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Brutal Beasts
There are places you always call home, their smells rotting or warm or sweet, their bruises just deep enough to forgive until you touch them. There are places you leave that will forever contain you or cling to you or cry out for you. Where the difference between love and disgust is no more distinguishable than the point at which you stop trying to forget.
Craig Buchner’s Brutal Beasts is a trip to these homes. It opens the door and finds us at the edge of a falls weighing the jump, of a bedroom where a father’s crumpled body lie failing, of the ability—and the desire—to love through what seems so repulsive.
Across eighteen stories Brutal Beasts realizes a visceral, addictively painful sense of familiarity with the violence and regret and compassion that bind the word home to its places and its people. Its characters navigate a litany of memories without knowing exactly why, or what they look for, except that despite how badly it hurts they keep looking. Buchner’s stories achieve an honesty that is hard to confront not just because of their brutality, but because we find ourselves at home in them.
Craig Buchner’s Brutal Beasts is a trip to these homes. It opens the door and finds us at the edge of a falls weighing the jump, of a bedroom where a father’s crumpled body lie failing, of the ability—and the desire—to love through what seems so repulsive.
Across eighteen stories Brutal Beasts realizes a visceral, addictively painful sense of familiarity with the violence and regret and compassion that bind the word home to its places and its people. Its characters navigate a litany of memories without knowing exactly why, or what they look for, except that despite how badly it hurts they keep looking. Buchner’s stories achieve an honesty that is hard to confront not just because of their brutality, but because we find ourselves at home in them.
195 pages, Paperback
Published May 1, 2022
79 people want to read
About the author
Craig Buchner
2 books10 followersBorn and raised in the Adirondack Mountains, Craig has lived in Idaho, Oregon, Tokyo, and today he lives in North Carolina. All of these places have greatly influenced his work.
He is the recipient of the AWP Intro Journals Award, and his fiction and poetry have appeared in Tin House, Baltimore Review, Chicago Quarterly Review, Cincinnati Review, Hobart, and Puerto del Sol, among others.
Brutal Beasts is his first book.
He is the recipient of the AWP Intro Journals Award, and his fiction and poetry have appeared in Tin House, Baltimore Review, Chicago Quarterly Review, Cincinnati Review, Hobart, and Puerto del Sol, among others.
Brutal Beasts is his first book.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
February 16, 2023
A collection of stories about the quiet yet horrific nature of disillusion and disappointment. I enjoyed the unbridled emotion that’s never quite allowed to burst out. Feels like rage and fear wrapped in Saran wrap, crystal clear but mangled and distant to the touch. I recommend this to anyone who’s a fan of transgressive fiction in more subdued hues.
August 22, 2022
Perhaps it's just me, but I feel that the measure of a great story is its ability to make a reader both uncomfortable in its truths and also unable to look away from them. I think that simultaneous repulsion and attraction are, often, what tether our experiences of fiction to those of our realities. Of all the things in Buchner's Brutal Beasts that I could rave about, this interplay between beauty and disgust (or pain, or grief, or regret) is, at least for me, its most compelling accomplishment.
While the stories range fairly widely - from post-apocalyptic zombie horror to transgressive family drama/comedy - Buchner's observant, intellectual grasp of the brutality of our relationships to places and people is unflagging. I'll refrain from projecting what I think to be the most touching through-lines except to say that I found myself continually reflecting on what it means to call somewhere and someone "home".
Buchner's prose is raw and pithy. Reminiscent of a contemporary style I think readers of Saunders or Palahniuk would enjoy, but also entirely unique and not without its head-shakingly tender moments. He is, after all, also a poet :).
I so highly recommend Brutal Beasts, and I cannot wait to read more from Buchner!
While the stories range fairly widely - from post-apocalyptic zombie horror to transgressive family drama/comedy - Buchner's observant, intellectual grasp of the brutality of our relationships to places and people is unflagging. I'll refrain from projecting what I think to be the most touching through-lines except to say that I found myself continually reflecting on what it means to call somewhere and someone "home".
Buchner's prose is raw and pithy. Reminiscent of a contemporary style I think readers of Saunders or Palahniuk would enjoy, but also entirely unique and not without its head-shakingly tender moments. He is, after all, also a poet :).
I so highly recommend Brutal Beasts, and I cannot wait to read more from Buchner!
August 21, 2022
Wildly entertaining read!
You know those people you love but would never bring them up on a first date? Or the ones who deserve a quick warning about before introducing them to someone new? This author does a fantastic job of showing that phenomenon that is such a familiar human experience.
The reader can get a much deeper sense of the characters through this book. And several times I felt myself wishing these chapters would stretch on for longer looks into the lives of these people.
Very funny, very well written, and just a wonderful exploration into all aspects of life from the banal to the supernatural.
Highly recommend.
You know those people you love but would never bring them up on a first date? Or the ones who deserve a quick warning about before introducing them to someone new? This author does a fantastic job of showing that phenomenon that is such a familiar human experience.
The reader can get a much deeper sense of the characters through this book. And several times I felt myself wishing these chapters would stretch on for longer looks into the lives of these people.
Very funny, very well written, and just a wonderful exploration into all aspects of life from the banal to the supernatural.
Highly recommend.
August 21, 2022
A truly fantastic read! Each unique story drew me in immediately and left me excited for the next. Craig Buchner is a talented storyteller. As someone with a short attention span, this book kept me interested and curious. In fact, some of the stories are so immersive that I wasn’t quite ready for them to end. All in all, a delightful collection of stories that will stay with you for weeks after you put it down.
December 27, 2025
These are all functional stories, but I'm not picking up what Craig's putting down.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews