Grace for Grace: Stories

by Steve De Jarnatt

Grace for Grace brings celebrated cult film-maker Steve De Jarnatt’s distinctive voice and cinematic vision to the page. Lush inner lives, idiosyncratic syntax, and sweeping scale characterize these wildly imaginative stories, which present characters in search of meaning and belonging, and often, at the same time, redemption and revenge.

'Rubiaux Rising' (a Best American Short Stories selection) is a tale of triumph amid calamity during Hurricane Katrina, while 'Her Great Blue' is a surreal interspecies love story. 'Mulligan' reveals the private pain of parents traveling across the country to give away their children, and 'Wraiths in a Swelter' is both a ghost story and a confessional memoir - following a deliriously exhausted EMT through a deadly Chicago heat wave.

Many of the stories in Grace for Grace are set against the backdrop of natural or man-made catastrophes. These disasters test the characters’ limits as they confront sudden changes and extremes, discovering through their unexpected resourcefulness and endurance something beyond suffering... something that approaches the sublime.

192 pages, Paperback

Published April 15, 2020

Reviews

[Janet · Rating 5 out of 5]

A feast for the language-lover and a workout for the thrill-minded, Steve de Jarnatt’s short story collection takes us to extremes. Exquisite, raw and absolutely unique tales of peril and wonderment.

Their subjects range widely--from disasters at sea to those of a romantic variety, an amputee trapped in an attic during Hurricane Katrina, a unliked girl who brings a rattlesnake to show and tell, a law in Nebraska that allows parents to legally abandon their children. There are fires and floods, tidal waves and heat waves and beached whales, and a masterful prose that is deft and lyrical, that lifts moment after moment into the sublime.

Here's an EMT during a savage Chicago heat wave in "Wraiths in Swelter":

"I've heard there are fires now that cannot be put out. Too many hydrants open. This moment I don't care. I crack open one more, in the shade of a distant skyscraper. There's a limp upsurge of a dozen liquid feet, an ever-changing shape, backlit and glowing. If I squint, a human form quivers within it. Today I believe in water sprites.

"I pull the wagon beneath the fountain, which crashes mercy across the roof. Metal steams. A staccato beat tattooing, repetition a calming thing. I yank the gurney from the back and roll off to find another half-backed beast for my ark."

[Christine · Rating 5 out of 5]

These are such original, ambitious, joyfully written stories. Some are also very funny at times, but De Jarnatt isn't afraid of pain and melancholy. Grace for Grace is a masterful collection - shocking that it's his first book (although he is a filmmaker and a screenwriter [Miracle Mile, Strange Brew], so he knows how to tell a story.]

I hope he'll find a lot of readers - it's really unlike any other collection I've read.

[Ross Maclean · Rating 4 out of 5]

There’s something incredibly impressive about the diversity of original narrative voices and geographical niches on display between stories throughout this eclectic collection. It’s clearly written by an author who has an innate sense of hyper-specific cultural nuances and regional phonology and has fun playing with them, whether it’s revelling in state nicknames or the nomenclature and ancestral background of the protagonists. But at the heart of every story is the kernel of an audacious idea — filled with wonderment at the vagaries of the human condition and how it rubs up against the nature that envelops it — that feels fully explored and inventively realised. Each of those ideas unfold vividly in colourful prose, leaving you soaking in the rich turns of phrase, and every single tale leaves a lasting impression with a variety of depths of indentation.

[Thomas · Rating 5 out of 5]

These stories are wildly specific, with vivid characters and great inventive energy. Every sentence is a pleasure - Vladimir Nabokov meets Annie Proulx. Uncanny fiction at its very best.

[Erik Bergstrom · Rating 5 out of 5]

A very interesting, challenging, and refreshing read! I'm a fan of Steve De Jarnatt's movies, so going into his fiction I was expecting some over the top cinematic style writing. There is some of that here, but there's also a lot of introspective and original storytelling at work. Looking at the acknowledgments, it appears De Jarnatt has put in his time in the creative writing world with an MFA and in all the places he's published, and though a lot of these stories are very literary in nature, they've also got all the twists & turns of his movies like Miracle Mile. Each story comes to a climax like the ones seen in his films, where the characters (who he writes very richly—something quite rare in modern fiction) come at odds with nature and things beyond their control. I loved every story and every minute reading this collection!

[Robert Morgan Fisher · Rating 5 out of 5]

Can't recall reading a short story collection that takes so many chances. De Jarnatt writes without limits. I drew a lot of inspiration from these tales. Sure, there are recurring themes and he loves a mess, the messiness of our existence. He's unafraid to reach for completely improbable synchronicity, cross over into surrealism--this guy knows how to make up interesting stories. His artistic background as a movie director/writer/actor follows a similar trek. De Jarnatt hates inertia.

He's like a conceptual shark always rushing headlong. And those sentences! Guy can really layer in the poetry. "Her Great Blue," which inspired the whale eye cover, is a story I'll give to any student stuck for ideas. It is just one of the wildest rides I've ever taken in the short fiction realm. Let's hope Steve circles back to short fiction soon--there's blood in the water and the beast must be fed.

[Howard Chesley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Remarkable book. I frankly wasn't expecting this quality of prose from a writer with a movie background.

[Jessa · Rating 3 out of 5]

loved some of the short stories, didn’t enjoy others..