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The Middle Ground: Stories
2019 Foreword INDIES Finalist
The middle ground is a place we’ve all crossed, the halfway point between who you are and who you want to be. In Jeff Ewing’s collection of stories, his diversely American characters call it home. From a story of a man living in the shadow of an abandoned missile silo that may hold the answer to a mystery of vanished children, to one of a small-town beauty tentatively courting stardom, Ewing’s sparse, musical prose illuminates lives lived in that space between fear and courage, hope and regret, life and death. Fog remembers, revenge beckons, and loneliness gives birth to fragile beauty—while in the distance the future gleams on a car hood, daring bold hands to seize it.
The middle ground is a place we’ve all crossed, the halfway point between who you are and who you want to be. In Jeff Ewing’s collection of stories, his diversely American characters call it home. From a story of a man living in the shadow of an abandoned missile silo that may hold the answer to a mystery of vanished children, to one of a small-town beauty tentatively courting stardom, Ewing’s sparse, musical prose illuminates lives lived in that space between fear and courage, hope and regret, life and death. Fog remembers, revenge beckons, and loneliness gives birth to fragile beauty—while in the distance the future gleams on a car hood, daring bold hands to seize it.
- GenresShort StoriesFiction
226 pages, Paperback
Published February 19, 2019
8 people are currently reading
981 people want to read
About the author
Jeff Ewing
4 books28 followersJeff Ewing's fiction has been widely published in prominent literary magazines, including Crazyhorse, Southwest Review, Cherry Tree, upstreet, and New World Writing. His poems can be found in numerous literary journals, including Subtropics, Atlanta Review, ZYZZYVA, Catamaran, Tar River Poetry, and Willow Springs. His full-length play The Middle of Nowhere received the Maxim Mazumdar New Play Award and world premiered at the Alleyway Theatre in Buffalo, New York. His one-act plays have won the FirstStage Prize and have been featured in the Samuel French Off-Off Broadway Short Play Festival. He works as a technical writer and editor in Sacramento, California.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 62 reviews
December 28, 2018
Once, in my early twenties, I bemoaned the fact that I hadn’t been granted any amount of closure from a failed relationship. Pulling from the thirty years he has on me, my father said we often don’t get closure until we are dead and buried. While I took no offense at his nihilistic-yet-somehow-optimistic advice, I sure as hell wasn’t sure what to do with that information. That reality—that closure is oftentimes too slippery a concept to nail down with any finality—has haunted me in a sense. Jeff Ewing’s short story collection, The Middle Ground, shows that I am not alone in being haunted.
This raw collection comes at a time when the world appears on the brink of collapse, when too many of us hold our breaths in anticipation of what new horrors will lurk inside headlines and newspaper headings. Ewing eschews the world stage in favor of a more intimate look at the erosion of individuals. His characters are the beaten, the bruised, and the bloodied, men and women who have succumbed to the everyday pains and banal evils of life; he allows his readers a glimpse into lives that have been lived well but still somehow fell off the rails some time ago only to be forgotten.
From the opening story about a homeless drifter reminiscing about his high school girlfriend to the closing tale about a doctor unable to treat his friend’s dying daughter, these stories capture the moments that truly matter to a great many of us, moments that are relatable because it could be you or me occupying one of them. It isn’t hard to find Carver nestled in Ewing’s prose, a muted sigh tinged with regret, but Ewing does something even Carver couldn’t: he implies hope in the face of the hopeless. By putting people who had something—love, careers, dreams—and lost it one way or another on display under a microscope, he invites readers in to take a long hard look and see themselves in among the broken, not so that they might join in the misery of the mundane that plagues these characters. Suffering is not an evil to Ewing, but a fact of life no different than the other facts. The Middle Ground is full of a rich kind of suffering, the kind we all at some point will face—that comes from giving up on certain dreams or failing in roles we did not expect to fail—and it reminds readers of that which they shouldn’t have forgotten: to suffer is to be human.
The sparse style employed by Ewing is tight and yet still meandering; he found the middle ground between Faulkner and Hemingway and allowed his pen to dance along that wandering path to brilliant effect. He opens windows with this style into his characters’ lives, teasing readers with backstory and details that are just at the edges, framing these beautiful glimpses in a way that few other contemporary writers try. Each story contains only what it needs to be complete and nothing more. Not a single word in this collection feels unnecessary or out of place, as if Ewing approached the craft of storytelling with sustainability in mind. To misquote Koyczan, Ewing is a journalist of the humanities that tells it like it is, and right now he’s telling us “the ending wasn’t important anyway, it wasn’t even an ending necessarily. What passed for an ending could easily be just a gap between two halves. An intermission. There wasn’t any sure ending until you were dead, and then it hardly mattered how you got there”.
Jeff Ewing’s The Middle Ground echoed and expanded upon that years old advice my father gave. These stories reminded me that we are all stuck some between A and B most of the time, that we all find ourselves trapped somewhere in the elusive middle ground, but that that is not necessarily a bad thing, it is just a thing. Ewing, with his terse yet lyrical prose and realistic characters, shows us all that it is up to us to decide what being in the middle ground means.
This raw collection comes at a time when the world appears on the brink of collapse, when too many of us hold our breaths in anticipation of what new horrors will lurk inside headlines and newspaper headings. Ewing eschews the world stage in favor of a more intimate look at the erosion of individuals. His characters are the beaten, the bruised, and the bloodied, men and women who have succumbed to the everyday pains and banal evils of life; he allows his readers a glimpse into lives that have been lived well but still somehow fell off the rails some time ago only to be forgotten.
From the opening story about a homeless drifter reminiscing about his high school girlfriend to the closing tale about a doctor unable to treat his friend’s dying daughter, these stories capture the moments that truly matter to a great many of us, moments that are relatable because it could be you or me occupying one of them. It isn’t hard to find Carver nestled in Ewing’s prose, a muted sigh tinged with regret, but Ewing does something even Carver couldn’t: he implies hope in the face of the hopeless. By putting people who had something—love, careers, dreams—and lost it one way or another on display under a microscope, he invites readers in to take a long hard look and see themselves in among the broken, not so that they might join in the misery of the mundane that plagues these characters. Suffering is not an evil to Ewing, but a fact of life no different than the other facts. The Middle Ground is full of a rich kind of suffering, the kind we all at some point will face—that comes from giving up on certain dreams or failing in roles we did not expect to fail—and it reminds readers of that which they shouldn’t have forgotten: to suffer is to be human.
The sparse style employed by Ewing is tight and yet still meandering; he found the middle ground between Faulkner and Hemingway and allowed his pen to dance along that wandering path to brilliant effect. He opens windows with this style into his characters’ lives, teasing readers with backstory and details that are just at the edges, framing these beautiful glimpses in a way that few other contemporary writers try. Each story contains only what it needs to be complete and nothing more. Not a single word in this collection feels unnecessary or out of place, as if Ewing approached the craft of storytelling with sustainability in mind. To misquote Koyczan, Ewing is a journalist of the humanities that tells it like it is, and right now he’s telling us “the ending wasn’t important anyway, it wasn’t even an ending necessarily. What passed for an ending could easily be just a gap between two halves. An intermission. There wasn’t any sure ending until you were dead, and then it hardly mattered how you got there”.
Jeff Ewing’s The Middle Ground echoed and expanded upon that years old advice my father gave. These stories reminded me that we are all stuck some between A and B most of the time, that we all find ourselves trapped somewhere in the elusive middle ground, but that that is not necessarily a bad thing, it is just a thing. Ewing, with his terse yet lyrical prose and realistic characters, shows us all that it is up to us to decide what being in the middle ground means.
December 17, 2018
Set in small, forgotten towns and dwellings across California and the U.S.A., Jeff Ewing's characters embody the quiet, desperate search for something . . . more—that something that's just beyond the middle ground they call home.
Ewing writes in the clean, simple and beautifully musical language of Hemingway and Raymond Carver, and the characters that populate his stories do so in a similarly authentic and truly human manner as those of the aforementioned literary greats. But Ewing's stories are very much his own, and his voice is at once familiar and original.
You will be hard-pressed to find a more quietly affecting, well-written, and enjoyable collection of short stories than The Middle Ground. It's one of the best short story collections I've ever read.
Ewing writes in the clean, simple and beautifully musical language of Hemingway and Raymond Carver, and the characters that populate his stories do so in a similarly authentic and truly human manner as those of the aforementioned literary greats. But Ewing's stories are very much his own, and his voice is at once familiar and original.
You will be hard-pressed to find a more quietly affecting, well-written, and enjoyable collection of short stories than The Middle Ground. It's one of the best short story collections I've ever read.
January 8, 2019
The stories in Jeff Ewing’s The Middle Ground describe relationships and their failures, past and present. A fresh and diverse mix including first and third person perspectives. “Tule Fog” reminds this reader of the complicated and backstory layered prose of Andre Dubus III. West Coast rather than East, but an equally fine tale of failure in a fading paradise. “Like Mary Jane” will make the reader squirm at the young heroine’s notion of love while empathizing with her need. The title story is a haunting account of twisted maternal love. Each story’s characters, settings, and situations are snapped onto the page with tight and boisterous prose. A delightful and thought provoking read. One hopes we’ll see much more from this writer.
