This Our Exile: Short Stories

by Joshua Hren

This Our Exile brings together short stories preoccupied with the eternal questions—incarnating them afresh through the singularities that mark our secular age. Here is a vibrant contribution to contemporary Catholic fiction that pinpoints those places in the heart that can come into existence only through suffering. “Joshua Hren’s fiction draws upon a great tradition, including Flannery O’Connor’s grotesque, but his voice is distinctively his own—elliptical, contemporary, and ironic without cynicism. His characters see the world from within distinctive anxieties whose particulars would have been incomprehensible only a generation ago, but whose nature is nonetheless universal. Marriage is at the center of Hren’s imaginative his couples confront each other in an age of self-absorption, addiction, and distraction, within which Hren uncovers the mysteries of birth, death, and responsibility through inner commentary and witty conversation. In the incisive stories of This Our Exile , the profane contemporary world unexpectedly (and without fail) meets up with a religious consciousness in an intersection with some aspect of transcendent reality that it could not have anticipated from within its own horizon. This is deeply thoughtful new fiction, troubling and memorable, offering readers a fresh understanding of what faith and its contraries look like in our times.”— GLENN ARBERY , President of Wyoming Catholic College, author of Why Literature Matters and Bearings and Distances “I have been a fan of Joshua Hren’s fiction for a decade now, and this collection reflects everything I admire in his writing. With his sensibility for the resonances of words and his attention to the effect of setting and scene, Hren brings to bear in his fiction talents that would well serve a poet or film director. With their intense awareness of human frailty and human dignity, these multifaceted stories follow diverse characters, along paths of struggle and suffering, toward grace. They refuse to offer readers easy answers, but affirm our human hunger for true and beautiful things, insisting that these latter not only can, but must, be found—even in dark places.”— KATY CARL , Editor-in-chief, Dappled Things magazine “A young man who battles the memory of his father’s and grandfather’s factory jobs—their dedication to spouses, children, stability; a teenage girl rebelling against her divorced mother’s attempt to drive her into sexual relationships, who reads about crowns of thorns and flagellated saints; a man who recognizes his father by chance—the father who was a graduate student in philosophy and now cooks in a restaurant, the father whom he hasn’t seen for years—Joshua Hren crafts words and insights into strong stories such as these, about the lost and marginalized in our current culture, wherein old measures, authorities, rules have been cast aside, and most of us wander in befuddlement without guidance. But there are points—or rather, persons—of redemption, such as Michelle, who ‘inhabits the landscape between deadening-gravity and everything-is-a-game,’ and who can articulate what a full life is. These stories come alive and make one wonder, and feel, and think.”— ARTHUR POWERS , author of A Hero for the People and The Book of Jotham , co-founder & vice president of the Catholic Writers Guild “The stories in Joshua Hren’s This Our Exile depict characters in pressing situations, leading challenged lives; and yet, despite their wrestling, there remains mystery, wonder, and hope. Reading his stories, you will be transported into a world where richly complex people are rendered present by a writer who repeatedly demonstrates humility and compassion towards his characters. This evocative debut collection showcases Hren as a writer adept at exploring language’s possibilities.”— NATHANIEL LEE HANSEN , Editor, The Windhover

142 pages, Paperback

Published December 14, 2017

About the author

Joshua Hren is an novelist and critic, a father and husband. He is founder and editor of Wiseblood Books and co-founder of the Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing at the University of St. Thomas, Houston. Joshua regularly publishes essays and poems in such journals as The Los Angeles Review of Books and First Things, America and Public Discourse, New Polity and The Hedgehog Review, Plough and Commonweal, National Review and The University Bookman, and Religion and Literature and LOGOS.

Joshua is the author of ten books: the short story collections This Our Exile and In the Wine Press; a book of poems called Last Things, First Things, & Other Lost Causes; Middle-earth and the Return of the Common Good: J.R.R. Tolkien and Political Philosophy; How to Read (and Write) Like a Catholic; the novel Infinite Regress; and the theological-aesthetical manifesto Contemplative Realism. Joshua's More than a Matter of Taste: The Moral Imagination and the Spirit of Literature and Faith in the Furnace of Doubt: Dana Gioia's Poetics of Belief, are forthcoming. His second novel, Blue Walls Falling Down, was published in October of 2024.

Reviews

[Thomas Kyte]

I enjoyed the smattering of short stories tied together with Catholic imagery and themes. I believe the message(s) that I understood were great and one particular line was especially beautiful. It’s the ones where I didn’t that Hren lost me and gets 3-3.5 stars. Now this is likely just as much my fault as his, but considering this is a collection of short stories, I maybe wrongly supposed they would all be digestible. The writing style itself I think gave me too much to process alongside the message(s) he was trying to convey. Maybe that is the point? The complexity of the lives he creates is certainly true to life but I don’t know. Within the context of one story, but a central theme throughout, I left the book with one thought returning: “the nun said this was the sort of thing you could do with your life: tend to Christ”.

[Robin]

Hren's writing style is lyrical, sometimes skittery, richly layered with images and ideas that dance and fight with each other. The stories can be a bit abstract, even obtuse, but they are also powerful, often delivering a gut punch. With a gentle hand, he deals with the big questions: who are we? Why are we here? How do we deal with imperfect parents? Imperfect spouses? Difficult children? Failure? Loss? Hope?

Some of the stories left me breathless, some haunted me for weeks afterwards, and some altered my thinking, which is high praise indeed.

Elegant, piercing, philosophical, provocative, and always, always, beauty-filled.

Not for everyone, but certainly for those who are asking those deep questions.