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Tacoma Stories
“Richard Wiley is one of our best writers. These stories satisfy in the way that brilliant short fiction always satisfies; one feels as if one has absorbed the expansive vision and drama of a novel. Read slowly, and I bet you’ll want to read again.” —Richard Bausch, author of Peace and Living in the Weather of the World
“It’s a strange and winsome feeling I have, reading Tacoma Stories, the blue sensation that Richard Wiley has made me homesick for a place I’ve never been, mourning the loss of friends I never had, in a life where each and every one of us is loved, however imperfectly. Think Sherwood Anderson inhabiting Raymond Carver’s Northwest and you’ll have a clear picture of Wiley’s accomplishment.” —Bob Shacochis, author of Easy in the Islands and The Woman Who Lost Her Soul
On St. Patrick’s Day in 1968, sixteen people sit in Pat’s Tavern, drink green beer, flirt, rib each other, and eventually go home in (mostly) different directions. In the stories that follow, which span 1958 to the present, Richard Wiley pops back into the lives of this colorful cast of characters—sometimes into their pasts, sometimes into their futures—and explores the ways in which their individual narratives indelibly weave together. At the heart of it all lies Tacoma, Washington, a town full of eccentricities and citizens as unique as they are universal. The Tacoma of Tacoma Stories might be harboring paranoid former CIA operatives and wax replicas of dead husbands, but it is also a place with all the joys and pains one could find in any town, anytime and anywhere.
Richard Wiley is the author of eight novels including Bob Stevenson; Soldiers in Hiding, winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction and the Washington State Book Award; and Ahmed’s Revenge, winner of the Maria Thomas Fiction Award. Professor emeritus at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, he divides his time between Los Angeles, California, and Tacoma, Washington.
“It’s a strange and winsome feeling I have, reading Tacoma Stories, the blue sensation that Richard Wiley has made me homesick for a place I’ve never been, mourning the loss of friends I never had, in a life where each and every one of us is loved, however imperfectly. Think Sherwood Anderson inhabiting Raymond Carver’s Northwest and you’ll have a clear picture of Wiley’s accomplishment.” —Bob Shacochis, author of Easy in the Islands and The Woman Who Lost Her Soul
On St. Patrick’s Day in 1968, sixteen people sit in Pat’s Tavern, drink green beer, flirt, rib each other, and eventually go home in (mostly) different directions. In the stories that follow, which span 1958 to the present, Richard Wiley pops back into the lives of this colorful cast of characters—sometimes into their pasts, sometimes into their futures—and explores the ways in which their individual narratives indelibly weave together. At the heart of it all lies Tacoma, Washington, a town full of eccentricities and citizens as unique as they are universal. The Tacoma of Tacoma Stories might be harboring paranoid former CIA operatives and wax replicas of dead husbands, but it is also a place with all the joys and pains one could find in any town, anytime and anywhere.
Richard Wiley is the author of eight novels including Bob Stevenson; Soldiers in Hiding, winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction and the Washington State Book Award; and Ahmed’s Revenge, winner of the Maria Thomas Fiction Award. Professor emeritus at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, he divides his time between Los Angeles, California, and Tacoma, Washington.
- GenresFictionShort Stories
272 pages, Kindle Edition
Published February 12, 2019
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Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
January 20, 2019
Because I don't like to read too much about a book before I read the book, I was disappointed by the first story in this book. I thought it rather boring, a bunch of people setting in a bar. And I HATED the second story, involving a hapless goat. But as I read on, I discovered that the people in the bar had stories to tell, and that these stories wound around one another, and the relationships were often convoluted. While it was interesting to see how the lives intersected, most of the people were sad characters living lives they disliked. There was a bit of a surprise in the last story, “Out for a Drink.” And I liked the Tacoma setting. But I didn't love the book and was happy to move on to something else when I finished it.
August 7, 2019
This is an absolutely great collection of connected short stories. Tacoma itself, a real Tacoma, is as important as any of the other recurring characters. The first story takes place in 1968 in a bar near the University of Puget Sound where all all of the recurring characters who all know each other are either working or celebrating St Patrick's Day. The last story is set 48 years later in the same bar where three of the characters meet to discuss old times and a recently released book written by the first story's narrator, which is a collection of short stories based on his friends from the bar.