February 9, 2019
THE MIDDLE GROUND by Jeff Ewing is not of earth, but water. From “Tule Fog,” “The Shallow End,” to “Hiddenfolk” and many others of his short stories, the lonely characters swim in life’s constricting fish bowl. It was a joy to peer in at them, catch an iridescent glint off their flawed, human scales.
These stories inhabit California, Florida, the Pacific Northwest and off the coast of Iceland, never far from the ribbon of a river, an unkempt pool or a crashing shoreline. Ewing’s settings rise like meditative steam from the Firehole River. Each beautiful nature description washes across reader consciousness like calm, but volcanic, tectonic pressures build deep in the characters’ hearts. “And in that gap, quietly and nearly bloodlessly, worlds are born and lost” – from “Tule Fog.”
For the characters it is often what is not said that matters. Ewing’s strong understatement flows into recurrent connection between a middle aged man and a young girl in several stories. The innocent little neighbor moves away or dies from the unnamed disease and the man remains, bouncing on the springboard bolted to the edge of his pool thinking “Here and gone, here and gone. A familiar enough phenomenon” – from “The Shallow End.”
This collection lacks narrative drive in many stories since the most fertile middle ground for exploration lays in the valley between the characters’ ears, but this feels more by design than a flaw. This literary fiction deserves attentive reading and these characters live in the midst of now. They swim, often unable to see the current of history, more concerned about waking for another day. But “Coast Starlight” is the exception in immersive plot and the rule in vivid imagery. This tale proved the best in the collection.
In a dusty dead end diner in Corning, California, Clifford stops to eat. He discovers his muse, an ingénue waiting his table. He cannot wait to cast her in a film, make her a star, but in a way she already is one to her boring, manual labor boyfriend, Matias. She is the story, yet not named (Elena) until the fourth page, given third billing, like an afterthought, a footnote, a sparkling fish in a tiny bowl.
“She couldn’t see herself anywhere but where she was. She never imagined other towns, a different life. When she looked out the window she saw olive trees, rice fields, and the stumpy tanks of the cement plant. The world did not curve out beyond the edge of her vision into rain forests and deserts and kingdoms, it butted up against the dry hills and stopped there.”
Yet Elena thirsts for more. She takes Clifford’s card. All the while Matias believes she will leave him without even knowing Clifford exists, so he takes a knee to cement her in, then the baby comes, the years pass, the wrinkles deepen. Clifford returns to the dry valley with a script. He calls her movie Out From The Shadows. Elena calls Clifford, but hangs up from a pay phone. She talks to Matias and says “I’d hate to think that. If I thought there wasn’t anything worth seeing outside of here, I’d drown myself in the bathtub.”
So one long weekend she leaves her daughter with her mother, leaves a note for Matias. She writes, she is going to see the ocean. It is not far from Hollywood after all. This freshwater sunfish might yet escape the bowl aboard the Coast Starlight rail line.
Elena, so beautifully drawn in this story, makes an elegant protagonist, so overmatched by her antagonist, doubt. The reader roots for the secret she keeps from her husband, longs to buy tickets to the movie she might make. We press our foreheads against the glass of her coach like an aquarium, imagining a courage we do not possess so that “something exciting would happen… just once.”
But like us, she is human, bathed in melancholy. While “Coast Starlight’s” ending need not be spoiled here, Ewing returns to his aquatic theme again and again. “The bowl sat on the sill in the little window alcove, the fish swimming aimlessly inside and periodically throwing itself against the glass. You could hear it, a little ping every so often. Then it would float slowly toward the surface before recovering and swimming back into its corner behind the little spray of coral” – from “Hiddenfolk.”
That could be Elena swimming there, or Pete Harmon, or Lisa’s boyfriend before Tim, or Ludlow, or you, or me. It could be any of us treading water, retreating, cowering, escaping our bowls only through oblivion.
(Read a free advanced copy in return for a review)
These stories inhabit California, Florida, the Pacific Northwest and off the coast of Iceland, never far from the ribbon of a river, an unkempt pool or a crashing shoreline. Ewing’s settings rise like meditative steam from the Firehole River. Each beautiful nature description washes across reader consciousness like calm, but volcanic, tectonic pressures build deep in the characters’ hearts. “And in that gap, quietly and nearly bloodlessly, worlds are born and lost” – from “Tule Fog.”
For the characters it is often what is not said that matters. Ewing’s strong understatement flows into recurrent connection between a middle aged man and a young girl in several stories. The innocent little neighbor moves away or dies from the unnamed disease and the man remains, bouncing on the springboard bolted to the edge of his pool thinking “Here and gone, here and gone. A familiar enough phenomenon” – from “The Shallow End.”
This collection lacks narrative drive in many stories since the most fertile middle ground for exploration lays in the valley between the characters’ ears, but this feels more by design than a flaw. This literary fiction deserves attentive reading and these characters live in the midst of now. They swim, often unable to see the current of history, more concerned about waking for another day. But “Coast Starlight” is the exception in immersive plot and the rule in vivid imagery. This tale proved the best in the collection.
In a dusty dead end diner in Corning, California, Clifford stops to eat. He discovers his muse, an ingénue waiting his table. He cannot wait to cast her in a film, make her a star, but in a way she already is one to her boring, manual labor boyfriend, Matias. She is the story, yet not named (Elena) until the fourth page, given third billing, like an afterthought, a footnote, a sparkling fish in a tiny bowl.
“She couldn’t see herself anywhere but where she was. She never imagined other towns, a different life. When she looked out the window she saw olive trees, rice fields, and the stumpy tanks of the cement plant. The world did not curve out beyond the edge of her vision into rain forests and deserts and kingdoms, it butted up against the dry hills and stopped there.”
Yet Elena thirsts for more. She takes Clifford’s card. All the while Matias believes she will leave him without even knowing Clifford exists, so he takes a knee to cement her in, then the baby comes, the years pass, the wrinkles deepen. Clifford returns to the dry valley with a script. He calls her movie Out From The Shadows. Elena calls Clifford, but hangs up from a pay phone. She talks to Matias and says “I’d hate to think that. If I thought there wasn’t anything worth seeing outside of here, I’d drown myself in the bathtub.”
So one long weekend she leaves her daughter with her mother, leaves a note for Matias. She writes, she is going to see the ocean. It is not far from Hollywood after all. This freshwater sunfish might yet escape the bowl aboard the Coast Starlight rail line.
Elena, so beautifully drawn in this story, makes an elegant protagonist, so overmatched by her antagonist, doubt. The reader roots for the secret she keeps from her husband, longs to buy tickets to the movie she might make. We press our foreheads against the glass of her coach like an aquarium, imagining a courage we do not possess so that “something exciting would happen… just once.”
But like us, she is human, bathed in melancholy. While “Coast Starlight’s” ending need not be spoiled here, Ewing returns to his aquatic theme again and again. “The bowl sat on the sill in the little window alcove, the fish swimming aimlessly inside and periodically throwing itself against the glass. You could hear it, a little ping every so often. Then it would float slowly toward the surface before recovering and swimming back into its corner behind the little spray of coral” – from “Hiddenfolk.”
That could be Elena swimming there, or Pete Harmon, or Lisa’s boyfriend before Tim, or Ludlow, or you, or me. It could be any of us treading water, retreating, cowering, escaping our bowls only through oblivion.
(Read a free advanced copy in return for a review)
January 26, 2019
My interpretation of the link between the very varied stories in this collection - the middle ground of the title - is that point where someone becomes resigned to the way things have turned out, the space between regret or nostalgia for the past and hope for the future. Seemingly small lives spent in out-of-the-way, unglamorous places are nevertheless dramatic in their individual ways and we are afforded snapshots of a few here.
One of my favourites is ‘Dick Fleming is Lost’ - a school alumni bulletin causes a man to muse on what might have become of a classmate who left town and lost contact. George imagines the different ways Dick Fleming’s life might have panned out, in other words how his own life might have gone if he hadn’t stuck around, suffering humiliation and disappointment. Another that struck me particularly is ‘Silo’ about two teenagers who vanished and the effect this had on those left behind.
I am becoming quite a fan of short story collections and this one did not disappoint. I confess some of the stories left me baffled, but I appreciated throughout some lovely turns of phrase. An example from the title story:
I didn’t tell him about the way she tore me down little by little, how she would visit me after we’d broken up and hardly say a word. Come to me at her lowest, where she could be the northern star and not just another guttering match.
With thanks to Into the Void via NetGalley for the opportunity read an ARC.
One of my favourites is ‘Dick Fleming is Lost’ - a school alumni bulletin causes a man to muse on what might have become of a classmate who left town and lost contact. George imagines the different ways Dick Fleming’s life might have panned out, in other words how his own life might have gone if he hadn’t stuck around, suffering humiliation and disappointment. Another that struck me particularly is ‘Silo’ about two teenagers who vanished and the effect this had on those left behind.
I am becoming quite a fan of short story collections and this one did not disappoint. I confess some of the stories left me baffled, but I appreciated throughout some lovely turns of phrase. An example from the title story:
I didn’t tell him about the way she tore me down little by little, how she would visit me after we’d broken up and hardly say a word. Come to me at her lowest, where she could be the northern star and not just another guttering match.
With thanks to Into the Void via NetGalley for the opportunity read an ARC.
January 10, 2019
Don't miss this extraordinary debut collection from a writer of real humanity and skill.
Ewing presents his broken, derailed characters in sentences of Hemingway-esque brevity and poise, painting a picture of what it is to live on the margins of American society, or even the margins of one’s own life.
As one character remarks in the story ‘Crossing to Lopez’
“Not everyone’s cut out for...whatever. Success. Advancement.”
These grim aphorisms occur throughout Ewing’s stories. Other examples include “People didn’t change, that was just a fantasy of little girls and drinkers” (from ‘Repurposing’) and “The only ghosts they believed in were their own better selves” (from ‘The Parliament of Owls’). The stories have such a strong common thread of quiet human suffering and nihilsm that each aphorism could apply to any story in the collection, which allows each section to build on its predecessors resulting in a rich reading experience.
Ewing deservedly joins the ranks of the great American short story tradition with The Middle Ground which packs an enormous emotional punch from within it's deceptively quiet, taunt prose.
Ewing presents his broken, derailed characters in sentences of Hemingway-esque brevity and poise, painting a picture of what it is to live on the margins of American society, or even the margins of one’s own life.
As one character remarks in the story ‘Crossing to Lopez’
“Not everyone’s cut out for...whatever. Success. Advancement.”
These grim aphorisms occur throughout Ewing’s stories. Other examples include “People didn’t change, that was just a fantasy of little girls and drinkers” (from ‘Repurposing’) and “The only ghosts they believed in were their own better selves” (from ‘The Parliament of Owls’). The stories have such a strong common thread of quiet human suffering and nihilsm that each aphorism could apply to any story in the collection, which allows each section to build on its predecessors resulting in a rich reading experience.
Ewing deservedly joins the ranks of the great American short story tradition with The Middle Ground which packs an enormous emotional punch from within it's deceptively quiet, taunt prose.
January 16, 2019
I received a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review here on Goodreads.
Beautiful imagery. Things described as I've never seen or heard them described, imparting a kind of poetry that overlays the disturbing journey you don't at first detect. By the time you know it's going downhill, you're already on the sled, forty-five degrees angled down an ice-covered slope with nothing to be done but grit your teeth, hold on and pray that Nature got rid of all the trees that're bound to be in your path. "...the mountains are already
haloed with the controlled explosions of a new day" being my favorite description. How many times have I looked at my own mountains and thought the sun looked like an explosion? Ewing actually put it down in words.
"The only ghosts they believed in were their own better selves." is another of my favorites. Such a unique way to describe the bleak, hopeless feel of the world Ewing has created. It almost seems harmless...it has a kind of beauty you're willing to live in, as though you've discovered that Hell is described with such a flourish that it's worth neverending suffering just to become part of the word-woven palette. The angst of knowing someone's purposely yet unconsciously hurtling toward his doom. The painfully real personal identification with the thoughts of people too real to be completely made up.
I learned a new word: fixit. My world will never be the same.
Such...mundandity, though I probably have made that up...the everyday nobodys, the ones you never hear about and sometimes don't even know about when they're your neighbors down the street. The capturing of so many different ways in which peoples' minds work, the ruts their existences fall into, the boring and yet so starkly captivating privacies they hide from even themselves. Showcasing banal normality against a backdrop of purposeful journeys in a way that makes you keep turning the page is an utter gift, and one which Ewing clearly is the master of.
Truly left wondering, in each story's case, what decisions would you have made? What would your life be like if you could have been that person, or those characters? How would you exist between the dark and the light, between the death and the life, between the painful and joyous? How does that differ from everyone else's experience?
All these thoughts and more, leaving me hours of puzzling to do as I reflect upon what is, what can be, what should be, what might be and what could be, all of which have been fostered by a collection of almost musically tuned short stories that I'm that much the richer for having read.
Beautiful imagery. Things described as I've never seen or heard them described, imparting a kind of poetry that overlays the disturbing journey you don't at first detect. By the time you know it's going downhill, you're already on the sled, forty-five degrees angled down an ice-covered slope with nothing to be done but grit your teeth, hold on and pray that Nature got rid of all the trees that're bound to be in your path. "...the mountains are already
haloed with the controlled explosions of a new day" being my favorite description. How many times have I looked at my own mountains and thought the sun looked like an explosion? Ewing actually put it down in words.
"The only ghosts they believed in were their own better selves." is another of my favorites. Such a unique way to describe the bleak, hopeless feel of the world Ewing has created. It almost seems harmless...it has a kind of beauty you're willing to live in, as though you've discovered that Hell is described with such a flourish that it's worth neverending suffering just to become part of the word-woven palette. The angst of knowing someone's purposely yet unconsciously hurtling toward his doom. The painfully real personal identification with the thoughts of people too real to be completely made up.
I learned a new word: fixit. My world will never be the same.
Such...mundandity, though I probably have made that up...the everyday nobodys, the ones you never hear about and sometimes don't even know about when they're your neighbors down the street. The capturing of so many different ways in which peoples' minds work, the ruts their existences fall into, the boring and yet so starkly captivating privacies they hide from even themselves. Showcasing banal normality against a backdrop of purposeful journeys in a way that makes you keep turning the page is an utter gift, and one which Ewing clearly is the master of.
Truly left wondering, in each story's case, what decisions would you have made? What would your life be like if you could have been that person, or those characters? How would you exist between the dark and the light, between the death and the life, between the painful and joyous? How does that differ from everyone else's experience?
All these thoughts and more, leaving me hours of puzzling to do as I reflect upon what is, what can be, what should be, what might be and what could be, all of which have been fostered by a collection of almost musically tuned short stories that I'm that much the richer for having read.
January 15, 2019
A collection of enigmatic short stories that are somewhat reminiscent of Alice Munro.
The stories contained in The Middle Ground more often than not have a deep melancholy quality. Like random chapters from different books by the same author each of the stories is similar to the others yet unique in its own way. One or two have a distinct Twilight Zone flavor to them.
I often found myself not understanding exactly what a story was about until it was nearly finished... More than once I didn't understand it even then.
I can't say it was the most compelling or enjoyable collection of stories I've ever read but The Middle Ground by Jeff Ewing is most definitely thought provoking. I intend to revisit this collection sometime in the future as I can't help but feel that I may have missed something important within these narratives... Something that perhaps I just wasn't receptive to at this particular time.
I recommend The Middle Ground to anyone with a taste for something on the edge of reality (though not Sci-fi) with stories that make a person work a little to comprehend them.
***Thanks to NetGalley,the publisher, and the author for allowing me the opportunity to read and review this title.
The stories contained in The Middle Ground more often than not have a deep melancholy quality. Like random chapters from different books by the same author each of the stories is similar to the others yet unique in its own way. One or two have a distinct Twilight Zone flavor to them.
I often found myself not understanding exactly what a story was about until it was nearly finished... More than once I didn't understand it even then.
I can't say it was the most compelling or enjoyable collection of stories I've ever read but The Middle Ground by Jeff Ewing is most definitely thought provoking. I intend to revisit this collection sometime in the future as I can't help but feel that I may have missed something important within these narratives... Something that perhaps I just wasn't receptive to at this particular time.
I recommend The Middle Ground to anyone with a taste for something on the edge of reality (though not Sci-fi) with stories that make a person work a little to comprehend them.
***Thanks to NetGalley,the publisher, and the author for allowing me the opportunity to read and review this title.
April 14, 2019
I have mixed feelings about 'The Middle Ground' - a book which, I should state clearly here, I received for free in return for an honest review. On the one hand, I found Ewing's ability to craft characters that really speak and move as you expected to be particularly good - there was never a time that I felt that somebody said something they had no business saying. Each of the characters was consistent, and for the most part well-rounded.
However, what I hold in my other hand rather outweighs the positive. The main complaint I have with the short story collection here is that I was often given very little reason to sympathise with the characters themselves. Either they were too far from my own range of experience, or they seemed unnaturally cold, or they had little to say that was worth hearing, or they behaved in ways that should have made them their story's antagonist rather than protagonist - summed together, I found that I was moving from one story to the next without really wanting to get to know each one's inhabitants.
The stories themselves were a mixed bag. The short pieces, which I would say count as flash fiction, were the most disappointing, simply because they contained the best ideas but were not fleshed out. Some of the longer pieces could have been trimmed by a half to make way for some of the more outlandish notions Ewing introduces in his shortest works - the otherworldly aspects here were a welcome change to the middle American 'middle ground' that Ewing devoted most of his time to exploring.
Perhaps the problem for me is that I'm an Englishman - we do not have those wide expanses of land in the middle of our country into which a man can fall and disappear for half of a lifetime. I imagine that Americans who are into the tradition of the true-blue American short story will appreciate these tales more than I did. In the end, though, I began to think of these stories as less the middle land, and more from no-man's land. Ewing has talent, that much is clear, and now that he has the support of an indie publisher par excellence, I think he has a bright future on the literary scene, but this first book is not the one that has sent the sparks flying for me.
However, what I hold in my other hand rather outweighs the positive. The main complaint I have with the short story collection here is that I was often given very little reason to sympathise with the characters themselves. Either they were too far from my own range of experience, or they seemed unnaturally cold, or they had little to say that was worth hearing, or they behaved in ways that should have made them their story's antagonist rather than protagonist - summed together, I found that I was moving from one story to the next without really wanting to get to know each one's inhabitants.
The stories themselves were a mixed bag. The short pieces, which I would say count as flash fiction, were the most disappointing, simply because they contained the best ideas but were not fleshed out. Some of the longer pieces could have been trimmed by a half to make way for some of the more outlandish notions Ewing introduces in his shortest works - the otherworldly aspects here were a welcome change to the middle American 'middle ground' that Ewing devoted most of his time to exploring.
Perhaps the problem for me is that I'm an Englishman - we do not have those wide expanses of land in the middle of our country into which a man can fall and disappear for half of a lifetime. I imagine that Americans who are into the tradition of the true-blue American short story will appreciate these tales more than I did. In the end, though, I began to think of these stories as less the middle land, and more from no-man's land. Ewing has talent, that much is clear, and now that he has the support of an indie publisher par excellence, I think he has a bright future on the literary scene, but this first book is not the one that has sent the sparks flying for me.
January 9, 2019
I receive books and litmags every week in the mail and I stack them high. I was similarly nonchalant when I received this volume, but then I began reading.
The stories here are satisfyingly varied, though tending to the Carver- and Tom Waits-esque, loser characters set in the kind of deadbeat Americana that has been pitched literally a thousand too many times. I would have stopped reading early, except -
THE WRITING. Oh my gosh, the writing. Every sentence, every paragraph bubbles something new at the reader, something raw and unexpected. There is not a dull moment.
To wit:
'Its belly looked caved-in, its ribs like a corset cinched tight and hurriedly draped in dun hide. When [the coyote] spotted him, it lurched to one side as if kicked. It backed away over the brow of the hill, never taking its eyes off of him.' ('Dick Fleming is Lost')
A mercenary scientist emerging from a converted mineshaft:
'The light didn't hit all at once. Resurfacing, mercifully, was a gradual thing ... thick skylights bathed him in a mellow green like the inside of an aquarium. Kyle always stayed there a few minutes before pulling his sunglasses on, taking a breath, and stepping out into the diffuse sun that tumbled down through hickory and pine …' ('Repurposing')
A middle-aged man confronting the flesh-and-blood object of his adolescent desire, finding her still scornful:
'Ed heard a faint whistling sound, time slipping its gears on the grade.' ('The Armchair Gardener')
Another middle-aged man, not-quite envious of his prosperous neighbor:
'An orderly world, it might be said, is the sure sign of an empty head.' ('The Shallow End')
A woman's fate turns on a long-ago slight of her younger brother:
'She suspected he never really got over the slap, that it was the gestating act of the paperwork sitting right now inside the house waiting for her signature.' ('Masterpiece')
Describing the face of a loved one in the midst of an epileptic crisis:
'In her tautened face one could see her determination to remain Felicia..' ('The New Canaan Village for Epilectics')
A woman reflecting on her mark on the life of an arrogant, privileged child, the mark permanent yet insignificant:
'Eventually there wouldn't be anything to prove she'd been there at all, except for the little scar by his elbow where the bone had broken through, an irregular patch shaped like Sognsvann itself that never tanned like the rest of him.' ('Sognsvann')
The same woman intimidated at the same child's world of privilege, eschewing a normal family ritual from embarrassment:
'It wasn't far to Konditori Pascal, perched on its hill like a gull. She'd even picked a tall almond cake out [for father] in the window when she'd passed earlier, the cafe crowded with students slashing the air with emphatic gestures and laughing over things dead Greeks and Romans and Englishman had said. Their assurance through the glass was almost blinding, like a religious painting.' ('Sognsvann')
A disfigured young man reflecting on the cause of his dejection, and a rare stab at humor:
'It wasn't the sunken egg cup where my eye used to be she objected to, it was my inaccessibility. Though to most people's minds I'm as accessible as a People magazine.' ('Crossing to Lopez')
I'm not doing it justice. The book is an actual wellspring of equal parts intellect, poetry, and deft narrative skill. I willed my jaded eye to stray but it just wouldn't. My only fault would be, perhaps, a heavy reliance on simile, and the aforementioned dearth of humor. I'm also not a huge fan of truncated fiction ('Double Helix,' 'Lake Mary Jane').
But the book diverted me, unswervingly, for two days in a row. I read a lot, so that is saying something.
MF
The stories here are satisfyingly varied, though tending to the Carver- and Tom Waits-esque, loser characters set in the kind of deadbeat Americana that has been pitched literally a thousand too many times. I would have stopped reading early, except -
THE WRITING. Oh my gosh, the writing. Every sentence, every paragraph bubbles something new at the reader, something raw and unexpected. There is not a dull moment.
To wit:
'Its belly looked caved-in, its ribs like a corset cinched tight and hurriedly draped in dun hide. When [the coyote] spotted him, it lurched to one side as if kicked. It backed away over the brow of the hill, never taking its eyes off of him.' ('Dick Fleming is Lost')
A mercenary scientist emerging from a converted mineshaft:
'The light didn't hit all at once. Resurfacing, mercifully, was a gradual thing ... thick skylights bathed him in a mellow green like the inside of an aquarium. Kyle always stayed there a few minutes before pulling his sunglasses on, taking a breath, and stepping out into the diffuse sun that tumbled down through hickory and pine …' ('Repurposing')
A middle-aged man confronting the flesh-and-blood object of his adolescent desire, finding her still scornful:
'Ed heard a faint whistling sound, time slipping its gears on the grade.' ('The Armchair Gardener')
Another middle-aged man, not-quite envious of his prosperous neighbor:
'An orderly world, it might be said, is the sure sign of an empty head.' ('The Shallow End')
A woman's fate turns on a long-ago slight of her younger brother:
'She suspected he never really got over the slap, that it was the gestating act of the paperwork sitting right now inside the house waiting for her signature.' ('Masterpiece')
Describing the face of a loved one in the midst of an epileptic crisis:
'In her tautened face one could see her determination to remain Felicia..' ('The New Canaan Village for Epilectics')
A woman reflecting on her mark on the life of an arrogant, privileged child, the mark permanent yet insignificant:
'Eventually there wouldn't be anything to prove she'd been there at all, except for the little scar by his elbow where the bone had broken through, an irregular patch shaped like Sognsvann itself that never tanned like the rest of him.' ('Sognsvann')
The same woman intimidated at the same child's world of privilege, eschewing a normal family ritual from embarrassment:
'It wasn't far to Konditori Pascal, perched on its hill like a gull. She'd even picked a tall almond cake out [for father] in the window when she'd passed earlier, the cafe crowded with students slashing the air with emphatic gestures and laughing over things dead Greeks and Romans and Englishman had said. Their assurance through the glass was almost blinding, like a religious painting.' ('Sognsvann')
A disfigured young man reflecting on the cause of his dejection, and a rare stab at humor:
'It wasn't the sunken egg cup where my eye used to be she objected to, it was my inaccessibility. Though to most people's minds I'm as accessible as a People magazine.' ('Crossing to Lopez')
I'm not doing it justice. The book is an actual wellspring of equal parts intellect, poetry, and deft narrative skill. I willed my jaded eye to stray but it just wouldn't. My only fault would be, perhaps, a heavy reliance on simile, and the aforementioned dearth of humor. I'm also not a huge fan of truncated fiction ('Double Helix,' 'Lake Mary Jane').
But the book diverted me, unswervingly, for two days in a row. I read a lot, so that is saying something.
MF
February 20, 2019
Some of these stories have really lingered with me, days after finishing the closing words. This collection rolls in soft on the fog of the opening story and takes the reader on a moving journey. Each story manages to share the common theme of loss and regret while still offering variety in characters and setting.
These stories find characters who sense they’re at some crucial decision point in their life spectrum. At times the “middle ground” seems to be their known world; at other times, it’s a purgatory of regret and loss. These characters aren’t sure they can leave it behind – their regrets and loss have become such a part of them.
It’s difficult to choose only a few as favorites but I’ll single out a few. “Silo” made me wonder why we choose to mire ourselves in our pasts. “Double Helix” moved me to tears with the double-edged sword of the gift of life. I liked the lurking mystery in “Lake Mary Jane” and I could see and hear every character in “Repurposing.” “The Middle Ground” ended on such a strong sentiment and “Hiddenfolk” swirled with the weight of caregiving.
But Ewing doesn’t dwell in a shoulda-coulda loop – he points a finger at those who cause middling people like these so much pain. The people who cause others such levels of grief. They don’t seem to feel a thing – they carry on their lives unscathed. Why are they so cruel and could any reason ever really justify it? Ewing’s stories contemplate this quiet pain, but seem to insist that, despite it all, a middling life is a gift, a life worth living.
These stories find characters who sense they’re at some crucial decision point in their life spectrum. At times the “middle ground” seems to be their known world; at other times, it’s a purgatory of regret and loss. These characters aren’t sure they can leave it behind – their regrets and loss have become such a part of them.
It’s difficult to choose only a few as favorites but I’ll single out a few. “Silo” made me wonder why we choose to mire ourselves in our pasts. “Double Helix” moved me to tears with the double-edged sword of the gift of life. I liked the lurking mystery in “Lake Mary Jane” and I could see and hear every character in “Repurposing.” “The Middle Ground” ended on such a strong sentiment and “Hiddenfolk” swirled with the weight of caregiving.
But Ewing doesn’t dwell in a shoulda-coulda loop – he points a finger at those who cause middling people like these so much pain. The people who cause others such levels of grief. They don’t seem to feel a thing – they carry on their lives unscathed. Why are they so cruel and could any reason ever really justify it? Ewing’s stories contemplate this quiet pain, but seem to insist that, despite it all, a middling life is a gift, a life worth living.
February 6, 2019
I have to start out by saying I'm not a big fan of the short story. If I'm going to invest time in getting to know a character I prefer a trilogy. In spite of this, I'm so glad to have read this book! Sometimes getting to know a character just enough works out just fine. This assortment of evocative sketches is basically like eavesdropping on people's lives, like those times staring out a bus window you catch glimpses of little scenes framed by lighted windows. Some stories were just a moment caught in time, others showcased an event that was soul changing like 'Dick Fleming is Lost.' 'Ice Flowers' was so suffused with beauty and loss it hurt to read the words and 'Hiddenfolk' haunts me still. The book description uses the word sparse but I found the opposite, an unexpected richness of emotion filling the pages.
January 21, 2019
Out of the corner of the reader's eye, a slim, dark-haired man in suit and tie smokes a cigarette while waiting to be noticed. Never mentioned, never actually there. But, to a reader of a certain age or imagination, unshakeable.
Among the characters dwelling in The Middle Ground, Jeff Ewing's enjoyable and thought-provoking collection of eighteen short and flash stories:
-- Pete: dedicated physician, loving friend, avid fisherman on a solo vacation.
-- May: daughter, sister, wife, mother, participant at a house clearing sale.
-- Lauren and Kyle: small people doing small jobs in a small town.
-- Wilton: rural neighbor, photographer, student of ice crystals and snowflakes.
Ewing's characters and their situations are realistic, believable, and humanly familiar. One might find their doppelgängers inhabiting any city or town. They live in carefully crafted landscapes that are every bit as tangible and relatable. All are strangers who will never meet or hear of each other, yet one feels they are kindred spirits.
This is an easy book to just keep reading deep into the night, after the house is quiet and everyone else asleep. These aren't tales of the supernatural or eye-widening suspense; none quite take place in The Twilight Zone. But an appearance by Rod Serling wouldn't be totally out of place, for their occupants' complexly common lives take each of them to the intersection of possible lives and universes. Welcome to a place known as . . . The Middle Ground.
Among the characters dwelling in The Middle Ground, Jeff Ewing's enjoyable and thought-provoking collection of eighteen short and flash stories:
-- Pete: dedicated physician, loving friend, avid fisherman on a solo vacation.
-- May: daughter, sister, wife, mother, participant at a house clearing sale.
-- Lauren and Kyle: small people doing small jobs in a small town.
-- Wilton: rural neighbor, photographer, student of ice crystals and snowflakes.
Ewing's characters and their situations are realistic, believable, and humanly familiar. One might find their doppelgängers inhabiting any city or town. They live in carefully crafted landscapes that are every bit as tangible and relatable. All are strangers who will never meet or hear of each other, yet one feels they are kindred spirits.
This is an easy book to just keep reading deep into the night, after the house is quiet and everyone else asleep. These aren't tales of the supernatural or eye-widening suspense; none quite take place in The Twilight Zone. But an appearance by Rod Serling wouldn't be totally out of place, for their occupants' complexly common lives take each of them to the intersection of possible lives and universes. Welcome to a place known as . . . The Middle Ground.
February 10, 2019
(Full disclosure: I was given an advance copy by Into the Void literary magazine in order to write this review.)
At first I thought the title referred to a common link the stories have—lonely characters cut off from society, although usually living within it, who long for connection. But the middle ground implies moderation, and the alienation these characters feel has no moderation—it runs deep to the bottom of their souls. They are trapped somewhere between their circumstances and where they would like to be. “No Man’s Land” might be a more appropriate title.
The stories are largely set in small towns in California and the northern United States, or perhaps in another desolate place (the interior of Iceland, in “Hiddenfolk”). The protagonists are majority male, but Ewing also draws female narrators very well.
Ewing’s language is never clunky and is often beautiful or striking in its sparseness. For instance:
�� “Tule Fog”: “There are six beers strapped across my chest in a bandolier.”
• “Ice Flowers”: “The calf had been dead a week; there wasn’t anything left of use.”
• “Double Helix”: “A car passed with its bass thumping, shock waves rippled in harmony across the pool, warping the night sky.”
• “Coast Starlight”: “Clifford could have been anyone, though no one from around Corning. He was too easy in his skin, standing with his hands loose at his sides, the first person in years to pay any attention to the PLEASE WAIT TO BE SEATED sign.”
The two best stories, the ones that will stay with me, are “Ice Flowers,” about a rancher on the cusp of falling in love again, only to lose her, perhaps through his own carelessness, and possibly his own life as well, and “Coast Starlight,” about a women in small-town California waitress who, approached by a movie producer, rejects his offers of stardom. When she tries at last to find him, she is thwarted by her own fellow women travelers.
The characters are well-drawn, though at heart many of them are essentially the same person. They range from likeable, like the protagonists in the stories above, to unappealing, even though their pain is explained—the home owner who allows a dog to remain trapped in his fence in “The Armchair Gardener,” or the woman who may have murdered her brother in “Masterpiece.” By and large, they never change, and neither do their circumstances. They are introspective, but not self-realizing. The doctor is “Hiddenfolk” believes he never walks away from his patients, and yet he does, singing the song ‘Lost Cause’ in the operating theater and by a patient’s bedside. Both they and their circumstances have created their loneliness. The most appealing stories above have protagonists who actually try to break out of their circumstances; the difference is refreshing.
If there are any serious flaws, it’s that interspersed throughout the longer stories are shorter, 3-4 page stories that tend to be simply a character’s self-reflection. It is often unclear what is actually happening (for instance, “Lake Mary Jane“), and I was often left wanting more from these shorter stories (e.g., with “The New Canaan Village for Epileptics”). There is also a tendency too towards sententiousness in the last sentences of the stories; it’s as though a need was felt to drive the lesson of the story home one more time, as in “The Middle Ground”: “Holding her ground to show her only son there wasn’t any door you could close tightly enough as the one leading to your heart.” That was clear already in the story.
Overall, however, this is an excellent collection of short stories with some real gems in it. 4.5/5
At first I thought the title referred to a common link the stories have—lonely characters cut off from society, although usually living within it, who long for connection. But the middle ground implies moderation, and the alienation these characters feel has no moderation—it runs deep to the bottom of their souls. They are trapped somewhere between their circumstances and where they would like to be. “No Man’s Land” might be a more appropriate title.
The stories are largely set in small towns in California and the northern United States, or perhaps in another desolate place (the interior of Iceland, in “Hiddenfolk”). The protagonists are majority male, but Ewing also draws female narrators very well.
Ewing’s language is never clunky and is often beautiful or striking in its sparseness. For instance:
�� “Tule Fog”: “There are six beers strapped across my chest in a bandolier.”
• “Ice Flowers”: “The calf had been dead a week; there wasn’t anything left of use.”
• “Double Helix”: “A car passed with its bass thumping, shock waves rippled in harmony across the pool, warping the night sky.”
• “Coast Starlight”: “Clifford could have been anyone, though no one from around Corning. He was too easy in his skin, standing with his hands loose at his sides, the first person in years to pay any attention to the PLEASE WAIT TO BE SEATED sign.”
The two best stories, the ones that will stay with me, are “Ice Flowers,” about a rancher on the cusp of falling in love again, only to lose her, perhaps through his own carelessness, and possibly his own life as well, and “Coast Starlight,” about a women in small-town California waitress who, approached by a movie producer, rejects his offers of stardom. When she tries at last to find him, she is thwarted by her own fellow women travelers.
The characters are well-drawn, though at heart many of them are essentially the same person. They range from likeable, like the protagonists in the stories above, to unappealing, even though their pain is explained—the home owner who allows a dog to remain trapped in his fence in “The Armchair Gardener,” or the woman who may have murdered her brother in “Masterpiece.” By and large, they never change, and neither do their circumstances. They are introspective, but not self-realizing. The doctor is “Hiddenfolk” believes he never walks away from his patients, and yet he does, singing the song ‘Lost Cause’ in the operating theater and by a patient’s bedside. Both they and their circumstances have created their loneliness. The most appealing stories above have protagonists who actually try to break out of their circumstances; the difference is refreshing.
