Why the Long Face?

by Ron MacLean

Fiction. Fifteen stories, at once playful and serious, simple and layered, familiar and not. Gertrude Stein and Buffy the Vampire Slayer track down the bridal party to save a Las Vegas wedding. An ambivalent geneticist disappears himself in Texas scrub country. A five-year-old in search of her lost mother walks a high-wire between her home and her lesbian neighbor's. These are stories about people yearning for connection with each other, with themselves, with whatever lies beyond.

Genres: Fiction

210 pages, Paperback

First published August 1, 2008

About the author

Ron’s fiction has appeared in GQ, Greensboro Review, Prism International, Night Train and other quarterlies. He is a recipient of the Frederick Exley Award for Short Fiction and a Pushcart Prize nominee. When he teaches, he does so at Grub Street, Boston’s independent writing center.

Reviews

[Gori Suture · Rating 3 out of 5]

It’s interesting, but the stories are more like character studies. Not much happens in them and they never feel concluded, just ended.

[Lale Davidson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Aimee Bender, Karen Russell, Amber Sparks, Ron MacLean all belong on the same shelf. Great stuff

[Stacie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Emotions 101.

[Jules Jones · Rating 3 out of 5]

I received a review copy of this book as part of the LibraryThing Early Reviewers programme. As with many of the books I've requested on LTER, it's a book that I might not have picked up and bought in a bookshop, but which looked intriguing enough on the LTER information for me to want to try it. As such, it's outside my usual reading range, which does have some bearing on my review.[return][return]The book is a collection of contemporary short stories by Ron MacLean. It was described in the publishers blurb as "MacLean's characters from a girl who walks on telephone wires to a memory-addled truck driver all offer revelatory evidence of the strange workings of the human mind." I've found that it doesn't quite match the impression I picked up from the blurb, being much more experimental litfic than I'd really expected. This isn't a problem as such, but I found some of the "quirky" stories to be a lot less experimental and cutting edge than the publisher suggests, at least from my perspective as a long-time reader of speculative fiction and high end fanfic.[return][return]The stories are very much character-driven, a step into the lives of people who range from the ordinary to the bizarre. The characters and their concerns are deftly portrayed in beautiful prose, but I've found that a common feature of the stories is that they feel as if they're the first chapter of a longer story -- there's no real end or closure to any of the ones I've read so far. It works when the stories are taken one at a time, but I find it irritating when reading two or three in a single session, which is a large part of why I still haven't finished the book. I fully intend to read every story, and expect that I'll want to re-read some of them, but I enjoy it better taken a story every so often rather than reading the book through.[return][return]In the end, a worthwhile use of my time, but rather hard to review in any coherent fashion.

[Mary · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ron MacLean is an artist who knows what he’s doing. He asks you to trust that he will tell you a story. He asks you to trust that there’s a good chance you’ll take away more than you imagined. Not every story in Why the Long Face is for all tastes, they weren’t all mine. Yet each one offers beauty.

“Las Vegas Wedding” plays like a recurring dream, a surreal snowball of nonlinear narrative, gradually rolling, forwards – and then backwards, adding layers of situations and characters – like Gertrude Stein of all people.

There are similar stories, surreal from the get-go. And some, begin more conventionally.
In “Aerialist”, newly widowed Nick learns that his five-year-old daughter, Katie, can walk with amazing calm and precision over unexpected heights. Nick is stunned when it’s two feet off the ground in the living room; he’s shocked when she maneuvers a second floor stair railing with ease. And the dichotomy here is not blatant; we know five-year-old children do not have that kind of skills that Katie continues to exhibit. But MacLean allows us to accept what’s happening – we feel only as much doubt and fear as Nick does – nothing more.


Read the rest of my review at Blogcritics Magazine: http://blogcritics.org/books/article/...

[Lisa · Rating 5 out of 5]

The fifteen stories in Ron MacLean's superb collection examine life through a variety of prisms. In some stories, the constraints of the physical world are heightened or tweaked, while others evoke the altered reality associated with dreams. What remains consistent throughout these stories is MacLean's ability to create compelling and sympathetic characters. From the grief-stricken father and daughter in the moving "Aerialist" to the troubled couples in "South of Why," MacLean's characters are driven by loss, and by their yearning for escape. Maps and geography figure prominently in many of these stories, and the experience of reading them is similar to that of taking a road trip: the reader turns the page with breathless anticipation, wondering what might be lurking beyond the next mile marker, and reaches the end of the road having learned as much about herself as she learned from the characters encountered along the way.

[Stephen Dorneman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ron MacLean has intensively studied the various forms a short story can take, and it shows in this excellent, eclectic collection. From the Borges-like "The Encylopedia of (Almost) All the Knowledge..." to the medical-historical fiction of "Strange Trajectory: A Story of Phineas Gage", from the surreal celebration of chaos that is "Las Vegas Wedding" to his jabs at the world of art and art funding in both "Dr. Bliss and the Library of Toast" and "Figure with Meat," Ron engages the reader with fascinating characters who struggle with the usual, that is the human, emotions and relationships in the light of often unusual events. There is humor here, and pain, and people who muddle through and sometimes fail. Recommended. [Disclaimer: I've studied with Ron at Boston's Grub Street, and know him to be a wonderful teacher and a great guy. But you should still buy and read this book. Go ahead, do it now. I'll wait.]

[S. Wilson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Most short story collections are usually a grab-bag; some good, some bad, some obviously just included to fill out the page count.

Why the Long Face? is the exception to the rule. Ron Maclean's collection of short stories vary in their style, subject matter, prose, and impact, yet every story shines as a perfect example of what a short story should be. MacLean's stories convey the emotions of the characters, the longing and suffering, confusion and contemplation, with elegance and skill. The world these stories take place in is eerie, bizarre, almost surrealistic, and yet all too familiar.

Short stories are an art form in themselves. Ron MacLean's Why the Long Face? is truly a work of art.

[Kirsten · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm a bit wary of non-genre short story collections -- they're often full of self-absorbed postmodernism, stories that seem to have been written for their own sake rather than to entertain or enlighten. I was surprised, then, to discover how much I loved this collection. The stories are by turns funny, luminous, and even frightening. Thanks, Mr. MacLean, for surprising me.

[Harlan · Rating 3 out of 5]

I got about halfway through this collection of short stories, before moving on to other books. A very mixed collection. On a 1-5 scale, of the stories I read, there was one 4.5, two 4s, two 3s, a 2, and an unreadable 1. I'll look forward to seeing Mr MacLean's stories when they're accepted by editors in magazines. (South of Why, my favorite of these stories, was originally published in GQ.)

[Cynthia Reeser]

Review here: http://www.newpages.com/bookreviews/2...

[Armand · Rating 4 out of 5]

A nicely written collection of short stories that delves deep into the psyches of lost souls. Good stuff.