Honeymoon and Other Stories

by Kevin Canty

Kevin Canty is a master of the short story, a writer whose work has been compared to that of Flannery O'Connor and Raymond Carver, but always with the understanding that Canty's is strikingly new, cool, and real. Now in Honeymoon, after two novels, Kevin Canty returns to short fiction, his first collection since his debut A Stranger in this World, a book that was hailed as "Superb: These tautly structured stories breathe with sharp, distilled intelligence."

Honeymoon is a book about love, about lovers and would-be lovers exploring unlikely alliances, all of them toeing a certain eventful edge, a decision between rational restraint and something altogether different. In the title story, a man leaves his lover's wedding with the bride's ex-girlfriend; in "Flipper" a young escapee from "fat camp" discovers a different kind of hunger while enjoying a pregnant teen's gifts of forbidden chocolate; in "Aquarium," a thirty-eight-year old woman who claims to "follow the straight and narrow" tries to resist seducing her fifteen-year-old nephew again.

Revealing the hidden longings and quirky needs of both men and women with a tough sensitivity and deep, sometimes biting humor, Honeymoon presents a masterful writer purely at home in his form, yet continuing to push himself and his stories to their limits with enthusiasm and daring.

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, Literary Fiction, Americana, American

161 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2001

About the author

Kevin Canty writes novels and short stories. He is a faculty member in the English department at the University of Montana at Missoula, where he currently resides. He received his Masters degree in English from the University of Florida in 1990, and M.F.A. in creative writing from the University of Arizona in 1993.

Reviews

[StarMan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some really good shorts here; all were 3 to 4+ stars for me. These are not really uplifting or made-me-smile tales, but more of the gritty/realistic slice-of-life types.

VERDICT: Close enough to 4 stars to make it so.

RECOMMENDED? Yes, if you enjoy contemporary, well-written short fiction that's not fluffy and happy.

[Faith Hope Love · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Honeymoon and other stories”
By Kevin Canty
Vintage Books
New York, 2002


In Honeymoon: And Other Stories stories by Kevin Canty, a world of daring love and uncontrollable desire take control of many people that are just like you and me. In this world, we are on a search for ourselves and try to find out who we really are through the trials and tribulations we claim to be part of our lives. We smile, cry, and laugh, but we in turn experience pleasure, pain, anger and sadness all within a matter of mere seconds. Kevin Canty takes this perspective of the world to another level with his short stories in this novel including Tokyo, my love, Aquarium, Flipper, Honeymoon, Carolina Beach, Red Dress, Sleepers Holding Hands, Little Debbie, Scarecrow, Little Palaces, and Girlfriend Hit by Bus. Taking a glance at the titles, it’s almost impossible to see how each story could be about love or barely a hint of passion. That’s just how clever Canty is. It’s almost like a mind trick on the reader. I know it was for me.

When I choose a novel to read, the title is what grabs my attention and with Honeymoon, it compelled me to want to find out what the mystery was behind the title. I wanted to discover what emotions it would cause me to feel and how I would look at the world after reading such a book. I can tell you right now, it gave me a different understanding about the world and the love that one can accidentally fall into day by day whether it be about an overweight boy just trying to find someone that is willing to understand him like in Flipper or a woman who has problems helping her nephew to be a better person only to disconnect herself from rational thought and her inner self in Aquarium. Each story in its unique way has a love that encompasses all that we try to search for in ourselves with the help of exploring others in the process.

Each story in a small way had that impact on me. I could learn from each character’s mistakes whether it is from Dr. Parker’s overwhelming lust in Sleepers Holding Hands or Evelyn’s confused and weary self in Little Palaces. At the end of each tale, there was always an afterthought for me as I pondered why a character chose to act this way or that. With all the stories combined, the answer is clear. They all acted on the impulse of love and wanting to feel needed. The desire to take a chance on love only led to each character finding out who they were. They were all really amazing stories to read as they were all different, but still one in the same. I strongly recommend this book to those out there on their journey to understanding who they are as they simultaneously try to grasp the meaning of love. I know that I now have a deeper appreciation for love and the struggle one has to go through to find the right person to share it with. Honeymoon: And Other Stories embraces the meaningful and soulful life of people who truly are like ourselves, just like you and me, trying to find those moments in time that can never be replaced, not for anything.

