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Greetings from Below
Winner of the Mary McCarthy Prize in short fiction, selected by David Means, and the University of Nevada's Silver Pen Award.
What would have become of Nick Adams if he'd been born along the ragged edges of a new American city, one with more churches per capita than any other, and twice the suicide rate? Meet Nick Danze, the main character of David Philip Mullins's vital debut collection, Greetings from Below . The opening story finds fourteen-year-old Nick and his pal Kilburg sitting in the Las Vegas desert, drinking whiskey from Kilburg's fake leg. It's the first of many shocks in Nick's sexual education, which begins with a kiss from Kilburg he calls "practice." In later stories, Nick hires a call girl, visits a swingers' club on Christmas Eve, obsesses over obese middle-aged women, and meets the love of his life, Annie, only he's not sure he loves her and he's compulsively unfaithful. Ashamed of his behavior, he stubbornly repeats it. And lurking behind it all is Vegas, with its gilded casinos, neon-tinted suburbs, and dingy, outer-ring strip clubs. In Nick's wounded honesty and queasy self-consciousness, Mullins awakens us to the perverse power of alienation and shame.
"Mullins writes about these journeys, and about sex and the desert, with a wonderful, edgy lucidity. Greetings from Below is a remarkable debut."––Margot Livesey
David Philip Mullins grew up in Las Vegas, Nevada, and is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. His stories have appeared in The Yale Review, The Massachusetts Review, New England Review, Cimarron Review, Fiction, Ecotone , and Folio . He has received awards from Yaddo and the Sewanee Writers’ Conference and lives in Omaha, Nebraska, with his wife and two children, where he teaches writing and literature at Creighton University.
What would have become of Nick Adams if he'd been born along the ragged edges of a new American city, one with more churches per capita than any other, and twice the suicide rate? Meet Nick Danze, the main character of David Philip Mullins's vital debut collection, Greetings from Below . The opening story finds fourteen-year-old Nick and his pal Kilburg sitting in the Las Vegas desert, drinking whiskey from Kilburg's fake leg. It's the first of many shocks in Nick's sexual education, which begins with a kiss from Kilburg he calls "practice." In later stories, Nick hires a call girl, visits a swingers' club on Christmas Eve, obsesses over obese middle-aged women, and meets the love of his life, Annie, only he's not sure he loves her and he's compulsively unfaithful. Ashamed of his behavior, he stubbornly repeats it. And lurking behind it all is Vegas, with its gilded casinos, neon-tinted suburbs, and dingy, outer-ring strip clubs. In Nick's wounded honesty and queasy self-consciousness, Mullins awakens us to the perverse power of alienation and shame.
"Mullins writes about these journeys, and about sex and the desert, with a wonderful, edgy lucidity. Greetings from Below is a remarkable debut."––Margot Livesey
David Philip Mullins grew up in Las Vegas, Nevada, and is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. His stories have appeared in The Yale Review, The Massachusetts Review, New England Review, Cimarron Review, Fiction, Ecotone , and Folio . He has received awards from Yaddo and the Sewanee Writers’ Conference and lives in Omaha, Nebraska, with his wife and two children, where he teaches writing and literature at Creighton University.
- GenresFictionShort Stories
224 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2011
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
October 5, 2011
The first story is interesting, has some complexities to it, then the next story takes the same character further into his development and you can somewhat see how the boy from the first story became this neurotic person...but then it gets a bit weird. I did like the first couple stories, but then more and more I came to despise Nick and his bizarre and destructive ways. Each story seemed to convey the same message, which got old after awhile.
The writing was good, it was just the repetitive nature of the stories that didn't seem to captivate me. I truthfully was just pulling myself through by the end, not really enjoying the stories anymore. The last one in the book was very sad and gave the most insight into Nick, who it turns out was a horrible person from the beginning.
The writing was good, it was just the repetitive nature of the stories that didn't seem to captivate me. I truthfully was just pulling myself through by the end, not really enjoying the stories anymore. The last one in the book was very sad and gave the most insight into Nick, who it turns out was a horrible person from the beginning.