The intervening stories take place at different times, each story includes the year of the story in its title and feature one of the recurring characters, a charm of the book is that all the characters have moved on with their different lives with occasional connections with the others. . My favorite story is Mary's last date in a series of blind dates she got from an online dating service, the date starts as bad as all the others before an endearing charm takes over; it is only in a later story that we learn how the date actually turned out.
The charm of this collection was enhanced for me when I googled Becky Welles, the true life daughter of Orson Welles and Rita Hayworth who is introduced in the first story but does not become a recurring character. The google search revealed an interview about her real life in Tacoma with a highlight being the friends and the fun times she had at a local tavern.
This is an absolutely great collection
The intervening stories take place at different times, each story includes the year of the story in its title and feature one of the recurring characters, a charm of the book is that all the characters have moved on with their different lives with occasional connections with the others. . My favorite story is Mary's last date in a series of blind dates she got from an online dating service, the date starts as bad as all the others before an endearing charm takes over; it is only in a later story that we learn how the date actually turned out.
The charm of this collection was enhanced for me when I googled Becky Welles, the true life daughter of Orson Welles and Rita Hayworth who is introduced in the first story but does not become a recurring character. The google search revealed an interview about her real life in Tacoma with a highlight being the friends and the fun times she had at a local tavern.
This is an absolutely great collection
February 6, 2019
This was a really unusual short story book - usually when I read a story I feel a little frustrated because I want more. With this book each story can stand alone, but they are so much better together. In the first story we meet a group of people in a bar. The following stories revisit these people at very different times. Some of the people remelt. or re-interact, some do not. They are all interesting, some very quirky, some weird.
It is not an easy way to read a book - I found it hard to keep track of who was who - I had to keep skimming the first story, but it was worth the effort. Some stories moved me more than others - my favorite was "eHarmony Date @Chez Panisse" which I think everyone should have to read - especially in this era of online dating and social media!
Thanks to Bellevue Literary Press and LibraryThing for the advanced copy! I never compromise my revues regardless of how I acquire a book!
It is not an easy way to read a book - I found it hard to keep track of who was who - I had to keep skimming the first story, but it was worth the effort. Some stories moved me more than others - my favorite was "eHarmony Date @Chez Panisse" which I think everyone should have to read - especially in this era of online dating and social media!
Thanks to Bellevue Literary Press and LibraryThing for the advanced copy! I never compromise my revues regardless of how I acquire a book!
January 12, 2019
Clearly, Wiley has distilled the essence of the Tacoma's North End and tiny lower Browns Point, and it is a fragrant flower of familiarity for anyone living in the region, past and present.
Read this in one sitting if possible so the vast cast of colorful characters, followed across decades, stay fresh in your mind; there are many. Minor memorable characters too such as the guilt-ridden man suffering from Bean's facedown syndrome and the fisticuffed twins, Fred and Red Dye, more finely nuance the stories. The irreverent hilarity of Perry's accidental goat murder and the presence of the life-sized, professor's, body-double mannequin attending the come-to-Jesus Kant family dinner party made for laugh-out-loud amusement and round out the powerful character development found in all these stories.
Wiley brilliantly connects the stories in surprising and satisfyingly subtle motifs. Locale motifs cleverly pepper and further solidify the Tacoma settings of the stories such as famous and infamous houses, where one should eat a Frisko Freeze burger, and the frigid cold of Commencement Bay (e.g., Perry and the goat, Cindy's near baptism). Wine motifs entertain throughout as well: Sauvignon Blanc-Cabernet Sauvignon, post-coital wine-and-crackers-in-bed followed by a more dignified amarone, and a courage-bolstering fast glass before meeting a twelfth and final e-harmony date. Indeed, the strange bedfellows of marriage and romantic relationships are a glue that bind these stories together too, as Mrs. Wilcox so wisely noted, "There should be a lemon law for marriage." While, the strange motifs around causes of death ("She died of gettin' a pillow in her mouth") and funerals - even a pet goat's - contrast all too starkly with ghosts of the very real victims of Ted Bundy. Finally, the many car reference motifs were far beyond this reviewer's vehicle knowledge.
Tools of the storytellers' trade that enhance and reward the reader with memorable descriptions - a buttery vibrator, the mossy morel-carpeted forest, and "sexy as a trimmed out librarian" - create vivid imagery.
On several occasions readers are challenged to flip back to previous stories to connect a past with a current story in these collected works but readers never doubt the authenticity of time and especially place in this wonderful tribute to the colorful and dignified, often misunderstood, city of Tacoma.
Read this in one sitting if possible so the vast cast of colorful characters, followed across decades, stay fresh in your mind; there are many. Minor memorable characters too such as the guilt-ridden man suffering from Bean's facedown syndrome and the fisticuffed twins, Fred and Red Dye, more finely nuance the stories. The irreverent hilarity of Perry's accidental goat murder and the presence of the life-sized, professor's, body-double mannequin attending the come-to-Jesus Kant family dinner party made for laugh-out-loud amusement and round out the powerful character development found in all these stories.
Wiley brilliantly connects the stories in surprising and satisfyingly subtle motifs. Locale motifs cleverly pepper and further solidify the Tacoma settings of the stories such as famous and infamous houses, where one should eat a Frisko Freeze burger, and the frigid cold of Commencement Bay (e.g., Perry and the goat, Cindy's near baptism). Wine motifs entertain throughout as well: Sauvignon Blanc-Cabernet Sauvignon, post-coital wine-and-crackers-in-bed followed by a more dignified amarone, and a courage-bolstering fast glass before meeting a twelfth and final e-harmony date. Indeed, the strange bedfellows of marriage and romantic relationships are a glue that bind these stories together too, as Mrs. Wilcox so wisely noted, "There should be a lemon law for marriage." While, the strange motifs around causes of death ("She died of gettin' a pillow in her mouth") and funerals - even a pet goat's - contrast all too starkly with ghosts of the very real victims of Ted Bundy. Finally, the many car reference motifs were far beyond this reviewer's vehicle knowledge.
Tools of the storytellers' trade that enhance and reward the reader with memorable descriptions - a buttery vibrator, the mossy morel-carpeted forest, and "sexy as a trimmed out librarian" - create vivid imagery.
On several occasions readers are challenged to flip back to previous stories to connect a past with a current story in these collected works but readers never doubt the authenticity of time and especially place in this wonderful tribute to the colorful and dignified, often misunderstood, city of Tacoma.
February 6, 2019
Tacoma Stories by Richard Wiley is a very highly recommended collection of fourteen interconnected short stories set in Tacoma, Washington.
The first story, set in Pat’s Tavern in Tacoma on St. Patrick’s Day in 1968, introduces the sixteen characters and their connections to each other. "So we were Pat, Fatty, Paddy, Vivian, Sari, Hani, Lars and Immy, Jonathan from Yale, Becky Welles, Ralph the English teacher, Lindy the convict’s ex, Andy, Earl, and Mary and I [Richie]. Sixteen characters in search of a play on Saint Patrick’s Day, 1968." The stories are set in different time periods, from the past up to the present, and include at least one of these characters.
Pay attention to the date when the story is set, as they do not follow a linear timeline. Several of the characters recur in several stories, with even a mention, which further ties the collection together as a complete narrative and facilitates the character development. The extended timeline, covering a large portion of the lives of these characters, allows the stories, as a whole, to establish a realistic look at how life doesn't normally turn out how you have planned. All of these characters have struggled in one way or another to survive to the present day and the stories help highlight some of the bumps along the way.
This is a very well-written and offbeat collection that is best read as a whole, in one sitting, if possible, in order to keep track of all the characters and retain their stories fresh in your mind. It will also assist you in catching all the connections between them over the years. Some of the stories are humorous, with situations that are memorable and absurd. While the narratives are all strong individual stories, presented together as a whole they create a masterful collection and reflection on life over the decades.
Disclosure: My review copy was courtesy of Bellevue Literary Press.
http://www.shetreadssoftly.com/2019/0...
The first story, set in Pat’s Tavern in Tacoma on St. Patrick’s Day in 1968, introduces the sixteen characters and their connections to each other. "So we were Pat, Fatty, Paddy, Vivian, Sari, Hani, Lars and Immy, Jonathan from Yale, Becky Welles, Ralph the English teacher, Lindy the convict’s ex, Andy, Earl, and Mary and I [Richie]. Sixteen characters in search of a play on Saint Patrick’s Day, 1968." The stories are set in different time periods, from the past up to the present, and include at least one of these characters.
Pay attention to the date when the story is set, as they do not follow a linear timeline. Several of the characters recur in several stories, with even a mention, which further ties the collection together as a complete narrative and facilitates the character development. The extended timeline, covering a large portion of the lives of these characters, allows the stories, as a whole, to establish a realistic look at how life doesn't normally turn out how you have planned. All of these characters have struggled in one way or another to survive to the present day and the stories help highlight some of the bumps along the way.
This is a very well-written and offbeat collection that is best read as a whole, in one sitting, if possible, in order to keep track of all the characters and retain their stories fresh in your mind. It will also assist you in catching all the connections between them over the years. Some of the stories are humorous, with situations that are memorable and absurd. While the narratives are all strong individual stories, presented together as a whole they create a masterful collection and reflection on life over the decades.
Disclosure: My review copy was courtesy of Bellevue Literary Press.
http://www.shetreadssoftly.com/2019/0...
May 23, 2019
Interesting mostly because of the local landmarks that are so familiar. However, the book is disjointed and difficult to follow as it jumps between several time periods with not a lot of cohesion.
You need to list the characters and times and stories to get a real sense of who they are and how their stories progress.
You need to list the characters and times and stories to get a real sense of who they are and how their stories progress.
January 21, 2019
Delightful book of short stories and not a one of them disappoint. Quirky reoccurring characters and inventive plot lines. Seriously, at the end of one story, I stopped and wondered how a human brain could have some up with such a plotline. Richard Wiley, Bravo!
September 9, 2019
This is a fine collection of linked short stories. Each one is innovative and fascinating, but the last story, which introduces a metafiction, raises the book to a higher level. Be on the lookout for the omniscient point of view. It's rare in short stories, but handled brilliantly here.
February 20, 2019
Tacoma Stories is a short story collection that spans sixty years and follows the lives of sixteen people who once all frequented the same dive bar in sleepy Tacoma, Washington. The characters are vivid and as varied as you can get; the stories highlighting different parts of their lives and their secrets; often times the characters will pop up in each others stories, never content to be alone. From love affairs to goat murder to Ted Bundy's house; this collection is all over the place, yet somehow so cohesive; the characters weaving in and out of each other's lives; often times in the most dramatic ways. Amusing, chilling, and sometimes downright bizarre, readers of short story collections with a unified theme will enjoy this.
May 17, 2021
After retirement my wife and I moved to Tacoma to be closer to our daughter in Puyallup. I love Tacoma and found Richard Wiley’s Tacoma Stories fascinating. I felt like I had some understanding what its was like to be an adolescent in the Browns Point neighborhood in the early 60’s, know a kid from a troubled home, and to cross paths with adults with complicated relationships. The author describes life truthfully, and tells just enough for the reader to want to know much more about the characters he made so real. Tacoma stories is more like a novel than a collection of an author's short stories.
April 7, 2019
A loosely connected short story collection based on people living in or with some connection to Tacoma, Washington. I particularly liked "The Man Who Looks at the Floor" about a man who is a retired secret agent who thinks that "the man" is spying on him. So he asks his wife to go under cover and study "the man". The problem is that the relationship goes so well that he wishes that he didn't encourage her. Some stories are memorable and some are forgettable. Overall the book is worth reading.
July 9, 2019
Short story collections are often hard to condense into a review or a number of stars, and this is no exception. There are loose threads that hold the stories together--the place, the people--but still, their impact for me was all over the map. Some of them fell flat. Others pulled me in. Most did something in between (a great example is the story in Ted Bundy's house; a slow, rambling start and a brilliant ending). The last story...well, no spoilers, but the last story cost this review a whole star.
November 19, 2018
This one wasn't for me. Folks who lived in Tacoma, Washington in the 1950s and 1960s might enjoy it, as well as anyone interested in the Tacoma bones - places, zeitgeist - underlying these stories. Strongly masculine voiced narrative.
July 29, 2023
What a fun read about Tacoma, Washington from local author Richard Wiley. Some identifiable "characters" from the author's encounters and many humorous stories. Thanks to my friend Christie for the signed copy to read!
March 23, 2020
This is the weirdest, most awful book I’ve ever read. It makes no sense and I’m still not sure if it fiction or not.
January 8, 2022
These interconnected stories move back and forth in time and we unexpectedly meet characters in new or old settings and in new relationships. I felt I’d gotten to know the people and the place
Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews