Possession

by John Smolens

In settings familiar and foreign, from the shores of the Great Lakes, to rural Ireland and Scotland, the boulevards of 19th century Paris, and an ancient Italian hill-town, John Smolens’ stories delineate his protagonists’ fears, doubts, and uncertainties, tempered by irony, humor, and tenacity. The collection’s title, Possession(s), suggests an overarching duality that connects these fourteen disparate narratives, which include stories first published in magazines such as the North American Review, the Madison Review and the Southern Review alongside new and never-before published narratives. In “prose that is an understated marvel” (Publishers Weekly) and through a wide range of compelling voices, each story resonates with compassion and honesty, often turning on unexpected encounters with a stranger, a place, the past, and often with oneself, offset by a recognition that the future holds few assurances other than the promise of mortality. Through their search for love, reconciliation, and acceptance, the characters in Possession(s) strive to find understanding and peace.
 

Unknown Binding

About the author

According to Northern Michigan University's website, John Smolens "...has published five novels Cold, The Invisible World, Fire Point, Angel’s Head, and Winter by Degrees, and one collection of short stories (My One and Only Bomb Shelter.) Cold was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, and the Detroit Free Press selected Fire Point as the best book by a Michigan author in 2004... His short stories and essays have appeared in various magazines and newspapers, including: the Virginia Quarterly, the William and Mary Review, the Massachusetts Review, Yankee, Redbook, the Los Angeles Times, and the Boston Globe. His work has been translated into Dutch, Greek, Italian, and Turkish, and has been published the United Kingdom by Hodder & Stoughton, London."

His most recent publication is The Anarchist and has been well received.

Reviews

[Kate O'Shea · Rating 5 out of 5]

Possession(s) is a short story collection based around the premise of possession or possessions and their myriad meanings of the word. All the stories have been published previously.

The writing is excellent and I learned later that one of Smolens' previous novels had been nominated for a Pulitzer. He's clearly a master of the short story.

There are so many different stories to choose from but my favourites were Spies (about a boy who befriends a woman (rumoured to be a spy) living in his neighbourhood; The End of The World (about a woman returning to Scotland with her daughter to the place her artist husband committed suicide); True Confession (about a boy trying to work out what it means to confess); Superior Noir (an imagining of the start of The Great Gatsby) and Barney (about a woman and her relationships).

I should warn readers that there are difficult subjects in some of the stories, such as suicide, death and the death of a pet.

All the stories are beautifully written and set all over the world. It is an art to write short stories and few writers truly do the genre justice. John Smolens is one of them.

I would certainly read more by this author and highly recommend this collection.

Thankyou to Netgalley and Michigan State University Press for the advance review copy.

[Nancy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Still you are possessed by possessions. Even after you dispossess yourself, they turn up in kitchen drawers and cabinets…. from Possession(s) by John Smolens

These haunting stories have a common thread, querying the nature of possessions, from a house that belonged to a grandmother to a person, that which we leave behind, and that which we create, what we own and what we can’t.

In Spies, a twelve-year-old boy befriends an ailing neighbor woman with a mysterious past. “Terrible, unexpected things will happen,” she warns. Whistler’s Mistress imagines the struggle between wife and mistress, each claiming the right to possession. A doubting boy cannot allow that he has any sins to confess. Siblings have a martini, their mother hospitalized after a stroke. One of my favorites, Superior Noir imagines Jay Gatsby coming into bootlegger Dan Cody’s life. “Everybody wants something,” Gatsby knows; he wants it all. Old flames meet up after twenty years. A man on a train becomes entangled with a mysterious couple. A woman visits the childhood home of her grandmother and learns the history of the house her grandmother always fondly remembered. A man deals with his deceased wife’s possessions.

There is darkness in these stories, and disturbing situations.

I was impressed with the writing and the variety of the stories.

Thanks to the publisher for a free book through NetGalley.

[Abigail · Rating 5 out of 5]

Such eclectic stories

In Spies I felt like I was in Stephen King’s America, think Needful Things or It without the clown.

The amount of backstory in The End of the World really made it a story about the backstory. It’s beautifully done and leads back to the ending like a breath.

I have to say I’ve been around a few juvenile delinquents and none were as articulate, well read, or grammatically savvy as Timothy in Among the Beasts. He reminds me of Zack from Bones.

Whistler’s Mistress read like nonfiction a lot.

One One Thousand perfectly captured the nursing home experience. It brought up so many memories of Grandma’s last months, my feelings, thoughts, struggles, and activities.

I did a writing exercise once where I took a real event and changed things so it was fiction. Barney reminded me of that. Also I miss Goobie.

Possession(s) was my favorite of the lot. What a perfect slice of big G Grief. If you know what it feels like, you get it. If you don’t, lucky you.

[Persy · Rating 3 out of 5]

“Still you are possessed by possessions.”

A man contemplates the power possessions hold over us after the passing of his wife. Sad and vulnerable, a short story that will surely make you melancholy.

[prantika · Rating 4 out of 5]

incredible, character driven short story that really gets in your feelings on a random sunday afternoon.