May 21, 2025
Spoiler alert.
This is a well-crafted book of short stories that was recommended to me because each story can stand on its own. They also vary in point of view and tense. Each has been published in literary journals, much to their credit.
As a collection, the protagonist in each story is the same, with the same small handful of secondary characters.
My problem with the collection is that the main character never changes, never develops the sort of self control or maturity to stop hurting the people in his life. His lack of connection to his girlfriend/wife never changes, yet both of them seem stuck in the non-relationship. It's one of those situations when you want to shout, "Just leave and take up with someone you're attracted to!" There was no real explanation as to why neither of them take any action when they are both miserable. And it doesn't seem that there is any type of bond between the two in the form of a real tight friendship. It's not that I demand an awakening and suddenly caring about others and happily ever after. I don't mind characters who are static. But when you have two who are stuck, at minimum, something needs to change around them. Nothing actually happens as this series of stories progresses. Characters need to be active, because if not, why follow their stories?
This is a well-crafted book of short stories that was recommended to me because each story can stand on its own. They also vary in point of view and tense. Each has been published in literary journals, much to their credit.
As a collection, the protagonist in each story is the same, with the same small handful of secondary characters.
My problem with the collection is that the main character never changes, never develops the sort of self control or maturity to stop hurting the people in his life. His lack of connection to his girlfriend/wife never changes, yet both of them seem stuck in the non-relationship. It's one of those situations when you want to shout, "Just leave and take up with someone you're attracted to!" There was no real explanation as to why neither of them take any action when they are both miserable. And it doesn't seem that there is any type of bond between the two in the form of a real tight friendship. It's not that I demand an awakening and suddenly caring about others and happily ever after. I don't mind characters who are static. But when you have two who are stuck, at minimum, something needs to change around them. Nothing actually happens as this series of stories progresses. Characters need to be active, because if not, why follow their stories?
January 20, 2024
This collection of short stories follows the life of a single protagonist from his teenage years to his early 40s. Each story sees Nick Danze a little older, if not wiser, struggling to come to grips with his father's illness and death, his mother's endless grief and addictions, and his own sexual frustrations and cravings, along with plenty of guilt. This is a fantastic book, written with skill and emotion. Its short stories that come together like a novel are fraught with longing, a searching for the self. Set in Las Vegas (and a bit in San Francisco) its narratives echo the western desert and residential fringes of Sin City. The last story in this stellar collection, titled "Crash Site on a Desert Mountain Outside Las Vegas," is as poignant as any come. A perfect ending to a near-perfect book.
October 29, 2026
Quick take: Greetings from Below is a gripping, fast-moving thriller with a few too many twists. What worked: short chapters, a clever opening, and a great chase through a parking garage. What didn't: by the fourth big reveal I stopped believing any of it. Recommend for fans of nonstop action, skip for readers who like their mysteries grounded.
June 3, 2023
The writing is not bad, but the plots read like a bad 90s movie.
January 2, 2011
Short stories in the realist mold loosely centered around Las Vegas. The first story, "Arboretum" is harrowing sexually charged coming-of-age story with disturbing imagery/scenes/consequences. The second is a boy meets girls story where the bartender and the prostitute both have hearts of gold--puh-lease--but the story took a turn at the end that made me squirm. So far so good... Reminds me a little bit of Tod Goldberg, but maybe that's a desert thing?
...
Now that I've finished the book it's very clear the stories are linked and meant to be read in the order presented. It's an awfully compelling project: a nature vs nurture look at an unsympathetic protagonist named Nick Danze. Do events in Nick's youth corrupt his good intentions, or does Nick's deviant personality shape the course of his life? It's an interesting question because the x factor is the death of Nick's father (not a spoiler; it's imminent in the first story) which casts a weird pall over the events in his life, namely his grotesque attraction to a one-legged bully. This unpleasant period of infatuation sets the stage for Nick's low-watt kink that leads him to obsess over Asian hookers, obese women, and middle-aged swingers in a series of settings that just gets more and more depressing. There's a grim resolve to Nick's actions that reminds me the downside of addiction: choices are made not on the merit of whether they are good or bad but so that they can be done with so that the choice won't have to be made again -- until the next time the need resurfaces...
Most of the stories employ the third person, some use the first, and one the second. Mullins develops his stories in painstaking fashion, yet I seldom saw the twists coming. Even in stories I didn't feel emotionally connected to, the surprises would pull me into the story instead of push me out. The nature vs nurture debate carries over to the linked collection vs short novel debate. Although I didn't "like" Nick, I felt invested in his story and wanted to see how things would turn out for him. If this were a novel, I'd want to know more about some of the secondary characters, but if there had been additional stories about these characters that took the focus off of Nick it would have weakened the collection, not strengthened it. Ultimately, the biggest takeaway for me is an appreciation of Mullins's craft.
[Disclaimer: I don't know the author but I will be appearing on a panel with him at AWP and he will be reading at my series, Vermin on the Mount, in San Diego February 19.]
...
Now that I've finished the book it's very clear the stories are linked and meant to be read in the order presented. It's an awfully compelling project: a nature vs nurture look at an unsympathetic protagonist named Nick Danze. Do events in Nick's youth corrupt his good intentions, or does Nick's deviant personality shape the course of his life? It's an interesting question because the x factor is the death of Nick's father (not a spoiler; it's imminent in the first story) which casts a weird pall over the events in his life, namely his grotesque attraction to a one-legged bully. This unpleasant period of infatuation sets the stage for Nick's low-watt kink that leads him to obsess over Asian hookers, obese women, and middle-aged swingers in a series of settings that just gets more and more depressing. There's a grim resolve to Nick's actions that reminds me the downside of addiction: choices are made not on the merit of whether they are good or bad but so that they can be done with so that the choice won't have to be made again -- until the next time the need resurfaces...
Most of the stories employ the third person, some use the first, and one the second. Mullins develops his stories in painstaking fashion, yet I seldom saw the twists coming. Even in stories I didn't feel emotionally connected to, the surprises would pull me into the story instead of push me out. The nature vs nurture debate carries over to the linked collection vs short novel debate. Although I didn't "like" Nick, I felt invested in his story and wanted to see how things would turn out for him. If this were a novel, I'd want to know more about some of the secondary characters, but if there had been additional stories about these characters that took the focus off of Nick it would have weakened the collection, not strengthened it. Ultimately, the biggest takeaway for me is an appreciation of Mullins's craft.
[Disclaimer: I don't know the author but I will be appearing on a panel with him at AWP and he will be reading at my series, Vermin on the Mount, in San Diego February 19.]
January 18, 2011
Honesty Alert: I know this author and read many of these stories in earlier forms.
Yet, the real pleasure of reading this book was getting to see them work as a cohesive whole. I really liked the way these stories circled the wreck of a few major incidents in the life of Nick Danze, coming at them in a pleasurably staggered way. Touchstones include: His father, who died in a sad and untimely manner. His mother's odd compulsive behaviors (one word: sugar). The endless cycle of deviant sex and guilt that makes up his romantic life. And the city of Las Vegas presented in a new literary light.
But, surprisingly enough in this series of stories that was often peculiar (owl and snake attacks) and sexually driven (swinger's clubs), I liked Nick's emotional honesty most of all. In the comforting secrecy of a first person confession, or the direct consciousness of third person close, Nick keeps turning the events in his life toward the light, trying to make sense of them. He is painfully honest about what he feels and what he doesn't (attraction for his beautiful girlfriend: nah. Attraction to an overweight academic: yes!), who he has hurt and why he can't help it. He rarely comes off as a role model, but he is never dishonest with himself. The content of these stories was alternately hilarious, sad, and raunchy, but the real enjoyment came through this character's equal capacity for sorrow and wonder.
Yet, the real pleasure of reading this book was getting to see them work as a cohesive whole. I really liked the way these stories circled the wreck of a few major incidents in the life of Nick Danze, coming at them in a pleasurably staggered way. Touchstones include: His father, who died in a sad and untimely manner. His mother's odd compulsive behaviors (one word: sugar). The endless cycle of deviant sex and guilt that makes up his romantic life. And the city of Las Vegas presented in a new literary light.