If there are any serious flaws, it’s that interspersed throughout the longer stories are shorter, 3-4 page stories that tend to be simply a character’s self-reflection. It is often unclear what is actually happening (for instance, “Lake Mary Jane“), and I was often left wanting more from these shorter stories (e.g., with “The New Canaan Village for Epileptics”). There is also a tendency too towards sententiousness in the last sentences of the stories; it’s as though a need was felt to drive the lesson of the story home one more time, as in “The Middle Ground”: “Holding her ground to show her only son there wasn’t any door you could close tightly enough as the one leading to your heart.” That was clear already in the story.
Overall, however, this is an excellent collection of short stories with some real gems in it. 4.5/5
February 13, 2019
Jeff Ewing’s The Middle Ground is a collection of vignettes about Americans in settings ranging from desolate suburbia, through the hot flat valleys of California and an abandoned mine in Kentucky, to an alligator-infested lake in Florida, with one final, climactic look abroad at a bleak volcanic landscape in Iceland. I call these offerings vignettes, because most of them aren’t quite stories. Ewing gives the readers hints of stories, but rarely gives the whole story and leaves this reviewer wanting more.
The first one, “Tule Fog,” is an exception. A man tells of returning to the neighborhood where he grew up in a drab California town of no importance that is enveloped in a thick winter fog. Lying on the ground all night in a weedy lot across the street from the house where his high-school girlfriend once lived, he observes whatever occurs in the one-foot gap left between the fog and the ground. As past and present merge, a barefoot girl in the house is visited by cowboy boots, their voices are heard, time passes, other memories surface, a dog barks, and the boots drive off. The narrator remembers the girlfriend who, having turned down his proposal, became a minor TV celebrity and died in a plane crash. In the morning the fog burns off and he gets up and walks away, well aware that no one, not even the dead, will wish they were here.
This is one of Ewing’s more developed vignettes, perhaps even a story, though we know little of the man who tells it. But it evokes a place and time masterfully, and conveys the sense of desolation, of irrelevance, of meaninglessness, that often infuses his tales.
Many of his characters strive desperately for meaning and fulfillment, and pay a price. A loving father takes his daughter with vestigial arms to the ocean so she can swim, and is cited for child endangerment (“Double Helix”). A married waitress yearning for a bigger life takes a train to Los Angeles, gets off at Santa Barbara by mistake, goes home to her husband and daughter, fantasizes about again seeing a man who long ago offered to put her in a movie {“Coast Starlight”). A little girl swimming in a lake is bitten by an alligator and wants to swim there again, so she can ask the alligator why it let her go (“Lake Mary Jane”).
Some of Ewing’s pieces defeat me; seemingly aimless and unresolved, they hint at a story, don’t deliver it. And sometimes fantasy and reality are so intertwined that I can’t tell them apart.
In “Parliament of Owls” the narrative switches back and forth between a linebacker turned minister lost in a forest, and his meaningless speech at a reunion of ex-jocks living in the past. An ingenious approach, but we never get to know the protagonist, are never told how he got into this situation or what he really wants. This happens too often in The Middle Ground.
As for Ewing’s characters, most of them are, to use the protagonist Nora’s word in “Masterpieces,” “unremarkable.” But how many unremarkable people do we want to read about? Failures are interesting only if complex and brilliant; the ones in The Middle Ground are neither. Unremarkable people are, alas, forgettable. If Ewing developed his characters and stories more, he could give us memorable work.
The first one, “Tule Fog,” is an exception. A man tells of returning to the neighborhood where he grew up in a drab California town of no importance that is enveloped in a thick winter fog. Lying on the ground all night in a weedy lot across the street from the house where his high-school girlfriend once lived, he observes whatever occurs in the one-foot gap left between the fog and the ground. As past and present merge, a barefoot girl in the house is visited by cowboy boots, their voices are heard, time passes, other memories surface, a dog barks, and the boots drive off. The narrator remembers the girlfriend who, having turned down his proposal, became a minor TV celebrity and died in a plane crash. In the morning the fog burns off and he gets up and walks away, well aware that no one, not even the dead, will wish they were here.
This is one of Ewing’s more developed vignettes, perhaps even a story, though we know little of the man who tells it. But it evokes a place and time masterfully, and conveys the sense of desolation, of irrelevance, of meaninglessness, that often infuses his tales.
Many of his characters strive desperately for meaning and fulfillment, and pay a price. A loving father takes his daughter with vestigial arms to the ocean so she can swim, and is cited for child endangerment (“Double Helix”). A married waitress yearning for a bigger life takes a train to Los Angeles, gets off at Santa Barbara by mistake, goes home to her husband and daughter, fantasizes about again seeing a man who long ago offered to put her in a movie {“Coast Starlight”). A little girl swimming in a lake is bitten by an alligator and wants to swim there again, so she can ask the alligator why it let her go (“Lake Mary Jane”).
Some of Ewing’s pieces defeat me; seemingly aimless and unresolved, they hint at a story, don’t deliver it. And sometimes fantasy and reality are so intertwined that I can’t tell them apart.
In “Parliament of Owls” the narrative switches back and forth between a linebacker turned minister lost in a forest, and his meaningless speech at a reunion of ex-jocks living in the past. An ingenious approach, but we never get to know the protagonist, are never told how he got into this situation or what he really wants. This happens too often in The Middle Ground.
As for Ewing’s characters, most of them are, to use the protagonist Nora’s word in “Masterpieces,” “unremarkable.” But how many unremarkable people do we want to read about? Failures are interesting only if complex and brilliant; the ones in The Middle Ground are neither. Unremarkable people are, alas, forgettable. If Ewing developed his characters and stories more, he could give us memorable work.
February 19, 2019
The Middle Ground by Jeff Ewing has beautiful descriptions of nature particularly. The middle ground is inhabited by left-behind people, some mystery about their past and some humor. Ewing’s descriptions of desolate places are exquisite. The first story “Tule Fog” captures a lost place, full of fog which brings back memories. In “Ice Flowers” winter’s beauty is recognizable: “Deeper into the woods, the wind died and the snow grew thicker and softer. There was a kind of music to it…the tick of weighted branches, the sigh like waves washing between the trees, rising and falling with the muffled voice of a distant conversation.” One story defies Ewing’s usual vague places. “Hiddenfolk” not only has the place identified—Iceland—but the only one outside the U.S., the only one with an affluent protagonist ( a doctor) and yet has plenty of mystery and defines Ewing’s typical location: “nowhere to hide, beautiful emptiness.” It is the middle of nowhere, where “the day shuffled like a vagrant towards evening” (“Masterpiece”)—places “The town is only known for olives and dust” (“Coast from Starlight”).
These are places where mostly wives but sometimes children have left for better lives. The middle aged men left behind deteriorate like their surroundings but have no will to leave, even to attend a child’s graduation in another state. “Everyone wanting… to know just what he knew and nothing more” (“Coast Starlight”). “Everyone leaned on everybody else like trees in a forest” (“The Shallow End”). “Was he lonely? He may have been. But if so, he’d outlived it. If there was any remnant, it was only the trace of hunger you feel when you stop yourself from eating your fill. The void is taken up somewhere else, and the next time you find you need even less” (“Ice Flowers”). There is drama: violence of love triangles prevail in several stories.
Some stories do not solve their mysteries. “Double Helix” is maybe too short and therefore the mystery overtakes the story: the back and forth in time, which all the stories have, becomes bewildering here, so that the reader isn’t sure what actually happened.
Yet in a few stories the main character does rise to do something, like the runner who takes up running again in “The Amateur Gardener.” Even a few stories have surprise happiness at the end, like “Repurposing” when an isolated albino finds love at the end. That story also has some humor when the socially inept albino looks for a name tag to address the store clerk but ends up embarrassing himself by staring at her chest.
This is a beautifully written collection of stories about forgotten people surviving in unknown circumstances. It confirms that ordinary people’s lives are interesting.
These are places where mostly wives but sometimes children have left for better lives. The middle aged men left behind deteriorate like their surroundings but have no will to leave, even to attend a child’s graduation in another state. “Everyone wanting… to know just what he knew and nothing more” (“Coast Starlight”). “Everyone leaned on everybody else like trees in a forest” (“The Shallow End”). “Was he lonely? He may have been. But if so, he’d outlived it. If there was any remnant, it was only the trace of hunger you feel when you stop yourself from eating your fill. The void is taken up somewhere else, and the next time you find you need even less” (“Ice Flowers”). There is drama: violence of love triangles prevail in several stories.
Some stories do not solve their mysteries. “Double Helix” is maybe too short and therefore the mystery overtakes the story: the back and forth in time, which all the stories have, becomes bewildering here, so that the reader isn’t sure what actually happened.
Yet in a few stories the main character does rise to do something, like the runner who takes up running again in “The Amateur Gardener.” Even a few stories have surprise happiness at the end, like “Repurposing” when an isolated albino finds love at the end. That story also has some humor when the socially inept albino looks for a name tag to address the store clerk but ends up embarrassing himself by staring at her chest.
This is a beautifully written collection of stories about forgotten people surviving in unknown circumstances. It confirms that ordinary people’s lives are interesting.
February 19, 2019
California is a big state with an economy and geography larger than most countries. And yet, if you relied only on popular media you might think California is a state of nothing but fit, lean, tan people who live an hour or less (depending on traffic) from the coast. You might also think California is still a bridge to golden living, unbounded futures. This judgment, of course, would hardly be fair to the state, its people, and to the land itself. They all have their own logic. They all are trying to make do with each other.
Jeff Ewing knows this.
What I appreciate most about this collection is how the landscape of California's Central Valley speaks through the characters and how the characters, in turn, scar the land with their trauma, their pyschosis. Ewing's own Valley moulds his characters, providing them with psychosomatic sensations and a prowling backdrop to goad their psychic wanderings. As I read, I was reminded of the lean prose and no-nonsense sensibilities of Joan Didion and her own account of California. Ewing's vision, spare and lapidary, seems right at home in the "this is not the dreamland" tradition I associate with Didion and Upton Sinclair; with California writers who have looked into the inferno, authors like Mike Davis and Brett Easton Ellis.
The Middle Ground takes the dream of palms and pacific waters, of high terrain skiing and crystal blue Tahoe and shows how, beneath them, runs a long fog with "a false bottom." That image of the Tule, which hits us right at the start, strikes me as a perfect image for all that follows. Ewing moves us along the foot of ground beneath the fog so that we feel his Valley taking to us. No hi-falutin' California dreaming here. Read this book.
Jeff Ewing knows this.
What I appreciate most about this collection is how the landscape of California's Central Valley speaks through the characters and how the characters, in turn, scar the land with their trauma, their pyschosis. Ewing's own Valley moulds his characters, providing them with psychosomatic sensations and a prowling backdrop to goad their psychic wanderings. As I read, I was reminded of the lean prose and no-nonsense sensibilities of Joan Didion and her own account of California. Ewing's vision, spare and lapidary, seems right at home in the "this is not the dreamland" tradition I associate with Didion and Upton Sinclair; with California writers who have looked into the inferno, authors like Mike Davis and Brett Easton Ellis.
The Middle Ground takes the dream of palms and pacific waters, of high terrain skiing and crystal blue Tahoe and shows how, beneath them, runs a long fog with "a false bottom." That image of the Tule, which hits us right at the start, strikes me as a perfect image for all that follows. Ewing moves us along the foot of ground beneath the fog so that we feel his Valley taking to us. No hi-falutin' California dreaming here. Read this book.
November 4, 2019
This is going to be a difficult review. Not because I have conflicting views of what I am going to say about the book as a whole but the fact that I finished it at a disproportionate time when compared with the time I started it and the time I have had it with me.
The first thing I have to say is that the writing is impressive. It has a severe and profound tone to it, as do most of the stories within. They focus on smaller towns and people who live in such communities.
It has considerably fewer pages than a lot of books that I have read since I started this (almost at the beginning of the year), but I have a partially good reason for that. It does not contain the kind of stories that you can take in at one go. I had to read a few over again to ensure I got the facts right. I hardly ever have to do that, and that points out the fact that this is not meant to be read at a swift pace. They are brutal in its depiction. The word does not directly depict violence (although some have subtle tinges of it). The brutality lies in the truthfulness of the narrative. People are shown at their best and worst, none in between. A few did not meet the mark with me, but overall, it shows the lives of people bound by the cycle due to the kind of lives they were born into and the show progression of time and age. I will not talk of individual stories (mostly because I did not keep independent tabs on them). There is not much of a wrapping up of a story before moving on to the next, something people should know before going in. I would recommend this to those readers who like a bit (or more) of grey in their stories.
I received an ARC thanks to NetGalley and the publishers, but the review is entirely based on my own reading experience.
The first thing I have to say is that the writing is impressive. It has a severe and profound tone to it, as do most of the stories within. They focus on smaller towns and people who live in such communities.
It has considerably fewer pages than a lot of books that I have read since I started this (almost at the beginning of the year), but I have a partially good reason for that. It does not contain the kind of stories that you can take in at one go. I had to read a few over again to ensure I got the facts right. I hardly ever have to do that, and that points out the fact that this is not meant to be read at a swift pace. They are brutal in its depiction. The word does not directly depict violence (although some have subtle tinges of it). The brutality lies in the truthfulness of the narrative. People are shown at their best and worst, none in between. A few did not meet the mark with me, but overall, it shows the lives of people bound by the cycle due to the kind of lives they were born into and the show progression of time and age. I will not talk of individual stories (mostly because I did not keep independent tabs on them). There is not much of a wrapping up of a story before moving on to the next, something people should know before going in. I would recommend this to those readers who like a bit (or more) of grey in their stories.
I received an ARC thanks to NetGalley and the publishers, but the review is entirely based on my own reading experience.
February 10, 2019
"He closed his eyes and concentrated, but it was impossible to call back the future that had been like an ocean washing against them. How had it shrunk to this?"
From Parliament of Owls
In this story collection, Ewing paints the beautiful and painful raw circumstances of his characters’ lives in a subtle, but quite powerful palette. He seems to have a direct line to the paradoxical places inside them and inside the reader— the places we don’t often wish to fully inhabit. He captures, with great sensitivity, the errors and desires that preoccupy a soul, the very things we frequently want to disown. This exceptional collection draws us into dark and seductive pools of memory while revealing these poignant lives in real time, with all their imperfections, regrets, and better instincts along for the ride. Ewing also succeeds in creating a strong sense of place across stories. I could hear the pinch and snap of wanderers through the woods, hear the wind through the trees and cutting across wheat fields. I squinted through the fog. I could smell horses and roadside diners. I “could feel the shape” of a thunderstorm. I was very impressed and moved by this collection, and being a writer myself, also inspired.
February 19, 2019
From the first paragraph of "Tule Fog" you know you're dealing with writer of talent. Mr. Ewing has a knack for gorgeous setting and wry observations about life. I must admit, though, that this first story wasn't my favorite of the collection--I got a little lost halfway through. But don't let that first one put you off--the collection only gets better as you go. From the disturbing "Double Helix" to the odd "Repurposing", Mr. Ewing keeps his readers surprised--such a rare and wonderful gift. Little flashes of his stories have come back to me again and again. One of my favorites, "Ice Flowers", made me actually get up off the couch, go outside to inspect snowflakes. Vivid scenes, such as when the narrator comes upon his neighbor in a hot spring, are nearly visceral for the reader. Take the time to read through the end of this collection, as the last few stories, particularly "The Shallow End" and "Hiddenfolk" will practically break your heart. Is it me, or was the writer able to work the word "Void" into every story (published by Into the Void)? Very clever.
February 20, 2019
(Provided with an advance copy in return for an honest review)
Let's get right to it; Jeff Ewing writes well.
The way he builds a sentence, establishes a flow, and draws you through a story are all top-notch.
The worlds he constructs are practically tangible. You can feel them, taste them, and come to know and love them. They become real.
He's also able to conjure firm, believable, and nuanced characters, though for best results requires a longer story. With some of the shorter stories I wanted a little more from the people in them, just a bit more background depth so I could get a better understanding of them.
The stories themselves, the ideas behind them, each is interesting and engaging in its own way. Are they all 'winners'? I personally don't think so, *however* enough of them are that I wasn't disappointed. As for the ones where I felt let down; I often found it came at the end, with a curtain call I didn't quite expect or feel sat well with the story that had come before it.
Overall, I did enjoy the read.
Let's get right to it; Jeff Ewing writes well.
The way he builds a sentence, establishes a flow, and draws you through a story are all top-notch.
The worlds he constructs are practically tangible. You can feel them, taste them, and come to know and love them. They become real.
He's also able to conjure firm, believable, and nuanced characters, though for best results requires a longer story. With some of the shorter stories I wanted a little more from the people in them, just a bit more background depth so I could get a better understanding of them.
The stories themselves, the ideas behind them, each is interesting and engaging in its own way. Are they all 'winners'? I personally don't think so, *however* enough of them are that I wasn't disappointed. As for the ones where I felt let down; I often found it came at the end, with a curtain call I didn't quite expect or feel sat well with the story that had come before it.
Overall, I did enjoy the read.
February 5, 2019
Full disclosure: I received this book free from NetGalley and the publisher. This has not affected my review. Thank you for the opportunity to read and review this book.
After reading the first few stories, I probably would have rated this a 3. But, keep reading. There's something about the writing that is haunting.
The characters are all regular people, people who, if not content in what they have aren't not content either. But they also aren't necessarily happy. They are just living, surviving, merely existing even. There's a melancholy within all of the main characters. Anyone who has ever struggled to figure out what the meaning of life is or what you're supposed to be doing here, will be able to relate to the ambivalence that seems to hover around the characters.
And while this all sounds like it might be a condemnation if this book, there's a poetic feeling that makes it very unique, literary, and worth giving a chance.
After reading the first few stories, I probably would have rated this a 3. But, keep reading. There's something about the writing that is haunting.
The characters are all regular people, people who, if not content in what they have aren't not content either. But they also aren't necessarily happy. They are just living, surviving, merely existing even. There's a melancholy within all of the main characters. Anyone who has ever struggled to figure out what the meaning of life is or what you're supposed to be doing here, will be able to relate to the ambivalence that seems to hover around the characters.
And while this all sounds like it might be a condemnation if this book, there's a poetic feeling that makes it very unique, literary, and worth giving a chance.
February 20, 2019
(Advance copy received in return for honest review)
This collection of 18 short stories is linked by a sense of the past – a looking back, but rarely with a sense of nostalgia. The language is gentle/literary and the images delightful, but the past is not idealised.
The rural setting for many of the stories suggests something unspoiled, but it soon becomes clear that time and change are the overriding issues.
Ewing draws us on in each of these stories. A disappointing marriage, the loss of an eye, a destructive sibling relationship; everything ordinary has its undertow of significance. In Sognsvann, a woman remembers with bitterness an incident involving a teenage boy. “No matter what she did, he healed and aged into confidence and dismissiveness while she stayed where she was, a minor, pitiful character in his story.”
The Middle Ground deals with the harsh realities of life with literary flair.
This collection of 18 short stories is linked by a sense of the past – a looking back, but rarely with a sense of nostalgia. The language is gentle/literary and the images delightful, but the past is not idealised.
The rural setting for many of the stories suggests something unspoiled, but it soon becomes clear that time and change are the overriding issues.
Ewing draws us on in each of these stories. A disappointing marriage, the loss of an eye, a destructive sibling relationship; everything ordinary has its undertow of significance. In Sognsvann, a woman remembers with bitterness an incident involving a teenage boy. “No matter what she did, he healed and aged into confidence and dismissiveness while she stayed where she was, a minor, pitiful character in his story.”
The Middle Ground deals with the harsh realities of life with literary flair.
January 25, 2019
The first story, "Thule Fog" sets the tone for this collection - “When people talk about California, they don’t mean here.” Because these stories are set in small towns and odd places across America.
Ewing’s stories all explore the human condition – what he sees as the middle ground – a place just beyond home, both in the physical and psychological sense. His characters are people who are searching for something, or have lost something.
“I wanted him to understand what it was like for us to be young who weren’t any more.” (From the story, "Middle Ground")
In "Lake Mary Jane" a child gets bitten by an alligator. This story – one of my favourites – has a comedic element but it also contains both love and violence.
There is beauty and regret in these stories but also a sense of wonder in the natural world.
Recommended.
Ewing’s stories all explore the human condition – what he sees as the middle ground – a place just beyond home, both in the physical and psychological sense. His characters are people who are searching for something, or have lost something.
“I wanted him to understand what it was like for us to be young who weren’t any more.” (From the story, "Middle Ground")
In "Lake Mary Jane" a child gets bitten by an alligator. This story – one of my favourites – has a comedic element but it also contains both love and violence.
There is beauty and regret in these stories but also a sense of wonder in the natural world.
Recommended.
February 19, 2019
So well written, so bleak. Stories of missed opportunities, dislocation, fractured lives, people trapped, stuck, marooned. The computer nerd in his mine in 'Repurposing', the beautiful girl in a small town in 'Coast Starlight'. 'Masterpiece''s brother and sister stuck in a destructive, repeating pattern ... I gave a small sigh of relief when 'Lake Mary Jane' ended on (almost) a note of hope!
In 'Tule Fog', the mountains are 'jagged pieces of the earth pushed up at the edge of the valley like teeth breaking through gums' and 'curl above the houses like an animal in mid-pounce.' 'No one anywhere, not even the dead, will wish they were here.'
'Barn Sale' was enthralling, unnerving, a bit surreal.
Thanks for the opportunity to read this. Not a feelgood book by any stretch, but some very fine writing, lots of atmosphere, and images that stay with you!
In 'Tule Fog', the mountains are 'jagged pieces of the earth pushed up at the edge of the valley like teeth breaking through gums' and 'curl above the houses like an animal in mid-pounce.' 'No one anywhere, not even the dead, will wish they were here.'
'Barn Sale' was enthralling, unnerving, a bit surreal.
Thanks for the opportunity to read this. Not a feelgood book by any stretch, but some very fine writing, lots of atmosphere, and images that stay with you!
February 19, 2019
The language in this collection of short stories-- some flash, some longer pieces--is gorgeous. Ewing creates vivid pictures of people and the places they inhabit. In some of the stories, place is a character that inhabits the person. A few of the stories felt abrupt-- more character sketch than fleshed out story. I loved "Repurposing"-- the premise, set-up, and characters gripped me, but the end fizzled. I found myself wanting more. The longer pieces were more satisfying, especially "Barn Sale," and "Coast Starlight." If Ewing writes any long form fiction, I would love to read it.
Overall, I really enjoyed this collection. Beautiful language, haunting characters, flashes of insight and vulnerability that have stayed with me.
I received a free copy of this book from the publisher, Into the Void, in return for an honest review.
Overall, I really enjoyed this collection. Beautiful language, haunting characters, flashes of insight and vulnerability that have stayed with me.
I received a free copy of this book from the publisher, Into the Void, in return for an honest review.
March 3, 2019
This collection is not for the inattentive reader, the skimmer, the escapist. But then what short story is? These are stories not afraid to stare into the void – which gets several direct mentions, although clearly this bears no relation to the publisher’s moniker (Into The Void), since many of the stories were previously published in a selection of litmags (with excellent pedigrees).
I loved all the stories, especially the final one, Hiddenfolk, and its strong ending.
The Middle Ground of the title could be geographical: the stories are not located in cities but rather in dusty deserts, small towns, forests, a vacant lot, Iceland, in a huge variety of situations. Middle Ground might also be a philosophical place, a murky distance from extremes, the average or neutral spot where many of us try to abide. It is where Ewing’s characters struggle to discern a meaning that doesn’t give itself up easily, if at all. It could even be compromise, a middle point in a life.
This is strong, thoughtful prose that is well worth the read, several readings, the puzzle to understand. Our investment is richly rewarded, our own humanity illuminated obliquely.
I’ll be reading these stories again, and watching out for more from Jeff Ewing.
I loved all the stories, especially the final one, Hiddenfolk, and its strong ending.
The Middle Ground of the title could be geographical: the stories are not located in cities but rather in dusty deserts, small towns, forests, a vacant lot, Iceland, in a huge variety of situations. Middle Ground might also be a philosophical place, a murky distance from extremes, the average or neutral spot where many of us try to abide. It is where Ewing’s characters struggle to discern a meaning that doesn’t give itself up easily, if at all. It could even be compromise, a middle point in a life.
This is strong, thoughtful prose that is well worth the read, several readings, the puzzle to understand. Our investment is richly rewarded, our own humanity illuminated obliquely.
I’ll be reading these stories again, and watching out for more from Jeff Ewing.
Read
February 22, 2019As the title implies, these are stories about space. Small towns, relationships, self-doubt. These characters have measured personal limitations on where they can go, what they can do, and how to live their life.
Dystopian in a way of sharing no contact with the outside world. These people live unhappily in remote towns and despise the small number of people around, so you begin to wonder why they don’t leave but maybe they don’t have a choice. Even the animals stay. It’s as if there’s this lurking darkness surrounding every mountain and valley, and despite not ever seeing it, its presence is made known throughout.
Strong prose that forces you to examine your own life and the choices you've made to get to where you are today.
Favorite: The Silo
Dystopian in a way of sharing no contact with the outside world. These people live unhappily in remote towns and despise the small number of people around, so you begin to wonder why they don’t leave but maybe they don’t have a choice. Even the animals stay. It’s as if there’s this lurking darkness surrounding every mountain and valley, and despite not ever seeing it, its presence is made known throughout.
Strong prose that forces you to examine your own life and the choices you've made to get to where you are today.
Favorite: The Silo
February 20, 2019
These short stories are set at the dishevelled edges of forgotten and run-down towns, populated by the marginalised and the unlucky. Places where strangers show more compassion than family and life gives way to disenchantment. Children disappoint their parents, relationships are made to be broken and a life of disquiet is all you can aim for.
Ewing's first collection is a strong one. His characters are well fleshed out and his writing tells of the regrets and lost opportunities of people unable to move forward. The melancholy of some of the stories and their strong sense of place is on a par with Willie Vlautin and I look forward to reading Ewing's next offerings.
Ewing's first collection is a strong one. His characters are well fleshed out and his writing tells of the regrets and lost opportunities of people unable to move forward. The melancholy of some of the stories and their strong sense of place is on a par with Willie Vlautin and I look forward to reading Ewing's next offerings.
February 7, 2019
This is a solid collection of stories with interesting characters in interesting situations. They are (mostly) extremely well-written and often include wisdom for the ages like in the story ‘Hiddenfolk’: “You wait too long sometimes, and the chance goes away for good.”
There’s a sense of wilderness that runs through the stories, and a dry, slow tempo that conveys as much about the places as it does about the characters. I felt like I ought to have a map nearby to pin where I was with each story, to watch the stories meander across the western US.
If I could give it a half-star rating, I would have given it 3 1/2 stars. I prefer to be generous than stingy and hence the 4 star rating. It’s a solid, nice collection.
There’s a sense of wilderness that runs through the stories, and a dry, slow tempo that conveys as much about the places as it does about the characters. I felt like I ought to have a map nearby to pin where I was with each story, to watch the stories meander across the western US.
If I could give it a half-star rating, I would have given it 3 1/2 stars. I prefer to be generous than stingy and hence the 4 star rating. It’s a solid, nice collection.
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