[Marica · Rating 3 out of 5]

Il sogno americano?
Il libro è molto ben scritto, ma nel complesso non mi ha convinto. C’è un vasto campionario infelicità. L’infelicità è parte della vita e bisogna imparare ad elaborarla: tuttavia sarebbe meglio diversificare l’offerta. Diversi racconti mi sembrano deboli e mi pare che vogliano stupire il lettore con una trovata paradossale. Altri sono più onesti e mi piacciono molto di più. La storia dell’uomo che si innamora di una donna che esce (forse) da una grave malattia può non essere nuova, ma mi pare che abbia senso ed è particolarmente bella la riflessione finale del protagonista (che non dirò). Un altro racconto che mi sembra convincente è quello del bambino molto grasso che viene spedito in vacanza in un campeggio per bambini molto grassi, dove probabilmente mangiano solo foglie di insalata: il bambino è solo e infelice, si potrebbe consigliare la consultazione di uno psichiatra infantile in alternativa all’internamento in un campo. Gli altri personaggi mi sembrano non sconfitti (che implica l’aver preso delle iniziative) ma rassegnati: si circondano di casse di birra e bottiglie di whiskey, cercano di cogliere l’attimo ma in modo futile, sognano patate fritte e gelati (non era questo il sogno americano). Insomma, mi aspettavo che si tenessero la mano nel sonno, ma non c’è questo spirito, nel complesso. Si potrebbe osservare che non si può obbligare i personaggi della letteratura ad agire secondo i miei disegni: è vero, lo ammetto. Non condivido molti personaggi: però mi è piaciuto il mostro alato protagonista del primo racconto - quello sì che è vitale- forse l’averlo inserito fa sfigurare gli altri. Forse sarebbe stato meglio metterlo in fondo.

[Arjun · Rating 5 out of 5]

A tremendous collection of spare stories. Canty's characters are people about to make a bad decision or reeling from the effects of one. He creates stories and worlds with a remarkable economy of words; he dives in and dives right back out and as a reader you just hang on for the ride and then marvel at how quickly and efficiently the writing has succeeded in moving you completely. Highly recommended.

[Ffiamma · Rating 4 out of 5]

veramente una gran raccolta. storie delicate e terribili, come sospese- non c'è mai nulla di troppo spiegato eppure ogni cosa appare chiara.
i migliori: il vestito rosso, lo spaventapasseri e carolina beach.

[Robert Morgan Fisher · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read this guy--short story master.

[Amber · Rating 5 out of 5]

Kevin Canty writes with brutal honesty. He is the kind of author who enters characters' heads and talks for them instead of taking a sketcher's position. It is rather surprising that Kevin Canty is described (in another book though) as "...in the tradition of the works of Raymond Carver and Richard Ford...". In fact, I happened to read "Honeymoon" and "Rock springs" simultaneously, one in my office at daytime and one at home at night. The contrast of the two books is just as stark as the the background light. True that both smell like desperate and depressing. But Ford's desperation and depression come from the situation, a dark abyss, or a dead end. The characters nevertheless hope for something good and bright. It is the gap between the overwhelming reality and the looming vision that fills the air with darkness gradually flooding over the witnesses - the author, and the readers who watch through the author's eyes. For Canty, the characters simply do not hope. They only desire. Without a third-party 's view, there is no sense of orientation, not a direction called "up" to which one can cast a look . All the darkness comes from the very inside, unpretentious, undisguised, escaping the shaping force of any norms. If one has to trace the tradition of Honeymoon, then maybe Camus. They both restore the mental reality. Camus goes all the way towards philosophical indifference and absurdity. Canty stays with worldly conflicts. His characters are screaming "don't tell me what I want" and "don't tell me how I feel".

What really reminds me of Camus is the last story in the book "Girlfriend hit by a bus", which is actually the third story I read. The first two are "Tokyo, my love" and "Honeymoon", whose emotions are so imposing for me that fail to impress. I would have given up the book hadn't I read the "Girlfriend hit by a bus". This is almost an O'Henry type's story that operates over a crank, but the spirit is just to the opposite. It is devilishly interesting to compare "Girlfriend hit by a bus" with "The gift of Magi", with both trying to talk about love in a spark towards the very end.

As I read on, the other stories are less of the O'Henry type but still with that kind of grin. Nobody can fool Canty around. He writes about everything improper and let his characters fall freely after some vain struggling. He is peeling off what is cultivated and revealing the primitive and the untamed. Nothing but dark, intriguingly dark.

[Dan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Awesome book of short stories

[Jennifer · Rating 3 out of 5]

There were stories I enjoyed and ones I just felt confused about. Much made me question the perspective I should see the stories from. A lot made me feel the characters full of emotion seemed flat and dismissive. Many enjoyed this book and perhaps I've read one too many deep short story books lately.

[Meghan C. · Rating 3 out of 5]

If you like lyrical language put to sad ends, then these stories are for you. For everyone else be forewarned, these stories are not meant to be enjoyed. There might be a turn of phrase here, or a quip there that brings a wry smile, but on the whole the mood is world-weary, the perspective is Brechtian but without the jazz. Life within these stories is nasty, brutish and short and what beauty there is to be had is only glimpsed out of the darkening window of a moving car.

Canty’s writing here is quality, handcrafted prose that ring with natural dialog and earned emotional conflict during moments that are at their core, tragic and universal. His characters face personal crises with one foot planted firmly in despair and the other in a kind of wry cynicism. If they feel pain, then they also know how mundane their pain is. If they are gutted by life, they are also aware that everyone is gutted by life. They oscillate between feeling special (a phrase more than one character utters in more than one story) and feeling average, maybe even hackneyed.

Canty susses out a truism we all feel, whether or not we can translate that feeling into words. There is something undeniably heroic in the simple act of facing the darkest parts of life. But that heroism is laced with a thick strand of irony. Because after all, when life gives you a shit sandwich, what else can you do but try to eat it?

On the other hand, to see this theme explored and revisited again and again for 11 stories (10 if you don’t count the weird, Godzilla ode to Tokyo in the beginning), the truth of the message begins to feel more like “truth.” The collection starts feeling like it wants to be Literary with a capital L. The first time I read this book it was for an advanced creative writing class in college, and as far as academia is concerned it seems like most modern fiction can’t be taken seriously unless there is a sense of detachment and also a willingness to “get real” about the dark things in life. Of course there’s a paradox in there. You can’t engage fully and get to the heart of something if you keep an ironic distance.

If any of these self-contained units were opened up (say, into the length of a novel), I don’t believe the narrative voice would be able to sustain a longer piece. There’s no fun to be had here, no moments that capture the joyful absurdity of life. Not that this collection doesn't try for the absurd. For all of the naturalistic impulses in the dialog, the plots of these pieces dance right up against the line of surreal (for instance, there's a story about Jim Beam's marriage to like-minded corporate logo, Little Debbie). Which I suppose from 30,000 feet up look like part of the mission statement; life is hard because it is random and opaque. But on the ground, these plot beats feel authorly and contrived. “You didn’t see that coming,” the stories seem to declare. It doesn’t help that certain markers of Serious Fiction, like booze and death, clutter up every story.

Some things are better in small packages, and the stories of this collection have a greater emotional impact as individual tapas plates rather than trying to present the whole as a meal. I recommend “Flipper” and “Little Palaces.”

[Karisa Wodz · Rating 3 out of 5]

Honeymoon: And Other Stories
By Kevin Canty
Vintage Books
New York, 2002

Love: The True, The Real, The Void

If you have ever longed for something that you didn’t really want, or ever pursued avenues of happiness, knowing that heartache was soon to follow- then you will be a fan of Kevin Canty’s Honeymoon: And Other Stories. Do not be fooled by the title that omits visions of white-satin sheets full of lovemaking and bliss- Honeymoon contains eleven stories of raw emotions, realistic love and tangible fears.

Tokyo, My Love is a light hearted tale about the love for a country. Understanding that Canty often used pop culture references in his work, it can be assumed that the narrator is a very well educated, Godzilla. This story, being the kick off for the novel, threw me off as a reader; I found this opening piece did not fully capture the same brilliance of the stories succeeding it.

Aquarium, a story of a recovered drug abuser, Olive, transcends into a relationship with her nephew, Robbie, a current drug enthusiast, carries a similar theme with Flipper, a story of a young boy sent away to fat camp for over eating. These stories circle relationships that are created out of a need for something greater. Olive does not really want to be in a relationship with her nephew, but her judgment is clouded by her inner voids she so desperately wants to fill. Flipper, a nickname given to the overweight teen, forms a relationship with food. He eats and eats to fill a void that is within himself, it is not until he meets a pregnant thirteen year old from a neighboring catholic camp, that his hunger is revealed to be an emotional malnourishment rather than a desire to merely over indulge.

Keeping with the theme of over indulging and substituting food for feelings, Little Debbie introduces a married couple with a very relatable love: the wife, being an ex-fat person who employs self-control and dedication every day for her cause; and the husband, who happily gives into his desires for alcohol and cigars. She works out and sacrifices to stay thin, which makes her happy, but even so, she pushes her husband away with past insecurities, which in turn makes him insecure:

“So I get a beer and then -- because I'm sad, because my wife has just turned me out, because tomorrow is Sunday and besides I-don't-give-a-shit is descending.”

I found this story to be a more realistic tale of love, insecurities and heart ache. With an eye for detail, Canty wonderfully portrays how love can so easily become lost or turned away without the need to over-dramatize.

Each short story focuses on love, loss and filling a void. As a writer, Canty’s novel was a great example showing that love stories DON’T have to be written clean and “pretty”. His attention to detail and stream of consciousness writing style, breaks literary guidelines for a more appreciative and raw reading experience.

I recommend this book to anyone; it’s an easy read for all and a great read for aspiring writers.

[Rosa Lee Mullins · Rating 5 out of 5]

How do you react when you see someone you secretly love to hate? This question goes through the minds of each of the characters in Kevin Canty’s short stories collection. The eleven stories in this collection are of people who everyone is familiar with and can relate to, as well as people who are so awkward that they make the story hard to believe. The characters are involved in awkward relationships, bothered by each other, and are unable to properly interact with other humans. Some characters include an alcoholic that has difficulty in restraining from drinking, a woman addicted to cocaine who begins to develop a relationship with her nephew who is addicted to heroin, a young boy at a fat camp who begins to have feelings for a pregnant teenager, a man who cannot find it within himself to break up with his girlfriend until one day she is hit by a bus and dies, and a little boy who envies his mother to the point that he decides to dress in her clothes. Recurring themes within this collection are overcoming temptations, compromising relationships, and compassion for human life. Canty’s stories are written from several points of views – first person, third person, and in one story, Godzilla is the narrator. The dialogue between characters seems normal so as to make the characters’ problems seem outrageous as well as miniscule. Canty dives into each story as if the narrator and reader are already familiar with each other. He offers blunt descriptions of people to make them seem all the more real. He makes his characters vain, have bad hobbies and habits, and what’s worse is that he makes them act on those bad impulses that people are supposed to shy from. There is chaos in his stories, embarrassing moments, disappointment, fear, anger, annoyance, jealousy, struggle, and a fight to show that while humanity is weak, humans are strong beyond belief. He makes use of the “sighing last line,” which offers a moment for readers to feel sympathy for the main character such as in "Red Dress," where the narrator says, “And this is all the childhood I will ever have,” as well as in "Aquarium," where the narrator says, “She’s where she needs to be,” and in "Girlfriend Hit by Bus," where the narrator says, “He will never get a chance to tell her; Christa, who would have loved this story so much.” The stories are syncopated and off-rhythm and the characters are drunk in their own stupidity. However, Canty writes their stories so powerfully that readers leave with a greater impression of life and humanity – a greater understanding of the struggles that humans face, of the diversity of everyone’s struggles, and the power of diversity.



Honeymoon and Other Stories
By Kevin Canty
Published by Doubleday
New York, 2001

[Laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

Honeymoon: And Other Stories is an excellent collection of short stories. What I absolutely love about each of these stories is that the writing is crisp, precise and powerful and that each one moves at a steady pace that delivers as much impact as possible without dragging on and on and on. Also, I feel that Canty creates characters that are deep, that long for understanding and love. He surrounds these characters with powerful emotions, desires, and he creates dialogue that is just as sharp and that gets straight to the heart of a reader, which I have learned, is essential to keeping a reader engaged and receptive to the true message of a work. Indeed, I've learned that the key to delivering a message in a work of fiction is to not overload the reader with it, and Canty has proven that he is the master of message delivery in a story.

[Paul · Rating 2 out of 5]

I mean, most of the stories here were just plain BAD. Like, seriously and very and all-out bad. I think the biggest problem is that the stories never go anywhere—most are just ideas or concepts, but contain no actual narrative. They never move beyond a single scene. The one story that does, the penultimate, rises far above the rest, if only for this reason. The opening three, though, holy Jesus. Just basically terrible. There's also stuff like nearly every story is told in the present tense, which is just annoying and totally unnecessary (and most fall into past tense for a sentence or two, which I guess is the editor's fault, but still). The sense of place present in Canty's debut is totally missing—in fact the stories are overall pretty much bare of all aspects of a good story. Pretty annoying. I'd say don't read this book. But I'd also say check out Canty's other work, since why not.

[Simone Subliminalpop · Rating 5 out of 5]

Era da tempo che non leggevo una raccolta così buona e sarà perché è un autore che tira le MIE corde, ma questo libro ve lo consiglio spassionatamente. <br />Canty ha quella capacità, che io amo particolarmente, di creare un’atmosfera e le sensazioni che vi gravitano attorno grazie ai piccoli gesti, dialoghi precisi, un ritmo in grado di tenere viva la tensione narrativa e tutto questo senza urlare, senza fuochi d’artifizio.

[Rvparks Parks · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not as good as previous efforts, beautiful, nonetheless.

[Josh · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not as good as A Stranger In This World. Read that instead.

[Kendall]

Great writer. Discovered by reading a review at Salon.com.

[Jon · Rating 5 out of 5]

X

[Chloe Harlow · Rating 4 out of 5]

great writing

[Sutter Lee · Rating 5 out of 5]

Superb. Short stories don't get any better than this. His writing, stories, stun me.
I'd previously read some of them in New Yorker, GQ and a volume from Tin House.
Looking forward to reading his novels.

[Bobparr · Rating 4 out of 5]

Secco, impeccabile, bravo. Lampi su situazioni improbabili (non della improbabilità di Monica Drake, che è invece finta) di persone possibili. Gli USA sono il giusto terreno per queste fantasie, che spesso scivolano nel sesso di una sera, che si nutrono di riferimenti marveliani, che prendono a pretesto il North Carolina per parlare di clima. Peccato per l'assenza di altre traduzioni dello stesso autore.