What do you think?
Rate this book
Sideshow
Ladies and Gentlemen, step right up.... Witness alarming and amusing antics! Experience irresistible wonder and dread! All on display in Sidney Thompson's stupendous debut collection, Sideshow.
Showcased herein are characters from the unexpected corners of the modern South--a stage where the urban and the rural, the cultured and the unrefined, privileged and poor, black and white all perform side by side. An airbrush artist learns to counterfeit twenty-dollar bills in a scheme to prove to his estranged wife that he is a genuine artiste; a teenage boy becomes a peeping tom in order to discover the true reasons for his parents' divorce; a father gives his son a classical lesson in logic and revenge by taking him to murder their next-door neighbor; the manager of an apartment complex is caught in a bizarre love triangle with a gorgeous new female tenant and her bedridden seven-hundred-pound husband. This menagerie of misfits serves as a reminder of how freakish we can become when our lives lack truth or love, or when we suddenly discover it.
Includes the following stories:
"The Man Who Never Dies"
"The Floater"
"The Voyeur"
"The Chameleon"
"The Romanticist and the Classicist"
"The Counterfeiter"
"Ernest, the Bicyclist"
"The Gatherer"
"The Husbands"
"The Aristotelian"
Showcased herein are characters from the unexpected corners of the modern South--a stage where the urban and the rural, the cultured and the unrefined, privileged and poor, black and white all perform side by side. An airbrush artist learns to counterfeit twenty-dollar bills in a scheme to prove to his estranged wife that he is a genuine artiste; a teenage boy becomes a peeping tom in order to discover the true reasons for his parents' divorce; a father gives his son a classical lesson in logic and revenge by taking him to murder their next-door neighbor; the manager of an apartment complex is caught in a bizarre love triangle with a gorgeous new female tenant and her bedridden seven-hundred-pound husband. This menagerie of misfits serves as a reminder of how freakish we can become when our lives lack truth or love, or when we suddenly discover it.
Includes the following stories:
"The Man Who Never Dies"
"The Floater"
"The Voyeur"
"The Chameleon"
"The Romanticist and the Classicist"
"The Counterfeiter"
"Ernest, the Bicyclist"
"The Gatherer"
"The Husbands"
"The Aristotelian"
236 pages, Paperback
First published May 1, 2006
1 person is currently reading
16 people want to read
About the author
Sidney Thompson
21 books59 followersThe first two novels in THE BASS REEVES TRILOGY--FOLLOW THE ANGELS, FOLLOW THE DOVES (2020) & HELL ON THE BORDER (2021)--inspired the 2023 Paramount+ miniseries LAWMEN: BASS REEVES (produced by Taylor Sheridan & starring Golden-Globe nominee David Oyelowo, Dennis Quaid, and Donald Sutherland). I was a Creative Consultant with the show. Book Three, THE FORSAKEN AND THE DEAD, was published in 2023. This bestselling trilogy has received numerous honors for preserving whitewashed cultural history.
Though enslaved for the first 22 years of his life, Bass Reeves rose to epic heights as the most successful and feared lawman in the Old West. The trilogy narrates his life story.
My other books include a middle-grade novel, KUDZU'S ENORMOUS NEW LIFE, which features a cast of animal characters and an autistic boy who live on a small farm in the Mississippi Delta. Margaret McMullan, author of Where the Angels Lived and How I Found the Strong, said, "Think E.B. White and Beatrice Potter. Kudzu’s Enormous New Life will be a classic." The book was nominated for the 2022 Mississippi Institute of Arts & Letters Book Award for Youth Literature, was a finalist for the 2021 American Book Fest Award for Children's Fiction, and was a 2023 Purple Dragonfly Book Award Winner for Animals/Pets, Middle Grade Fiction, & Special Needs/Disability Awareness.
In addition: YOU/WEE: POEMS FROM A FATHER (2018) and SIDESHOW: STORIES, winner of Foreword INDIES Silver Award for Short Story Collection of the Year (2006).
I earned an MFA in creative writing at the University of Arkansas and a PhD in American literature/African-American narratives at the University of North Texas, and now teach creative writing and African-American literature at Texas Christian University in Fort Worth.
Though enslaved for the first 22 years of his life, Bass Reeves rose to epic heights as the most successful and feared lawman in the Old West. The trilogy narrates his life story.
My other books include a middle-grade novel, KUDZU'S ENORMOUS NEW LIFE, which features a cast of animal characters and an autistic boy who live on a small farm in the Mississippi Delta. Margaret McMullan, author of Where the Angels Lived and How I Found the Strong, said, "Think E.B. White and Beatrice Potter. Kudzu’s Enormous New Life will be a classic." The book was nominated for the 2022 Mississippi Institute of Arts & Letters Book Award for Youth Literature, was a finalist for the 2021 American Book Fest Award for Children's Fiction, and was a 2023 Purple Dragonfly Book Award Winner for Animals/Pets, Middle Grade Fiction, & Special Needs/Disability Awareness.
In addition: YOU/WEE: POEMS FROM A FATHER (2018) and SIDESHOW: STORIES, winner of Foreword INDIES Silver Award for Short Story Collection of the Year (2006).
I earned an MFA in creative writing at the University of Arkansas and a PhD in American literature/African-American narratives at the University of North Texas, and now teach creative writing and African-American literature at Texas Christian University in Fort Worth.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
No one has reviewed this book yet.