Barnstorm: Contemporary Wisconsin Fiction

by Raphael Kadushin (Editor)

Though the best American writers live everywhere now, a popular fiction our strongest literary voices are strictly bi-coastal ones. Barnstorm sets out to disprove that cliché and to undermine another one as the sense of regional fiction as something quaint, slightly regressive, and full of local color. The stories in this collection capture our global reality with a ruthless, unaffected voice. Lorrie Moore's "The Jewish Hunter" is a dark romance that's by turns cynical and guileless. Mack Friedman catches the smoking feel of first love in his "Setting the Lawn on Fire," and Jesse Lee Kercheval's "Brazil" is a raucous, ultimately mournful road trip. For Jane Hamilton, Wisconsin is a gorgeous but bittersweet homecoming, and for Kelly Cherry, in her achingly elegiac "As It Is in Heaven," it's the hopeful new world, juxtaposed with a bleak, tweedy England. Dwight Allen's "The Green Suit" evokes the young man edging toward adulthood, in a New York that's as flamboyant as an opera, and Tenaya Darlington, in her "A Patch of Skin," constructs a pure horror story, because the horror of loneliness is something we all know. Together Barnstorm's eclectic voices suggest that every coast now, even the Great Lakes' shores, are at the very center of our best, and truest, national literature.

Not for sale in the United Kingdom.

330 pages, Paperback

First published January 10, 2005

Reviews

[Ana Bugalho · Rating 3 out of 5]

A mixed but worthwhile collection. Some of the stories are a bit odd and lean darker than expected, and not all of them fully land. That said, there’s plenty of sharp writing, insight, and moments of humor throughout. While uneven at times, the stronger stories make this an enjoyable read.

[Madeleine · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's good to support local writers, and here are some talented Wisconsin authors.

[Rebecca Dougherty · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some of the short stories were very odd and not in a good way, but those more toward the end were substantially better. Jane Hamilton's may have saved the entire collection.