But, surprisingly enough in this series of stories that was often peculiar (owl and snake attacks) and sexually driven (swinger's clubs), I liked Nick's emotional honesty most of all. In the comforting secrecy of a first person confession, or the direct consciousness of third person close, Nick keeps turning the events in his life toward the light, trying to make sense of them. He is painfully honest about what he feels and what he doesn't (attraction for his beautiful girlfriend: nah. Attraction to an overweight academic: yes!), who he has hurt and why he can't help it. He rarely comes off as a role model, but he is never dishonest with himself. The content of these stories was alternately hilarious, sad, and raunchy, but the real enjoyment came through this character's equal capacity for sorrow and wonder.
August 3, 2013
This is a powerful book. Like many powerful things you may not like it. My own reactions while reading looked like the display on an oscilloscope, up and down, rollercoastering around.
_Greetings_ is a collection of stories that are united by a common protagonist, Nick Danze, told in a mostly linear fashion from Nick's youth to his middle age. Nick is richly drawn and not always easy to identify with. At times I was repulsed by him, angered by him, disappointed in his choices and failures in judgment. It is almost impossible not to see the human being in Nick, to see our own unmanaged selves. I can understand someone not finishing this book because there are moments you want to walk away from Nick and his bad choices, but it is a testament to Mullins' always skillful, sometimes lyrical writing that if you stick with this tale to the book's profoundly sad final chapter you will be nodding with a kind of grim resolve. This is a very sad story, masterfully told. The writing is unflinching, it will be very hard for the reader to not flinch, wince, grind his teeth and be deeply moved by Nick's story.
_Greetings_ is a collection of stories that are united by a common protagonist, Nick Danze, told in a mostly linear fashion from Nick's youth to his middle age. Nick is richly drawn and not always easy to identify with. At times I was repulsed by him, angered by him, disappointed in his choices and failures in judgment. It is almost impossible not to see the human being in Nick, to see our own unmanaged selves. I can understand someone not finishing this book because there are moments you want to walk away from Nick and his bad choices, but it is a testament to Mullins' always skillful, sometimes lyrical writing that if you stick with this tale to the book's profoundly sad final chapter you will be nodding with a kind of grim resolve. This is a very sad story, masterfully told. The writing is unflinching, it will be very hard for the reader to not flinch, wince, grind his teeth and be deeply moved by Nick's story.
April 27, 2019
Ok. How is it possible that a book that seems so unassuming still comes to mind months and years after its reading (and re-reading)?
Mullins has masterfully created a single-narrative story that beautifully and efficiently stops the reader in their tracks. My only qualm is that Mullins teases readers with books like this, but hasn't published enough novels. Any less than 50 novels is not enough.
There are so many books read in life that are a waste of time. Simply put, this is NOT one of them.
Mullins has masterfully created a single-narrative story that beautifully and efficiently stops the reader in their tracks. My only qualm is that Mullins teases readers with books like this, but hasn't published enough novels. Any less than 50 novels is not enough.
There are so many books read in life that are a waste of time. Simply put, this is NOT one of them.
April 9, 2012
Great debut collection of linked stories. Mullins is able to write a collection of stories with a protagonist, Nick, that most will probably find at least mildly reprehensible, yet the insight Mullins gives us into Nick's psyche allows us to empathize with him. That's not easy to pull off, and Mullins should be commended for it.
Looking forward to whatever Mullins does next.
Looking forward to whatever Mullins does next.
March 22, 2011
Just wonderful. David creates an exceptional voice in these stories and leaves you wanting more. Loved how the descriptions of Las Vegas are so vivid and make the city/landscape another character in the book.
Read
July 3, 2011Okay - I wrote a bad review of this book, but I had it mixed up with GET ME OUT OF HERE (which I didn't like at all). This is okay - another, messed up young man trips through life - Jonathan Tropper goes to Vegas.
May 25, 2011
Best book I read all year. Superb.
July 1, 2011
Fantastic debut short story collection.
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews