 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2005
8 people are currently reading
278 people want to read
About the author
Scott Wolven
15 books21 followersScott Wolven lives in upstate New York. His work has been selected three years in a row for The Best American Mystery Stories (2002, 2003, and 2004).
See also: http://thestoryisthecure.blogspot.com...
See also: http://thestoryisthecure.blogspot.com...
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 37 reviews
May 4, 2025
Second time around.
This is an ARC I bought for a dollar at a library sale in Woodstock, New York - 8 miles up the hills from here.
There isn't one story in this that wouldn't have been the best short story in an edition of The Manhunt Companion
So I went undercover, and in the middle, the fucking middle of it all, there was an hour when nobody was watching me and I had a little money and I slipped away, on the ghost train out of there.
I can't even imagine how many people are looking for me now..
These are all mostly inter-connected stories of life in prison ( okay- suffocating subject matter, I agree.... well written but we only get a pair of those) . The others feature many of the same lead character's 1st person narratives - some feature a second character introduced in the 1st section of the short stories.
I just can't recommend this collection of stories by Scott Wolven highly enough. The only non-hardcase tale is one that will break the heart of the strongest alpha-male among us: TIGERS, a story that will almost bring you to your knees.
I loved this collection. I've read it once before -as I said- I'll reread it many more times in the years I have left to read.
I swear to God:
Go forth and find this anthology, buy it (Kindle if you have to), and cherish the writing.
Writers like Wolven don't just pop up much these days.
This is an ARC I bought for a dollar at a library sale in Woodstock, New York - 8 miles up the hills from here.
There isn't one story in this that wouldn't have been the best short story in an edition of The Manhunt Companion
So I went undercover, and in the middle, the fucking middle of it all, there was an hour when nobody was watching me and I had a little money and I slipped away, on the ghost train out of there.
I can't even imagine how many people are looking for me now..
These are all mostly inter-connected stories of life in prison ( okay- suffocating subject matter, I agree.... well written but we only get a pair of those) . The others feature many of the same lead character's 1st person narratives - some feature a second character introduced in the 1st section of the short stories.
I just can't recommend this collection of stories by Scott Wolven highly enough. The only non-hardcase tale is one that will break the heart of the strongest alpha-male among us: TIGERS, a story that will almost bring you to your knees.
I loved this collection. I've read it once before -as I said- I'll reread it many more times in the years I have left to read.
I swear to God:
Go forth and find this anthology, buy it (Kindle if you have to), and cherish the writing.
Writers like Wolven don't just pop up much these days.
June 10, 2019
A collection of loosely-linked short stories. These are gritty tales of hard times and hard men, told in a very strong voice that I liked a lot. [Rating: 4.25*]
May 8, 2010
RATING: 4.5
SETTING: New England and Idaho
SERIES: Short stories
Normally, I'm not a big fan of short stories, but Scott Wolven managed to keep me turning the pages in CONTROLLED BURN. Although each story stands alone well, there were some subtle and direct interconnections between the stories, and the tone was uniform throughout. For example, the first part of the book has all the stories set in New England and generally involve something to do with logging. Some of the characters carry over from story to story. There was never a feeling of "I've finished that story – what's next" and moving on to a completely different kind of narrative.
The cover states that CONTROLLED BURN contains stories of prison, crime and men. I found that statement a little misleading, since almost all the stories took place in small towns in New England and Idaho, and not in prison settings. However, they were uniformly tough and gritty. The stories flowed from one to the next without the traditional shocking twist that occurs in many works of this kind. These stories did not require "big bang" endings. I felt that I was reading well-told pieces of life.
The book is divided into two sections: "The Northeast Kingdom" which set in Vermont and New Hampshire, and "The Fugitive West" which is mostly set in Idaho. However, there are connections between the two parts of the book, which made it feel more like reading a novel than a series of discrete stories. My favorite story was the last, "Vigilance", which was quite suspenseful and had a surprising tie to one of the early stories in the book. However, there were many other pearls in this collection.
I thought CONTROLLED BURN was a masterful creation. Wolven has a very elegiac way of writing; I marked many beautifully written passages throughout the book. Characterizations were complex and rich; establishing a cogent yet segmented plot that interwove itself throughout the pieces of the narrative was exceptionally well done. I personally would love to see him turn his skills toward writing a full-length book. However, even if he decides that short stories are his milieu, I will be searching out all of his future work. He is a talented writer, and it was a joy to spend time reading a work that was so well conceived.
SETTING: New England and Idaho
SERIES: Short stories
Normally, I'm not a big fan of short stories, but Scott Wolven managed to keep me turning the pages in CONTROLLED BURN. Although each story stands alone well, there were some subtle and direct interconnections between the stories, and the tone was uniform throughout. For example, the first part of the book has all the stories set in New England and generally involve something to do with logging. Some of the characters carry over from story to story. There was never a feeling of "I've finished that story – what's next" and moving on to a completely different kind of narrative.
The cover states that CONTROLLED BURN contains stories of prison, crime and men. I found that statement a little misleading, since almost all the stories took place in small towns in New England and Idaho, and not in prison settings. However, they were uniformly tough and gritty. The stories flowed from one to the next without the traditional shocking twist that occurs in many works of this kind. These stories did not require "big bang" endings. I felt that I was reading well-told pieces of life.
The book is divided into two sections: "The Northeast Kingdom" which set in Vermont and New Hampshire, and "The Fugitive West" which is mostly set in Idaho. However, there are connections between the two parts of the book, which made it feel more like reading a novel than a series of discrete stories. My favorite story was the last, "Vigilance", which was quite suspenseful and had a surprising tie to one of the early stories in the book. However, there were many other pearls in this collection.
I thought CONTROLLED BURN was a masterful creation. Wolven has a very elegiac way of writing; I marked many beautifully written passages throughout the book. Characterizations were complex and rich; establishing a cogent yet segmented plot that interwove itself throughout the pieces of the narrative was exceptionally well done. I personally would love to see him turn his skills toward writing a full-length book. However, even if he decides that short stories are his milieu, I will be searching out all of his future work. He is a talented writer, and it was a joy to spend time reading a work that was so well conceived.
Read
October 23, 2020Skip all the rambling and head to the last three paragraphs of this "review" for an actual reflection on the book.
I'm not usually all that rigid in what I am going to order at a restaurant or which hiking trail I am going to follow. I'll gladly listen to other recommendations and I'm open to changing my mind. However, I keep all of my books in those plastic milk crates and the crate at the top holds the books that I plan to read next. I don't budge on these reading plans. If an old friend or a new acquaintance or a complete stranger tells me about a book that I must read, I acknowledge their enthusiasm and I appreciate their recommendation but I don't usually rush off to the library or even give it consideration. This is not a quality that I like in myself. I should be more open to book recommendations. However, I have this ridiculous backlog of books that I've been desperately wanting to read and so I just don't feel like I can justify the time to read something that isn't worth reading. But of course, every book is worth reading to the right person.
There was a copy of Scott Wolven's Controlled Burn in my mailbox last month, and I opened it up to find a note inside from a very generous friend telling me how much he adored this book and, convinced I would feel the same way, sent me my own copy. If someone is going to purchase a book and then ship it to me with a thoughtful note - sure, I'll put my rigid reading schedule on hold. I mean, how could I not?
The subtitle of this collection is Stories of Prison, Crime, and Men. The cover is black with a grainy, rain-slick highway vanishing into the blackness. There are blurbs by Nelson DeMille and Richard Ford and George Pelecanos. I looked it over and then I did that thing that you're not supposed to do: I judged the book by its cover. And I judged it harshly. The subtitle alone might as well have been the epigraph from House of Leaves: This is not for you.
There seems to be a strain of American fiction that tends to be focused on violence and manliness to such a degree that sometimes it almost rubs shoulders with parody. I think the lineage goes something like this: Hemingway begat Cormac McCarthy begat Raymond Carver begat Thom Jones begat Denis Johnson.....and begat Scott Wolven. Maybe that sort of makes sense. Anyways, the style that connects this strain is sparse. And the properties that emerge are usually based around men facing challenges in very manly ways. This lineage of fiction contains characters that are often drunks, sometimes convicts, usually adept at fighting, they frequently carry guns and they will occasionally use methamphetamines, and they are generally men of few words. You'll meet truckers and loggers and drug-dealers and welders and boxers. The protagonist is often a real hard case and usually lost and comes across some hard earned wisdom along the way.
Now, it's not that I don't think these people exist in real life. We know they do. And it's not that I feel that are not worth reading about. They are. Everyone is. It's just that this style, which is often overly-macho, wears out its welcome for me very quickly. And that is clearly just idiosyncratic on my part. It's a matter of taste or preference or something along those lines. The word "gritty" gets used, often overused, to describe this tradition and it's a fitting word. But usually the grit gets stuck in my teeth.
This style regularly uses very taught dialogue. The sentences can be clipped. The prose is generally pretty lean. Descriptions use just enough to create a mood or a visual and then pull back. Seldom, if ever, the language erupts into rhapsody. All in all, it's really interesting the way that so much can be built out of those deliberate limitations. And it can be a good technique for making the tension just sort of simmer. Again, it just isn't for me.
And so I guess I try to think about books that I'm not much into in the same way that I think about eating pizza with pineapples on top. I don't much like pineapples on my pizza - not one bit. But if I, through some strange circumstance, end up eating a pineapple pizza, I know what I'm going to be tasting. I can't get mad that it's not like the pizza that I prefer to eat as it's not trying to be that at all. But certainly I can differentiate between really good pineapple pizza and really bad pineapple pizza. I would not have ordered it myself, but I can appreciate a really good pineapple pizza for what it is. And likewise, I can leave a really bad pineapple pizza on the plate uneaten without a twinge of guilt. Most importantly, I must be open to the possibility that I will one day crave the very thing that I now avoid.
And so, to the book: It is death that forms the connective tissue throughout these stories. In fact, the narrator in the story "Tigers" reflects:
"Death connects everything. All things that are alive have the same end. The fragility of things, the wish that a parent or spouse has to keep a child or spouse safe. The prayers, religious or not, spoken or silent. These things have their own freezing point, where they turn to ice-death. And that freezing point is only one degree away from life, and often moves faster than blessings and prayers."
Scott Wolven sits comfortably among his forebears. Each story in Controlled Burn is cloaked in that dark shade of noir where each decision a character makes is not between a good choice and a bad choice, but between a bad choice and a slightly less but still pretty bad choice. Many of the stories overlap and share characters or situations or settings. The first half of the book is set in New England; the second half, in the West-mostly Idaho. Every story is staggeringly severe as men continually find themselves trapped - whether in prison, in addiction, in dangerous work, or in depraved psyches. And the creation of the character Red Green, a fellow that cooks meth and speaks in a drug-induced flurry, added some nice absurdity amongst the stoicism of most of the other characters. Wolven does have that touch where he can give you just enough imagery that scenes stay in your mind long after you've read them.
I did feel enclosed in the bleakness of these stories and, taken together as a collection, I was impressed by the consistent mood that built on itself to the final page. Controlled Burn was indeed controlled, as it managed to be pretty even throughout. All the more impressive, knowing that it was his debut. Still, nothing exactly knocked my socks off, but I didn't expect it to. It's not my flavor. And, although I'll not likely read this again, I am glad I gave it a shot and spent time in Wolven's hard-bitten world.
I'm not usually all that rigid in what I am going to order at a restaurant or which hiking trail I am going to follow. I'll gladly listen to other recommendations and I'm open to changing my mind. However, I keep all of my books in those plastic milk crates and the crate at the top holds the books that I plan to read next. I don't budge on these reading plans. If an old friend or a new acquaintance or a complete stranger tells me about a book that I must read, I acknowledge their enthusiasm and I appreciate their recommendation but I don't usually rush off to the library or even give it consideration. This is not a quality that I like in myself. I should be more open to book recommendations. However, I have this ridiculous backlog of books that I've been desperately wanting to read and so I just don't feel like I can justify the time to read something that isn't worth reading. But of course, every book is worth reading to the right person.
There was a copy of Scott Wolven's Controlled Burn in my mailbox last month, and I opened it up to find a note inside from a very generous friend telling me how much he adored this book and, convinced I would feel the same way, sent me my own copy. If someone is going to purchase a book and then ship it to me with a thoughtful note - sure, I'll put my rigid reading schedule on hold. I mean, how could I not?
The subtitle of this collection is Stories of Prison, Crime, and Men. The cover is black with a grainy, rain-slick highway vanishing into the blackness. There are blurbs by Nelson DeMille and Richard Ford and George Pelecanos. I looked it over and then I did that thing that you're not supposed to do: I judged the book by its cover. And I judged it harshly. The subtitle alone might as well have been the epigraph from House of Leaves: This is not for you.
There seems to be a strain of American fiction that tends to be focused on violence and manliness to such a degree that sometimes it almost rubs shoulders with parody. I think the lineage goes something like this: Hemingway begat Cormac McCarthy begat Raymond Carver begat Thom Jones begat Denis Johnson.....and begat Scott Wolven. Maybe that sort of makes sense. Anyways, the style that connects this strain is sparse. And the properties that emerge are usually based around men facing challenges in very manly ways. This lineage of fiction contains characters that are often drunks, sometimes convicts, usually adept at fighting, they frequently carry guns and they will occasionally use methamphetamines, and they are generally men of few words. You'll meet truckers and loggers and drug-dealers and welders and boxers. The protagonist is often a real hard case and usually lost and comes across some hard earned wisdom along the way.
Now, it's not that I don't think these people exist in real life. We know they do. And it's not that I feel that are not worth reading about. They are. Everyone is. It's just that this style, which is often overly-macho, wears out its welcome for me very quickly. And that is clearly just idiosyncratic on my part. It's a matter of taste or preference or something along those lines. The word "gritty" gets used, often overused, to describe this tradition and it's a fitting word. But usually the grit gets stuck in my teeth.
This style regularly uses very taught dialogue. The sentences can be clipped. The prose is generally pretty lean. Descriptions use just enough to create a mood or a visual and then pull back. Seldom, if ever, the language erupts into rhapsody. All in all, it's really interesting the way that so much can be built out of those deliberate limitations. And it can be a good technique for making the tension just sort of simmer. Again, it just isn't for me.
And so I guess I try to think about books that I'm not much into in the same way that I think about eating pizza with pineapples on top. I don't much like pineapples on my pizza - not one bit. But if I, through some strange circumstance, end up eating a pineapple pizza, I know what I'm going to be tasting. I can't get mad that it's not like the pizza that I prefer to eat as it's not trying to be that at all. But certainly I can differentiate between really good pineapple pizza and really bad pineapple pizza. I would not have ordered it myself, but I can appreciate a really good pineapple pizza for what it is. And likewise, I can leave a really bad pineapple pizza on the plate uneaten without a twinge of guilt. Most importantly, I must be open to the possibility that I will one day crave the very thing that I now avoid.
And so, to the book: It is death that forms the connective tissue throughout these stories. In fact, the narrator in the story "Tigers" reflects:
"Death connects everything. All things that are alive have the same end. The fragility of things, the wish that a parent or spouse has to keep a child or spouse safe. The prayers, religious or not, spoken or silent. These things have their own freezing point, where they turn to ice-death. And that freezing point is only one degree away from life, and often moves faster than blessings and prayers."
Scott Wolven sits comfortably among his forebears. Each story in Controlled Burn is cloaked in that dark shade of noir where each decision a character makes is not between a good choice and a bad choice, but between a bad choice and a slightly less but still pretty bad choice. Many of the stories overlap and share characters or situations or settings. The first half of the book is set in New England; the second half, in the West-mostly Idaho. Every story is staggeringly severe as men continually find themselves trapped - whether in prison, in addiction, in dangerous work, or in depraved psyches. And the creation of the character Red Green, a fellow that cooks meth and speaks in a drug-induced flurry, added some nice absurdity amongst the stoicism of most of the other characters. Wolven does have that touch where he can give you just enough imagery that scenes stay in your mind long after you've read them.
I did feel enclosed in the bleakness of these stories and, taken together as a collection, I was impressed by the consistent mood that built on itself to the final page. Controlled Burn was indeed controlled, as it managed to be pretty even throughout. All the more impressive, knowing that it was his debut. Still, nothing exactly knocked my socks off, but I didn't expect it to. It's not my flavor. And, although I'll not likely read this again, I am glad I gave it a shot and spent time in Wolven's hard-bitten world.
April 16, 2010
Outstanding collection of short stories!
I bought this book after reading only a few reviews and it paid off. "Controlled Burn" is one of the best short story collections I've read in awhile.
The book has thirteen stories, all worth reading!
After reading the first two stories, I felt the writing was great, but the stories were slow and very humble. Once you hit the third story "El Rey", the book never looks back and every story gets better and better.
Meth dealers, boxers, fugitives, alcoholics, fathers, sons, gangs, bounty hunters, dogs - their all here in "Controlled Burn".
A few that really blew me away -
Crank
Ball Lightning Reported
Atomic Supernova
The Copper Kings
Vigilance
A great collection, if you enjoy short stories, this book is a must read!
If you read "Controlled Burn" and enjoyed it, also check out "Poachers" by Tom Franklin & "The Hotel Eden" by Ron Carlson, both amazing books of short stories.
I bought this book after reading only a few reviews and it paid off. "Controlled Burn" is one of the best short story collections I've read in awhile.
The book has thirteen stories, all worth reading!
After reading the first two stories, I felt the writing was great, but the stories were slow and very humble. Once you hit the third story "El Rey", the book never looks back and every story gets better and better.
Meth dealers, boxers, fugitives, alcoholics, fathers, sons, gangs, bounty hunters, dogs - their all here in "Controlled Burn".
A few that really blew me away -
Crank
Ball Lightning Reported
Atomic Supernova
The Copper Kings
Vigilance
A great collection, if you enjoy short stories, this book is a must read!
If you read "Controlled Burn" and enjoyed it, also check out "Poachers" by Tom Franklin & "The Hotel Eden" by Ron Carlson, both amazing books of short stories.
May 26, 2018
It’s grim. In one of the stories somebody describes a nest of baby snakes. You see one eating the tail off another which is eating another snake’s head, and they’re twisting and writhing around each other in a fatal knot until you can’t tell one from another or who’s eating whom. Then the guy says “Some poor people think that’s life”. Life indeed is like that for the people in these stories. The book is unsettling but gripping. You also get the sense that the stories are plausible, that there are many people like this in small towns across the country. If you’ve been to the backwoods anywhere in America you’ll nod your head occasionally and think, “Yeah, I can see that”, or “Yeah, I’ve known people who have done that” - and it won’t make you feel good. But you won’t stop reading either.
March 2, 2010
Two really awesome stories, and a number of fine stories.
September 29, 2024
Recommended by Keith Rosson, whose Fever House I devoured, on the Talking Scared podcast, and danged if it isn't a literate, despairing take on marginality in the northeast, mostly Vermont, and Idaho, whose existential awareness and beautifully spare prose reminds me of all those minimalist classics, Denis Johnson and Richard Ford and Tobias Wolff, though with more chainsaws (there's really quite a lot here about cutting down trees) and probably equivalent amounts of drinking. There are a couple of consistent protagonists, with the major through-line being a let's call it ethical flexibility as to life goals and means of getting there. One set of stories involves a hilariously/scarily philosophical/absurdist crank dealer who's fully plugged into the meaninglessness of existence.
Everything feels contingent here--lives, jobs, purpose. In what I thought was the best story, "Atomic Supernova," the part-time crook we've seen assist in bounty-hunting in the previous story ends up getting drafted as a deputy in a retro Wild West bad-man hunt, accompanying a quick-drawing 87-year-old sheriff and his former colleague, who lost his hearing in an accident and is now prone to odd offhand remarks. It's random and existential and pointless and maybe a tiny bit heroic. The other standout, "Tigers," is just a heartbreaker about what purpose in life might mean and why it might count, for us if for nobody else. But all of these move far beyond the usual low-end milieu to sketch a profound vision of how we all strive, at sometimes briefly manage, to wrestle sense from senselessness.
Everything feels contingent here--lives, jobs, purpose. In what I thought was the best story, "Atomic Supernova," the part-time crook we've seen assist in bounty-hunting in the previous story ends up getting drafted as a deputy in a retro Wild West bad-man hunt, accompanying a quick-drawing 87-year-old sheriff and his former colleague, who lost his hearing in an accident and is now prone to odd offhand remarks. It's random and existential and pointless and maybe a tiny bit heroic. The other standout, "Tigers," is just a heartbreaker about what purpose in life might mean and why it might count, for us if for nobody else. But all of these move far beyond the usual low-end milieu to sketch a profound vision of how we all strive, at sometimes briefly manage, to wrestle sense from senselessness.
November 29, 2017
Like the firs, oaks and pines that populate Wolven's landscapes, here stands an impressive copse of interlinked short stories, with branches sometimes reaching into other stories, whether by associated characters or thematic resonances. Wolven's preoccupation in this collection is with prisons, drug addicts, and underbelly outliers busy negotiating ways to live in the margins. Wolven commissions his characters to complete oddballs tasks such as burying bodies in a prison field, torching fields of marijuana, feeding crystal meth habits, finding missing persons, dispensing illegal gas, and masterminding aliases to escape the large hand of the law. Wolven's ambitious scope brings to mind Alice Munro's work and in its grittiness I'm reminded of Raymond Carver. While there's good strength in the middle stories, what resonated most for me was the delicious stubborn confidence of the matriarch in Taciturnity. It's easy to imagine Ida wagging a finger in Wolven's direction, urging him to get on with a novel now the horizon is cleared of pesky oaks. So it's back to Wolven - will he?
December 3, 2024
Really excellent collection of short stories. Reminded me strongly of Jesus’ Son by Denis Johnson. Very gritty slice of life stories about hard men, often down on their luck. The language here sings. I'm so glad I pulled this from my short story shelf.
June 4, 2018
Tough, violent stories as uncompromising and unforgiving as stone, with glimmers of beauty if you look hard enough. These characters inhabit a New England most people will never even know they haven't seen.
August 17, 2023
I usually don’t read short stories. I read this because I knew the author. These stories painted a bleak, barren world in such a strong way. It painted worlds of black and white devoid of color and powerful hopeless images of people struggling to survive (or not).
January 31, 2018
Brilliant collection of stories. Wolven knows how to spin a good yarn. There are many moments of pure poetry. I wish he would produce more.
July 9, 2019
Good noir-type stories. Sparse writing, gritty characters, and moral ambiguity.
abandoned-or-dnfed-or-not-for-me
July 18, 2022DNF’ed after reading the first and eponymous stories. Not extremely terrible, just meh.
May 9, 2025
I frickin loved the wild stories in this book!
June 26, 2025
Beautiful, lyrical crime stories about the down-and-out blue collar and the poor, most of which just trying to survive in an ugly, chaotic world that necessitates their condition. Amazing stuff.
July 30, 2017
I wasn't expecting much from this book. It has been on my shelves for the longest time because it was a random gift.
Finally this summer I decided to give it a go and I wasn't disappointed and a couple of times I was even pleasantly surprised.
Though, like most short story collections, it is uneven, there were a few standouts. It might not have blown my mind, but I am glad I read it.
Finally this summer I decided to give it a go and I wasn't disappointed and a couple of times I was even pleasantly surprised.
Though, like most short story collections, it is uneven, there were a few standouts. It might not have blown my mind, but I am glad I read it.
January 16, 2011
The collection is divided into two sections: The Northeast Kingdom, with the stories all set in the northeast, and The Fugitive West, of which most of the stories take place in Northern Idaho. On the surface, this collection delivers on the promise of the title and subtitle. However, as good as the writing is (the plotting, the snappy dialog, the strong sense of place), outside of a couple stories, the collection didn't really affect me in any way.
I've thought about this quite a bit, because when I'm overly critical I want to make sure I have a leg to stand on, and I think the problems I have with the collection stem mostly from the characters. Several of the stories in this collection feature the same characters, but even the ones that don't feel very similar to me. Of course a collection like this is peopled with similar "types" of characters--and I'm okay with that--but I have problem with the characters not being individuals. I suppose what I'm getting at is that at the end of each story, I didn't care enough about the characters. It wasn't because they were meth dealers, bounty hunters, liars, or alcoholics, but because I didn't know enough about them to care. Most of the stories start off in motion, which is good, but through the course of each story I never felt like I got to know the characters past their "type." Most of the characters are on the run living under assumed names and there are allusions to their shady pasts, but outside of a few exceptions, that's all we get about them. In stories like the ones Wolven writes, I want to know these men, know what makes them tick, what decisions they made that drove them to do the thing that sent them on the run. That's real conflict, and to me, it's even more compelling than a drug deal gone bad, or a couple of guys hunting someone who has skipped bail.
Though I've been critical of the collection, Wolven can obviously write. "Outside Work Detail," "Tigers," and "The Copper Kings" are three really strong stories, stories that provide not only action but pack an emotional wallop that the weaker stories of the bunch are missing. I believe he has a novel forthcoming, and based on the stories above, I'd be interested in reading it when it comes out.
For more, see my blog: http://thestoryisthecure.blogspot.com/
I've thought about this quite a bit, because when I'm overly critical I want to make sure I have a leg to stand on, and I think the problems I have with the collection stem mostly from the characters. Several of the stories in this collection feature the same characters, but even the ones that don't feel very similar to me. Of course a collection like this is peopled with similar "types" of characters--and I'm okay with that--but I have problem with the characters not being individuals. I suppose what I'm getting at is that at the end of each story, I didn't care enough about the characters. It wasn't because they were meth dealers, bounty hunters, liars, or alcoholics, but because I didn't know enough about them to care. Most of the stories start off in motion, which is good, but through the course of each story I never felt like I got to know the characters past their "type." Most of the characters are on the run living under assumed names and there are allusions to their shady pasts, but outside of a few exceptions, that's all we get about them. In stories like the ones Wolven writes, I want to know these men, know what makes them tick, what decisions they made that drove them to do the thing that sent them on the run. That's real conflict, and to me, it's even more compelling than a drug deal gone bad, or a couple of guys hunting someone who has skipped bail.
Though I've been critical of the collection, Wolven can obviously write. "Outside Work Detail," "Tigers," and "The Copper Kings" are three really strong stories, stories that provide not only action but pack an emotional wallop that the weaker stories of the bunch are missing. I believe he has a novel forthcoming, and based on the stories above, I'd be interested in reading it when it comes out.
For more, see my blog: http://thestoryisthecure.blogspot.com/
August 2, 2009
I liked this book because it was easily read and served its purpose - I needed to be entertained during a recent 6 hour flight. Aside from that, it was just OK. It is a series of short stories about convicts, people struggling to survive in society, crystal methane addicition, and other uplifitng topics. Some of the stories were interrelated, with consistent themes and characters.
The stories were entertaining but lacked a point and ended abruptly, often without a conclusion. It almost seemed like the author lost interest in writting a story, and looked for the first possible exit.
The story telling was effective, though. The environment the stories were based in were harsh, and the author did a good job of allowing you to feel the harshness. Overall, it was halfway decent.
The stories were entertaining but lacked a point and ended abruptly, often without a conclusion. It almost seemed like the author lost interest in writting a story, and looked for the first possible exit.
The story telling was effective, though. The environment the stories were based in were harsh, and the author did a good job of allowing you to feel the harshness. Overall, it was halfway decent.
June 15, 2019
Its strange, holding a masterpiece in hands. Especially a recent one. I can feel its power and its freshness and the way it bends and twists the story like a never-ending highway.
Its strength comes from reading the stories close together. Perhaps in one sitting or several sittings instead of bleeding it out throughout a year. That way, it becomes a winding journey with no clear timeline.
This is, without a doubt a noir collection. I already wonder what this will inspire in future generations. My biggest question then, is where did this author go? Never published before, never published after.
Its strength comes from reading the stories close together. Perhaps in one sitting or several sittings instead of bleeding it out throughout a year. That way, it becomes a winding journey with no clear timeline.
This is, without a doubt a noir collection. I already wonder what this will inspire in future generations. My biggest question then, is where did this author go? Never published before, never published after.
January 18, 2009
Incredible! Don't let the bad subtitle scare you away. Strong, crafted writing that just happens to be about lowlifes and crystal meth dealers. It chillingly feels like the future of America. Answers (somewhat) the question how did this country kind of elect Bush twice. The vacuum that exists in most of this country is being filled by worse and worse mind searing drugs. Come on, you can stretch out a lifetime on smack and alcohol......
October 19, 2009
This collection wasn't what I was expecting. I assumed it would be violent, masculine, and thrilling, which it was at times, but there was also some emotion that surprised me. Some moments are really touching, and Wolven's writing is extremely moving in some of the stories. Some stories were amazing... ("Controlled Burn", "Outside Work Detail", and "The Copper Kings"), and some stories were good, but the rest were just OK.
July 6, 2012
Good god. Talk about being bowled over by story.
Wolven explores these little microcosms in each story, interspersed with recurring characters and locations. The result is stunning, both in the unblinking but humane way he shows the characters and the depth of story he gets in such a short page count. I think it's interesting that Controlled Burn was recommended to me as Rural Noir, but that's a different conversation, I think.
Excellent, excellent read.
Wolven explores these little microcosms in each story, interspersed with recurring characters and locations. The result is stunning, both in the unblinking but humane way he shows the characters and the depth of story he gets in such a short page count. I think it's interesting that Controlled Burn was recommended to me as Rural Noir, but that's a different conversation, I think.
Excellent, excellent read.
October 12, 2009
Not as good as I expected. Wolven's ear for "yocal" is good enough to fool urban readers but not yocals themselves. I'd heard great things about how authentic his characters are, but I found them flat and made-up. You don't care about them that much, and the shock value is minimal. Read Dead Boys instead.
January 15, 2016
A truly excellent collection of short stories. Wolven's style is reminiscent of Hemingway, with content reminiscent of Cormac McCarthy... brutal, violent, masculine stories of hard men in hard circumstances. I read Controlled Burn in a day and a half, and definitely look forward to reading more of Wolven's work in the future. Highly recommended.
July 8, 2012
A collection of loosely-connected stories about, as the cover says, "prison, crime, and men." And while the subject matter is gritty, the writing is far from hard-boiled. The focus is on the inevitable, inescapable consequences of bad decisions. Wolven's understated style lends emotional weight to each of the characters' struggles.
Favorites: "Tigers", "Underdogs", and "Vigilance".
Favorites: "Tigers", "Underdogs", and "Vigilance".
March 12, 2007
The world of Scott Wolven's loggers, drug runners, burnouts and fighters inspires itself--bad guys doing bad things. Its characters are their own misguided heroes, and it was clearly written by a person who wrote the book he wanted to read. There's something to be said for that.
April 16, 2008
Some stories were excellent, others just so-so. I would like to read a new collection by him if it comes out. I like his hard-hitting prose. Tough, gripping, outdoor literature like Pinckney Benedict, Breece Pancake, or Larry Brown.
August 9, 2009
I've already read many of Scott Wolven's short stories in the annual Best American Mysteries series edited by Otto Penzler et al. This is a great collection of short stories for anyone who appreciates gritty literary fiction. Can't wait for his next book.
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