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Copy Cats: Stories
Featuring seven stories and a novella, David Crouse’s powerful debut collection depicts people staring down the complicated mysteries of their own identities. “Who are you?” a homeless man asks his would-be benefactor in the title story. On the surface it’s a simple question, but one that would stump many of the characters who inhabit these carefully rendered tales.In the edgy novella “Click” Jonathan’s ongoing photo-documentary of a prostitute exposes how little intensity remains between him and his fiancée, Margaret. While Jonathan is plagued with doubts about his motivations and abilities as an artist, Margaret is worn out by her obligations not just to her needy husband-to-be but to all the men in her life. In “The Ugliest Boy,” Justin develops an odd friendship with Steven, his girlfriend’s brother. Steven was disfigured by fire in a childhood accident. Justin bears wounds more deeply hidden. The two forge a strange bond based on their anger and pain.
Crouse’s stories often involve people trapped on the margins of society, confronted by diminishing possibilities and various forms of mental illness. The junior executive in “Code” worries about his job--and his sanity--amid a sudden and wide-sweeping corporate layoff. A manic-depressive father and his teenage daughter dress as vampires and embark on a strange Halloween journey through their suburban neighborhood in the darkly humorous “Morte Infinita.” In “Swimming in the Dark” a family gives up on itself. Shredded slowly over the years since the accidental drowning of the eldest son, the remaining family members seek their own separate peace, however imperfect.
The men and women in Copy Cats are unwilling and often unable to differentiate reality from fantasy. Cursed with what one of them calls “a pollution of ideas,” these are people at war with their own imaginations.
Crouse’s stories often involve people trapped on the margins of society, confronted by diminishing possibilities and various forms of mental illness. The junior executive in “Code” worries about his job--and his sanity--amid a sudden and wide-sweeping corporate layoff. A manic-depressive father and his teenage daughter dress as vampires and embark on a strange Halloween journey through their suburban neighborhood in the darkly humorous “Morte Infinita.” In “Swimming in the Dark” a family gives up on itself. Shredded slowly over the years since the accidental drowning of the eldest son, the remaining family members seek their own separate peace, however imperfect.
The men and women in Copy Cats are unwilling and often unable to differentiate reality from fantasy. Cursed with what one of them calls “a pollution of ideas,” these are people at war with their own imaginations.
- GenresShort StoriesFiction
238 pages, Hardcover
First published October 10, 2005
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
November 26, 2014
These stories explore the spaces we shy away from, particularly sex and violence and the shame that so often link them. All of these characters have secrets from each other, often from themselves, always from the reader. Early in every story from this collection is an ambiguous term, an "it" with no clear antecedent, a reference to "the hammer event" with no description immediately following. The stories always allow the reader to find and place this missing piece, and the effect almost always pays off in the end.
Eventually, though, I started wondering why Crouse doesn't just build the mystery without the pointed references to missing puzzle pieces. Other writers allow mysteries like this to unfold in a different way, more straightforwardly. Sometimes stories with a central mystery work their way to the missing puzzle pieces without referring to them ahead of time. Other times, a story might artfully misdirect readers into thinking that the moments after a crucial event were the important part, only later letting readers how crucial the preceding seconds really were. But Crouse delivers at least one, and sometimes more, explicit reference to a missing piece of the story and then charges the narrative or the characters' voice in an entirely different direction, without misdirection or subtlety. And I confess that, by the end of this collection, the technique kept frustrating me.
So it's a testament to Crouse's other skills as a writer, including his eye for poignant imagery and engaging description, that nearly all of these stories won me back. The missing puzzle pieces, often enough, were sufficiently psychologically complicated that the stories' oblique approaches to them matched the characters' struggles and hesitations over confronting them. It's easier to forgive a flashy technique of form when the form follows a character function.
For me, though, what ultimately keeps this collection from a fifth star is the fact that so many of the stories put their trauma and darkness and misery in the past, showing characters struggling to understand the trauma and to put the misery behind them. These are frequently the stories of people doing less dastardly deeds than they've done before, or were done to them in the past, and then fretting about what the milder misdeeds reveal about them. The stories' effects depend heavily upon the careful revelation of past events and how those past events impact the present. In this way, the stories are driven more by plot than by character. That's not to say the stories lack character--all of these fictions delve deeply into our complicated human psyches in a fresh and fearless way. But it would be nice if a few of these stories were placed in a chronological order. For me, it would show that Crouse trusts his characters to be interesting and compelling enough to carry the fiction on their own shoulders, without relying so heavily on the arrangement of events.
Eventually, though, I started wondering why Crouse doesn't just build the mystery without the pointed references to missing puzzle pieces. Other writers allow mysteries like this to unfold in a different way, more straightforwardly. Sometimes stories with a central mystery work their way to the missing puzzle pieces without referring to them ahead of time. Other times, a story might artfully misdirect readers into thinking that the moments after a crucial event were the important part, only later letting readers how crucial the preceding seconds really were. But Crouse delivers at least one, and sometimes more, explicit reference to a missing piece of the story and then charges the narrative or the characters' voice in an entirely different direction, without misdirection or subtlety. And I confess that, by the end of this collection, the technique kept frustrating me.
So it's a testament to Crouse's other skills as a writer, including his eye for poignant imagery and engaging description, that nearly all of these stories won me back. The missing puzzle pieces, often enough, were sufficiently psychologically complicated that the stories' oblique approaches to them matched the characters' struggles and hesitations over confronting them. It's easier to forgive a flashy technique of form when the form follows a character function.
For me, though, what ultimately keeps this collection from a fifth star is the fact that so many of the stories put their trauma and darkness and misery in the past, showing characters struggling to understand the trauma and to put the misery behind them. These are frequently the stories of people doing less dastardly deeds than they've done before, or were done to them in the past, and then fretting about what the milder misdeeds reveal about them. The stories' effects depend heavily upon the careful revelation of past events and how those past events impact the present. In this way, the stories are driven more by plot than by character. That's not to say the stories lack character--all of these fictions delve deeply into our complicated human psyches in a fresh and fearless way. But it would be nice if a few of these stories were placed in a chronological order. For me, it would show that Crouse trusts his characters to be interesting and compelling enough to carry the fiction on their own shoulders, without relying so heavily on the arrangement of events.
August 23, 2023
Some of these were better than others
March 2, 2017
Loved
July 24, 2014
These stories really drew me in. The writing is subtle. You don’t always notice it. But the author is always working behind the scenes, creating tension and developing characters with a stunning amount of complexity. There’s a lot of layering that happens here. Some of my favorite aspects: the daughter’s perspective and the father’s melt down in “Morte Infinita.” Jonathan’s growing obsession in “Click,” the novella. And the relationship between Barbecue and Justin in “The Ugliest Boy.” I admire this author’s work and will definitely be reading more of his books.
March 22, 2007
This is written by a friend of mine who won the Flannery O'Connor award for it, so Im a bit biased. But is a honest view of the distances between desperate and lonely people
October 11, 2008
Pretty incredible short stories. Love them, especially the novella.
September 19, 2009
incredible
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews