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Anna Hoyt #2 (Ardent)
Cape Cod Noir
"Youthful alienation and despair dominate the 13 stories in Akashic's noir volume devoted to Cape Cod. [It] will satisfy those with a hankering for a taste of the dark side."--Publishers Weekly"A book full of cries in the dark, heavy drinking in the thin gray light of winter, and other dark poses. In other words, the stories sneak in the back screen door of those summer cottages after Labor Day, after all the tourists have gone home and Cape Codders of the authors' imagination drop their masks and their guards. It's a fun read, a little like tracing the shoreline of a not-quite-familiar coast."--Boston Globe"David L. Ulin has put together a malicious collection of short stories that will stay with you long after you return home safe."--The The Official Chuck Palahniuk WebsiteIncludes brand-new stories by Paul Tremblay, Seth Greenland, Ben Greenman, Fred G. Leebron, David L. Ulin, Dana Cameron, Kaylie Jones, and others.Los Angeles Times book critic David L. Ulin has been vacationing in Cape Cod every summer since he was a boy. He knows the terrain inside and out; enough to identify the squalid underbelly of this allegedly idyllic location. His editing prowess is a perfect match for this fine volume.David L. Ulin is book critic of the Los Angeles Times. From 2005 to 2010, he was the paper's book editor. He is the author of The Myth of Solid Earthquakes, Prediction, and the Fault Line Between Reason and Faith, and is the editor of Another Writing from Los Angeles and Writing Los A Literary Anthology, which won a 2002 California Book Award. He has written for the Atlantic Monthly, The Nation, The New York Times Book Review, and National Public Radio’s All Things Considered.
224 pages, Paperback
First published May 17, 2011
27 people are currently reading
311 people want to read
About the author
David L. Ulin
41 books138 followersDavid L. Ulin is book critic, and former book editor, of the Los Angeles Times. He is the author of The Lost Art of Reading: Why Books Matter in a Distracted Time, Labyrinth, and The Myth of Solid Ground: Earthquakes, Prediction, and the Fault Line Between Reason and Faith, selected as a best book of 2004 by the Chicago Tribune and the San Francisco Chronicle.
He is also the editor of three anthologies: Another City: Writing from Los Angeles, Cape Cod Noir, and the Library of America's Writing Los Angeles: A Literary Anthology, which won a 2002 California Book Award. His writing has appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, The Nation, The New York Times Book Review, Bookforum, Black Clock, Columbia Journalism Review, and on National Public Radio's All Things Considered.
Ulin teaches at USC, and in the low residency MFA in creative writing program at the University of California, Riverside’s Palm Desert Graduate Center. In 2010, he was awarded a Southern California Independent Booksellers Association/Glenn Goldman Book Award for his work on Los Angeles: Portrait of a City.
He is also the editor of three anthologies: Another City: Writing from Los Angeles, Cape Cod Noir, and the Library of America's Writing Los Angeles: A Literary Anthology, which won a 2002 California Book Award. His writing has appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, The Nation, The New York Times Book Review, Bookforum, Black Clock, Columbia Journalism Review, and on National Public Radio's All Things Considered.
Ulin teaches at USC, and in the low residency MFA in creative writing program at the University of California, Riverside’s Palm Desert Graduate Center. In 2010, he was awarded a Southern California Independent Booksellers Association/Glenn Goldman Book Award for his work on Los Angeles: Portrait of a City.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 34 reviews
August 3, 2011
(This review was originally published at The Cult.)
When I think of cities that inspire noir, Cape Cod is certainly not at the top of that list. I think of New York, Chicago, Baltimore even, but never would I have thought of Cape Cod. In the ongoing series by Akashic Books, they’ve visited almost fifty cities across the United States, and around the world. It’s a compelling series to say the least. Once I started to get into this collection, though, I understood the appeal of Cape Cod. Any place where you have the rich surrounded by the middle and working-class, the permanent residents dealing with entitled tourists, there’s bound to be a simmering pot of angst and violence waiting to overflow.
Editor David L. Ulin speaks to the concept of noir in the opening of this book, and the reasons that Cape Cod came to mind. What is noir to him?:
“…that air of desolate clarity, of a character staring into the abyss as the abyss stares back…a cry in the darkness of a world that is, as best, apathetic, and at worst, in violent disarray.”
Twelve pages into this collection of thirteen stories by authors such as Paul Tremblay, Dave Zeltserman, Jedidiah Berry and many other dark visionaries, I found myself nodding my head. David gets it, I thought. This is going to be good. But how is he going to make this work in Cape Cod? He elaborates:
“…my experiences on the Cape suggest…that noir is everywhere. You can see it in the desperate excitations of the summer people, the desire to make their vacations count. You can see it in the tension of the year-rounders, who rely on the seasonal trade for survival, even as they must tolerate having their communities overrun…And after Labor Day, once the tourists have gone home, it is still a lot like it has always been: desolate, empty in the thin gray light, with little to do in the slow winter months. You drink, you brood, you wait for summer, when the cycle starts all over again.”
Sounds like noir to me. I was sold.
What kind of noir can you expect to find in this collection? It’s a wide range of stories for sure. You have ex-cons out on parole trying to stay out of trouble, some of them on a reform school island, chopping wood and ducking bird poop. You have variations on revenge—for being fired, for taking a father away, for spouting off at the mouth. You have a series of pictures that add up to a realization, and bizarre puppet shows where a witch disappears at the end—the flesh and blood one, not the puppets. Whether you are in Martha’s Vineyard or Hyannisport, Sandwich or Buzzards Bay, if you gaze out into the darkness and scan the choppy water there are bodies to be found—violence and regret filling the air.
When it comes to noir, or really, any good story, the best way to get my attention is with an opening line, or narrative hook, that really piques my interest. This one is from “Bad Night in Hyannisport by Seth Greenland:
“I was dead. That was the main thing. And I never saw it coming.”
And this one, from “Twenty-Eight Scenes for Neglected Guests” by Jedediah Berry:
“In the illustrations of the crime scene, the full moon is high and small over the sea, shining through a halo of clouds.”
In the first example you get the quirkiness of a dead man telling you his story, so we know this is going to be a bleak tale. In the second story, we can picture the setting vividly, the mood and tone set, the crime committed. Both examples let us know that things are not going to go well—in fact, the deeds have already been done. But how we get there, and what that journey may entail, that has not been revealed yet.
Of course, once you’re hooked, one of the most important aspects of noir is the setting—the tension and atmosphere that must be maintained throughout the story—that sense of foreboding and clenched gut as we wait for the unspeakable to unfold. This example is from William Hastings and his story “Ten-Year Plan”:
“There’s a lot of coke on the Cape, bad during the summer, even worse during the winter. It’s cold and there’s no one. You lose a lot of line cooks that way. You lose a lot of college girls that way. I got lost that way.”
Or this example from Elyssa East and her story “Second Chance”:
“I never meant to be in the car that killed that girl. It was like that was someone else, not me. Like I wasn’t even there. But I was.”
Or this vivid description from Lizzie Skurnick and “Spectacle Pond”:
“The black sky over the pond was a lid, he suspended in its jar. Through a conflagration of circumstance and other people’s will, he was floating alone two miles from a small, dark road smack in the center of a barely populated peninsula, with nobody to know or care. He was not angry or murderous. He was lonely, merely lonely—or at least, he thought, lonelier than anyone like him had a right or reason to be.”
And certainly this desolate picture painted by David L. Ulin in “La Jetée”:
“Standing on the jetty, watching the sky grow pale and silver-pink at sunset, he drifted back to that moment, emptying his drawers into a trash can, realizing that nothing he’d gathered in the last five years, nothing he’d accumulated, meant anything at all. In a weird way, he felt hardened, kiln-fired…Not purified, though, never purified. Not unless purity could be defined in terms of rage.”
But not every story is your typical tragic noir. There is a bit of humor sprinkled here and there, as in the uniquely strange story “Twenty-Eight Scenes for Neglected Guests” by Jedediah Berry. In this fractured tale of puppets, witches and love lost, we are treated to this scene where the three Widows of North Varnish laugh at their losses with glee:
“‘My husband died because he ate too much,’ says the first of the three Widows of North Varnish. ‘Too much poison, that is.’
‘And my husband died because he hit his head,’ says the second widow, ‘against the skillet I was holding.’
‘And for my husband,’ says the third widow, ‘he died of natural causes.’
‘Is that so?’ asked the first widow.
‘We were standing together on the edge of a very high cliff, just admiring nature, and then he fell right into it.’
One other unique structural element of this anthology was the use of numbered sections—stories broken down into bite-sized pieces, a mathematics of betrayal and deceit that adds up to death, voodoo, and the ever-expanding darkness of the Cape. The aforementioned “Twenty-Eight Scenes for Neglected Guests” jumps back and forth between a myriad of characters, each of them jilted and desperate, as they put together a macabre puppet show. Love is buried and revealed; witchcraft is employed; all the while the puppets rehearsing in the background, morbid as they tell their sordid tales.
Another story broken down into subsections is Paul Tremblay’s slow reveal in “Nineteen Snapshots of Dennisport.” A young boy carries his camera around on the family vacation, taking the usual blurred pictures of faces and hands, the action out of the shots just as revealing as what is captured on film. A hotel room opened to a curious eye only shows shadows when the film is developed. Memories of a beautiful, exotic Italian girl, Isabella, are mixed with family photos gathered around tables, faces frowning, something wrong—an affair, a mistake, strange men at the periphery wanting some time from father:
“Look closer. Over his left shoulder. See that huge guy two storefronts away, hiding under an awning, but not hiding? He’s watching behind reflective sunglasses, and he’s wearing a tight white polo shirt, wearing it like a threat…”
For those that are unfamiliar with Cape Cod this is a fascinating collection of tales that reveal the underbelly of a quiet vacation spot, taking you out into troubled waters, back into the alleyways and forever bending forests, freezing moments in time for you to retain for future reference. For those that have spent time in these locations, it is a haunting trip back to a place that may hold fond memories for you, or perhaps simply confirms your own ideas that something was happening just out of sight. And for those that are simply fans of noir there are plenty of dark nights for you to embrace—hushed voices and smeared lipstick, fists that are eternally clenched in anger. Akashic Books knows what they are doing with this series, and David L. Ulin has put together a malicious collection of short stories that will stay with you long after you return home safe.
When I think of cities that inspire noir, Cape Cod is certainly not at the top of that list. I think of New York, Chicago, Baltimore even, but never would I have thought of Cape Cod. In the ongoing series by Akashic Books, they’ve visited almost fifty cities across the United States, and around the world. It’s a compelling series to say the least. Once I started to get into this collection, though, I understood the appeal of Cape Cod. Any place where you have the rich surrounded by the middle and working-class, the permanent residents dealing with entitled tourists, there’s bound to be a simmering pot of angst and violence waiting to overflow.
Editor David L. Ulin speaks to the concept of noir in the opening of this book, and the reasons that Cape Cod came to mind. What is noir to him?:
“…that air of desolate clarity, of a character staring into the abyss as the abyss stares back…a cry in the darkness of a world that is, as best, apathetic, and at worst, in violent disarray.”
Twelve pages into this collection of thirteen stories by authors such as Paul Tremblay, Dave Zeltserman, Jedidiah Berry and many other dark visionaries, I found myself nodding my head. David gets it, I thought. This is going to be good. But how is he going to make this work in Cape Cod? He elaborates:
“…my experiences on the Cape suggest…that noir is everywhere. You can see it in the desperate excitations of the summer people, the desire to make their vacations count. You can see it in the tension of the year-rounders, who rely on the seasonal trade for survival, even as they must tolerate having their communities overrun…And after Labor Day, once the tourists have gone home, it is still a lot like it has always been: desolate, empty in the thin gray light, with little to do in the slow winter months. You drink, you brood, you wait for summer, when the cycle starts all over again.”
Sounds like noir to me. I was sold.
What kind of noir can you expect to find in this collection? It’s a wide range of stories for sure. You have ex-cons out on parole trying to stay out of trouble, some of them on a reform school island, chopping wood and ducking bird poop. You have variations on revenge—for being fired, for taking a father away, for spouting off at the mouth. You have a series of pictures that add up to a realization, and bizarre puppet shows where a witch disappears at the end—the flesh and blood one, not the puppets. Whether you are in Martha’s Vineyard or Hyannisport, Sandwich or Buzzards Bay, if you gaze out into the darkness and scan the choppy water there are bodies to be found—violence and regret filling the air.
When it comes to noir, or really, any good story, the best way to get my attention is with an opening line, or narrative hook, that really piques my interest. This one is from “Bad Night in Hyannisport by Seth Greenland:
“I was dead. That was the main thing. And I never saw it coming.”
And this one, from “Twenty-Eight Scenes for Neglected Guests” by Jedediah Berry:
“In the illustrations of the crime scene, the full moon is high and small over the sea, shining through a halo of clouds.”
In the first example you get the quirkiness of a dead man telling you his story, so we know this is going to be a bleak tale. In the second story, we can picture the setting vividly, the mood and tone set, the crime committed. Both examples let us know that things are not going to go well—in fact, the deeds have already been done. But how we get there, and what that journey may entail, that has not been revealed yet.
Of course, once you’re hooked, one of the most important aspects of noir is the setting—the tension and atmosphere that must be maintained throughout the story—that sense of foreboding and clenched gut as we wait for the unspeakable to unfold. This example is from William Hastings and his story “Ten-Year Plan”:
“There’s a lot of coke on the Cape, bad during the summer, even worse during the winter. It’s cold and there’s no one. You lose a lot of line cooks that way. You lose a lot of college girls that way. I got lost that way.”
Or this example from Elyssa East and her story “Second Chance”:
“I never meant to be in the car that killed that girl. It was like that was someone else, not me. Like I wasn’t even there. But I was.”
Or this vivid description from Lizzie Skurnick and “Spectacle Pond”:
“The black sky over the pond was a lid, he suspended in its jar. Through a conflagration of circumstance and other people’s will, he was floating alone two miles from a small, dark road smack in the center of a barely populated peninsula, with nobody to know or care. He was not angry or murderous. He was lonely, merely lonely—or at least, he thought, lonelier than anyone like him had a right or reason to be.”
And certainly this desolate picture painted by David L. Ulin in “La Jetée”:
“Standing on the jetty, watching the sky grow pale and silver-pink at sunset, he drifted back to that moment, emptying his drawers into a trash can, realizing that nothing he’d gathered in the last five years, nothing he’d accumulated, meant anything at all. In a weird way, he felt hardened, kiln-fired…Not purified, though, never purified. Not unless purity could be defined in terms of rage.”
But not every story is your typical tragic noir. There is a bit of humor sprinkled here and there, as in the uniquely strange story “Twenty-Eight Scenes for Neglected Guests” by Jedediah Berry. In this fractured tale of puppets, witches and love lost, we are treated to this scene where the three Widows of North Varnish laugh at their losses with glee:
“‘My husband died because he ate too much,’ says the first of the three Widows of North Varnish. ‘Too much poison, that is.’
‘And my husband died because he hit his head,’ says the second widow, ‘against the skillet I was holding.’
‘And for my husband,’ says the third widow, ‘he died of natural causes.’
‘Is that so?’ asked the first widow.
‘We were standing together on the edge of a very high cliff, just admiring nature, and then he fell right into it.’
One other unique structural element of this anthology was the use of numbered sections—stories broken down into bite-sized pieces, a mathematics of betrayal and deceit that adds up to death, voodoo, and the ever-expanding darkness of the Cape. The aforementioned “Twenty-Eight Scenes for Neglected Guests” jumps back and forth between a myriad of characters, each of them jilted and desperate, as they put together a macabre puppet show. Love is buried and revealed; witchcraft is employed; all the while the puppets rehearsing in the background, morbid as they tell their sordid tales.
Another story broken down into subsections is Paul Tremblay’s slow reveal in “Nineteen Snapshots of Dennisport.” A young boy carries his camera around on the family vacation, taking the usual blurred pictures of faces and hands, the action out of the shots just as revealing as what is captured on film. A hotel room opened to a curious eye only shows shadows when the film is developed. Memories of a beautiful, exotic Italian girl, Isabella, are mixed with family photos gathered around tables, faces frowning, something wrong—an affair, a mistake, strange men at the periphery wanting some time from father:
“Look closer. Over his left shoulder. See that huge guy two storefronts away, hiding under an awning, but not hiding? He’s watching behind reflective sunglasses, and he’s wearing a tight white polo shirt, wearing it like a threat…”
For those that are unfamiliar with Cape Cod this is a fascinating collection of tales that reveal the underbelly of a quiet vacation spot, taking you out into troubled waters, back into the alleyways and forever bending forests, freezing moments in time for you to retain for future reference. For those that have spent time in these locations, it is a haunting trip back to a place that may hold fond memories for you, or perhaps simply confirms your own ideas that something was happening just out of sight. And for those that are simply fans of noir there are plenty of dark nights for you to embrace—hushed voices and smeared lipstick, fists that are eternally clenched in anger. Akashic Books knows what they are doing with this series, and David L. Ulin has put together a malicious collection of short stories that will stay with you long after you return home safe.
June 22, 2011
What a great mix of short stories--mixing everything from the 18th through 21st centuries as contexts for the tales. It's part of a series of noir anthologies set in assorted places, primarily throughout the U.S. but increasingly global in scope. Anyhow, back to Cape Cod Noir, the series focuses on the mix of cultures and classes that inhabit the Cape--both the summer trade and those who make their livings here year round. The stories are dark, as noir implies, but extremely well crafted. Ulin does a fine job with the arranging of stories and the pacing and, despite the darkness, the series does little to dissuade one from wanting to further explore Cape Cod. Many thanks to the 13 fine authors whose work is included, and to Ulin for arranging it all so well. (While I liked different ones for assorted different reasons--including the entry by my buddy Dana Cameron--I esp. enjoyed Paul Tremblay's "Nineteen Snapshots of Dennisport" for the sheer inventiveness of its format.) I will definitely explore other works in Akashic Books' series of noir anthologies and heartily encourage others to do the same.
August 9, 2020
I had such a hard time rating this one. Some stories kept me interested from start to end, others had me skimming. Some made me sentimental for the Cape trip I didn’t take this year, some had be yelling “WTF”. So I went with 3 stars. Because some of these stories will sit with me for a while.
December 24, 2022
This was a DNF that I’m taking off my shelves. Some stories worked and done didn’t. The locale was a minor character throughout
January 6, 2013
It's always fun to read about places you know. I know the Cape. I know how it feels to look out your window and see the water, and the boats. I know the sounds of hammering in the spring, and the clink clink clink of the hardware on masts. I know the smells. I'll be the first one to say that, even with attending church with the Kennedy's every summer, I know, unequivically, that the Cape has it's underbelly. Like, they mention the Egg and I in one of my favorite stories, Nineteen shots of Dennisport. I had a roomate that got shot in front of the Egg and I over a girl. It was a through and through in the shoulder. Adam Mansbach's Variations On A Fifty Pound Bale was great, I'd swear I know most of the people in that one. The Falmouth one...my sister is a waitress in a Townie restaurant, great owner, good to his employees, that story Ten Year Plan creeped me out, but those people are the people who populate Falmouth...it isn't all canada mint pink pants and Sperry top siders. A few of the stories I just flat out didn't get, or they left me blank. It's funny that you can read so much murder and mayhem in such a familiar landscape, and still just be jonesin to go be there for a while. To me, there is no place I'd rather be than on that strip of sand and scrub pine, no more beautiful place on earth, at least in the off season when you don't have to deal with a bunch of tourists.
August 30, 2025
This was an odd little assortment of stories. They got darker and more obscure as the collection progressed. For the first several stories I thought: oh boy - hyper realistic melancholic portrayals of relationships and conflict without resolution? maybe ive been a noir fan forever and never knew it! And though I can't say I enjoyed the stories, because they do ultimately leave you feeling kind of, for lack of a better word, morose, I found at least a couple of them memorable and well written. Then towards the end the stories crept into the more disturbing and violent realm, and the last story was my least favorite just because of how pretentious it came off. This was a great introduction to noir though, I definitely got the (depressing) picture. I need a sweet little rom-com now, though.
March 31, 2019
I got this from the library, in order to read “Anna Hoyt #2” by Dana Cameron. Actual title of that is “Ardent”. (It was good, but not quite as good as “Anna Hoyt #1”.) Then I read the first 6 stories (of 13 stories) in this book, and was extremely impressed with the chapters by Paul Tremblay “19 Snapshots of Dennisport” and Elyssa East “Second Chance.” The writing in this Noir is more akin to the edition on Boston—way stronger than the trashy Orange County one or the ho-hum Philadelphia one. However, these stories were also extremely dark and dismal, and so I stopped after story #6. My Anna Hoyt mission has been accomplished...
August 13, 2025
I was really excited about this collection, but got really tired of very similar characters in most of the stories. I loved the final story (28 Scenes) and 19 Snapshots of Dennisport, but I loved the creation of the settings in all!
August 2, 2017
Excellent, as always. Paul Tremblay's story particularly quivered with menace!
December 5, 2020
A pretty good collection of some bleak stories set in my home-town area of Cape Cod. I liked some of the familiar locales interspersed - Jack's Outback! New Bedford!
March 7, 2021
Mostly disappointing vaguely "noir" stories.
December 18, 2025
There are a few good stories in this collection.
August 13, 2012
Another reward has come from the display of new books at my local library. The series of Noir short mystery stories published by Akashic includes many titles, all of which are set in a single location. The books range from Baltimore Noir to Wall Street Noir, (no A or Z as yet), with international as well as national settings. The list of titles is so long that for it to fit on one page, an 8 or 9 point font proved necessary.
In his introduction to Cape Cod Noir, David L. Ulin writes explaining what to expect of the genre. "Bad things happen to good people--or possibilities narrow until every option is compromised and no one ever wins." But noir, he says, goes further. It has to do with how we deal with the defining limits of the situation when we recognize it. Ulin quotes Raymond Chandler in Farewell, My Lovely, one of the authors who helped define noir, to illuminate it. "I needed a drink, I needed a lot of life insurance, I needed a vacation. I needed a home in the country. What I had was a coat, a hat and a gun." The CCN stories all live up to what Ulin promises.
There is much to like in such a series, I found, beyond the spectrum offered in this volume. The idea of a commonality invites those who are familiar with a setting to revisit it. Or tempts those who wish to travel there. Each story is subtitled with a specific location within that setting, and a map of that area has each story marked upon it--with little crime scene body outlines.
I'm a fan of stories told in real settings. I particularly enjoy following novels on maps when the author's style allows it by naming specific locations and streets. For example, I purchased a map of Venice for use while reading a mystery. I traced travel along specific bridges and streets, and found where various buildings were, from unmarked cafes to famous landmarks. For the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, I roamed Stockholm. Even though familiar with it, for Little Brother by Cory Doctorow, I pulled the San Francisco Bay Area map out of my car.
As in any short story collection, it is a smorgasbord for differing tastes in its styles and shadings of genre. Here there are experimental stories such as "Nineteen Snapshots of Dennisport" by Paul Tremblay, based on photographs, each a vignette contributing to a whole. "The Exchange Student" by Fred G. Leebron recounts the story of a Danish high school student coping with a death in his host family during his first month in Provincetown as well as his difficulties with the culture and language. And for me, Cape Cod Noir offered a huge gift, two dishes of distinction, all the better for having introduced me to new authors.
The first of these two, Dana Cameron, contributed "Ardent", set in 18th century Eastham. The protagonist, Anna Hoyt, has stopped over there, returning from a London visit back to Boston where she owns a tavern, a legacy from her dead husband. Circumstances of the period and her own life pull her in different directions. In an Eastham church Anna wonders of her life "if she could not be what she had been, and was not allowed to be what she might, what would she do?" She must choose how to balance her life between her tavern, the Queen's Arms, her position as a woman, her vulnerability to people who have power over her, such as Samuel Stratton and his boss Oliver Browne, and what to do about a man she hopes to marry.
In a voice very different from that of Cameron, Seth Greenland wrote "Bad Night in Hyannisport," one of the shorter stories. It begins, "I was dead. That was the main thing. And I never saw it coming. Maybe if I hadn't been suffering from the worst hangover of my life, I would sensed something was amiss." It is 1974. A nineteen year-old student has been spending the summer as a construction worker while hoping to score after hours with a girl vacationing there following her freshman year at the University of New Hampshire. He recounts his last day of life and how he came to be dead. Using nothing but the student's own voice, the author lets us see the why of his death as the boy relates the what-happened of it. And in this way, Greenland's understated humor works to make "Bad Nigh"t one of the best in the book.
Cape Cod Noir and the series showcases talent at hand in each of the collection's stories as well as a chance to discover writers to follow in other venues. Again, thank goodness for the new book display!
In his introduction to Cape Cod Noir, David L. Ulin writes explaining what to expect of the genre. "Bad things happen to good people--or possibilities narrow until every option is compromised and no one ever wins." But noir, he says, goes further. It has to do with how we deal with the defining limits of the situation when we recognize it. Ulin quotes Raymond Chandler in Farewell, My Lovely, one of the authors who helped define noir, to illuminate it. "I needed a drink, I needed a lot of life insurance, I needed a vacation. I needed a home in the country. What I had was a coat, a hat and a gun." The CCN stories all live up to what Ulin promises.
There is much to like in such a series, I found, beyond the spectrum offered in this volume. The idea of a commonality invites those who are familiar with a setting to revisit it. Or tempts those who wish to travel there. Each story is subtitled with a specific location within that setting, and a map of that area has each story marked upon it--with little crime scene body outlines.
I'm a fan of stories told in real settings. I particularly enjoy following novels on maps when the author's style allows it by naming specific locations and streets. For example, I purchased a map of Venice for use while reading a mystery. I traced travel along specific bridges and streets, and found where various buildings were, from unmarked cafes to famous landmarks. For the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, I roamed Stockholm. Even though familiar with it, for Little Brother by Cory Doctorow, I pulled the San Francisco Bay Area map out of my car.
As in any short story collection, it is a smorgasbord for differing tastes in its styles and shadings of genre. Here there are experimental stories such as "Nineteen Snapshots of Dennisport" by Paul Tremblay, based on photographs, each a vignette contributing to a whole. "The Exchange Student" by Fred G. Leebron recounts the story of a Danish high school student coping with a death in his host family during his first month in Provincetown as well as his difficulties with the culture and language. And for me, Cape Cod Noir offered a huge gift, two dishes of distinction, all the better for having introduced me to new authors.
The first of these two, Dana Cameron, contributed "Ardent", set in 18th century Eastham. The protagonist, Anna Hoyt, has stopped over there, returning from a London visit back to Boston where she owns a tavern, a legacy from her dead husband. Circumstances of the period and her own life pull her in different directions. In an Eastham church Anna wonders of her life "if she could not be what she had been, and was not allowed to be what she might, what would she do?" She must choose how to balance her life between her tavern, the Queen's Arms, her position as a woman, her vulnerability to people who have power over her, such as Samuel Stratton and his boss Oliver Browne, and what to do about a man she hopes to marry.
In a voice very different from that of Cameron, Seth Greenland wrote "Bad Night in Hyannisport," one of the shorter stories. It begins, "I was dead. That was the main thing. And I never saw it coming. Maybe if I hadn't been suffering from the worst hangover of my life, I would sensed something was amiss." It is 1974. A nineteen year-old student has been spending the summer as a construction worker while hoping to score after hours with a girl vacationing there following her freshman year at the University of New Hampshire. He recounts his last day of life and how he came to be dead. Using nothing but the student's own voice, the author lets us see the why of his death as the boy relates the what-happened of it. And in this way, Greenland's understated humor works to make "Bad Nigh"t one of the best in the book.
Cape Cod Noir and the series showcases talent at hand in each of the collection's stories as well as a chance to discover writers to follow in other venues. Again, thank goodness for the new book display!
May 12, 2012
This summer I am spending three months on the West coast...far away from my eastern roots. Though I haven’t been really homesick, when I saw “Cape Cod Noir” on a bookshelf I knew that I had to have it! Reading the stories chilled my spine while taking me back to the many summers I spent on the Cape. I think this is definitely a great book for those familiar with this locale though it might be lacking for outsiders.
As you may know, this collection is just one in the “noir” series which collects short stories in different cities around the country. Because the stories are noir, they are often eerie, have some violence, and might give you the chills. I have read other books in this series including “Mexico City Noir” and “New Orleans Noir” both of which I was unable to get into. While some of the stories were well written, I didn’t feel connected to any of the characters in any of the stories. I finally realized that I think my lack of connection with the locales made it hard for me to enjoy the stories.
It is for this reason that when I cracked the spine on the Cape Cod edition, I felt like I had come home. There is a map in the front of the book that shows where each story takes place so that people can orient themselves. This specific edition is broken into thee parts: Out of Season, Summer People, and End of the Line. Obviously, the first section contains stories about residents who are there year round and those in the area from September to May. The Summer People tells of just that, tales that take place during the summer usually involving vacationers. Some of the stories are written very well and have unique narratives. Such is the case with the story “Nineteen Snapshots of Dennisport” which is told in nineteen paragraphs that describe photographs that are not included. With each description, the tale gets creepier and creepier and the narrator begins to realize that her father may be in grave trouble. My favorite in this section is “Second Chance” which is about a school of boys on the Penikese Island. This school actually exists and the author of this story must have done some fantastic research because the descriptions match perfectly with the actual place. This school is for boys who are very troubled and are given one last chance. Stranded on the island away from electricity and modern conveniences, these boys live as if they are in the 1800s. But violence and fear are timeless and certainly find their way to the island in this tale. Part two has a great story called “Bad Night in Hyannisport” which is narrated by a dead man in the tradition of “Sunset Boulevard”. Sadly, I felt that the third section lagged and didn’t contain as many great stories as the first two parts.
While there were certainly some great stories in this collection, I felt that it got a bit redundant towards the final pages. These are not on par with the noir classics of the 1950s but they should not go unnoticed. I believe that some of the authors who contributed are so great that I look forward to reading their other works. Overall, even for a lover of Cape Cod, I would borrow it from the library instead of opening my wallet.
www.iamliteraryaddicted.blogspot.com
As you may know, this collection is just one in the “noir” series which collects short stories in different cities around the country. Because the stories are noir, they are often eerie, have some violence, and might give you the chills. I have read other books in this series including “Mexico City Noir” and “New Orleans Noir” both of which I was unable to get into. While some of the stories were well written, I didn’t feel connected to any of the characters in any of the stories. I finally realized that I think my lack of connection with the locales made it hard for me to enjoy the stories.
It is for this reason that when I cracked the spine on the Cape Cod edition, I felt like I had come home. There is a map in the front of the book that shows where each story takes place so that people can orient themselves. This specific edition is broken into thee parts: Out of Season, Summer People, and End of the Line. Obviously, the first section contains stories about residents who are there year round and those in the area from September to May. The Summer People tells of just that, tales that take place during the summer usually involving vacationers. Some of the stories are written very well and have unique narratives. Such is the case with the story “Nineteen Snapshots of Dennisport” which is told in nineteen paragraphs that describe photographs that are not included. With each description, the tale gets creepier and creepier and the narrator begins to realize that her father may be in grave trouble. My favorite in this section is “Second Chance” which is about a school of boys on the Penikese Island. This school actually exists and the author of this story must have done some fantastic research because the descriptions match perfectly with the actual place. This school is for boys who are very troubled and are given one last chance. Stranded on the island away from electricity and modern conveniences, these boys live as if they are in the 1800s. But violence and fear are timeless and certainly find their way to the island in this tale. Part two has a great story called “Bad Night in Hyannisport” which is narrated by a dead man in the tradition of “Sunset Boulevard”. Sadly, I felt that the third section lagged and didn’t contain as many great stories as the first two parts.
While there were certainly some great stories in this collection, I felt that it got a bit redundant towards the final pages. These are not on par with the noir classics of the 1950s but they should not go unnoticed. I believe that some of the authors who contributed are so great that I look forward to reading their other works. Overall, even for a lover of Cape Cod, I would borrow it from the library instead of opening my wallet.
www.iamliteraryaddicted.blogspot.com
April 17, 2016
I spent eighteen summer on the Cape. Big whoop, so did lots of other people. What makes me different is the fourteen winters I spent on the place. Winters on the Cape are different experience from what the tourists and summer people get. I cruised around on Friday nights when the only places open past 8 PM were convenience stores, bars, and the movie theater. I shoveled snow, partied in the only occupied house in a neighborhood, and saw Buzzard's Bay frozen over. I know what the bottle of malt vinegar on your restaurant table is for. As far as I'm concerned, these experiences make me a local. I've since gotten out of the place, but I'll never not be a Cape Cod native.
A couple years back I had lunch with another escaped native at an urbane joint on the North Side--the kind of place they serve beers on the patio and they have Buddhist prayer flags and vegan entrees. They don't have joints like that on the Cape. He had been back more recently that I had, so I asked him about what was new. He told me that pretty much everyone we still knew back home was now involved in one drug trafficking scheme or another.
OK, that's enough of the noir shtick. What I mean to say is that as a native, this collection of stories really spoke to me. They're stories about how, as David Ulin says in the introduction, "possibilities narrow, until every option is compromised and no one ever wins." These are the stories from a seedy, off-season Cape Cod, about my friends and classmates who turned to selling drugs out of a combination of boredom and desperation. Granted, lots of the stories portray a seedier side than I'm used to (Two stories are about out-of-towners who come to the Cape in winter to kill somebody, one is about someone who hides out on the Cape in winter after killing somebody), but nothing is outside the realm of possibility.
Of the thirteen short stories here, I would say that seven are good to excellent, two are OK, and four are bad (which docked a star from my rating). Among the best are "Ten-Year Plan," "Second Chance," "La Jetee," and "Bad Night In Hyannisport." The absolute highlight for me, however, was "Variations on a Fifty-Pound Bale," by Adam Mansbach, author of Rage Is Back, which landed on my all-time favorites list after reading it. An unknown narrator recounts the local legend of a fifty-pound bale of marijuana that washed ashore on Martha's Vineyard sometime in 1973. Or was it 1965? And did it wash ashore, or was or did someone swim out and paddle it back in? And who was that guy who found the bale? Was it a lifeguard, a townie hippie, or a mild-mannered college professor? It's a story that everybody knows, but nobody can agree on the details. It's like if Rashomon had a baby with Pineapple Express, but somehow weirdo beardos, ne'er-do-well Irish seasonal workers, Frank Sinatra, and a herd of goats got involved. It don't think I've ever read a better twelve consecutive pages in my life.
A couple years back I had lunch with another escaped native at an urbane joint on the North Side--the kind of place they serve beers on the patio and they have Buddhist prayer flags and vegan entrees. They don't have joints like that on the Cape. He had been back more recently that I had, so I asked him about what was new. He told me that pretty much everyone we still knew back home was now involved in one drug trafficking scheme or another.
OK, that's enough of the noir shtick. What I mean to say is that as a native, this collection of stories really spoke to me. They're stories about how, as David Ulin says in the introduction, "possibilities narrow, until every option is compromised and no one ever wins." These are the stories from a seedy, off-season Cape Cod, about my friends and classmates who turned to selling drugs out of a combination of boredom and desperation. Granted, lots of the stories portray a seedier side than I'm used to (Two stories are about out-of-towners who come to the Cape in winter to kill somebody, one is about someone who hides out on the Cape in winter after killing somebody), but nothing is outside the realm of possibility.
Of the thirteen short stories here, I would say that seven are good to excellent, two are OK, and four are bad (which docked a star from my rating). Among the best are "Ten-Year Plan," "Second Chance," "La Jetee," and "Bad Night In Hyannisport." The absolute highlight for me, however, was "Variations on a Fifty-Pound Bale," by Adam Mansbach, author of Rage Is Back, which landed on my all-time favorites list after reading it. An unknown narrator recounts the local legend of a fifty-pound bale of marijuana that washed ashore on Martha's Vineyard sometime in 1973. Or was it 1965? And did it wash ashore, or was or did someone swim out and paddle it back in? And who was that guy who found the bale? Was it a lifeguard, a townie hippie, or a mild-mannered college professor? It's a story that everybody knows, but nobody can agree on the details. It's like if Rashomon had a baby with Pineapple Express, but somehow weirdo beardos, ne'er-do-well Irish seasonal workers, Frank Sinatra, and a herd of goats got involved. It don't think I've ever read a better twelve consecutive pages in my life.
Want to read
July 29, 2015Launched with the summer '04 award-winning best-seller Brooklyn Noir, Akashic Books continues its groundbreaking series of original noir anthologies. Each book is comprised of all-new stories, each one set in a distinct neighborhood or location within the city of the book.
Los Angeles Times book critic David L. Ulin has been vacationing in Cape Cod every summer since he was a boy. He knows the terrain inside out; enough to identify the squalid underbelly of this allegedly idyllic location. His editing prowess is a perfect match for this fine volume.
From the introduction by David L. Ulin: "For me, Cape Cod is a repository of memory: forty summers in the same house will do that to you. But it is also a landscape of hidden tensions, which rise up when we least anticipate. In part, this has to do with social aspiration, which is one of the things that brought my family, like many others, to the Cape. In part, it has to do with social division, which has been a factor since at least the end of the nineteenth century, when then summer trade began. There are lines here, lines that get crossed and lines that never get crossed, the kinds of lines that form the web of noir. Call it what you want - summer and smoke is how I think of it - but that's the Cape Cod at the center of this book."
April 3, 2014
Maybe the best anthology in the bang-up Akashic series of neo and classic noir stories. My students, native to Los Angeles or far flung international locales, reread this book and its handful of sharp, formally varied works for pleasure in their spare time. When does that ever happen? From the opening story and its relatable economic vise called a despotic boss, Hasting's "Ten-Year Plan", to the lurid shenanigans of Tremblay's "Nineteen Snapshots of Dennisport", to the finance noir of Ulin's "La Jetee," the mad poetry of Greenman's erotic tinged "Viva Regina," this book is one of the tightest line-ups of inventive neo-noir fiction possible.
August 25, 2014
Not all of the stories in the volume are of the same caliber - or carry the same weight that one might expect of the noir genre - however, as a collection its quite enjoyable. Moreover, there are clear gems in the collection. I'm confused as to why no writers of color appear to have been engaged - and why there was not piece focused on the large Cape Verdean and Portuguese population on the Cape and the Vineyard. I was also disappointed that there was no story featuring Black communities like Oak Bluffs on the Vineyard. All in all a strong collection that I enjoyed.
April 7, 2011
Full disclosure, I have one story in this. I loved the variety of takes on what noir can be. Many of the tales dwell on class/cultural clashes with the summer help, year 'rounders, and well off tourists, with William Hastings's "Ten Year Plan" as the perfect opener. I suspect noir purists may not like the genre bending/stretching of some of the stories, but I found it to be refreshing. Push them boundaries!
August 25, 2013
A strong 3.5.
Best: William Hastings' Ten Year Plan, Elyssa East's Second Chance, David L. Ulin's La Jetée, Ben Greenman's Viva Regina, Dave Zeltserman's When Death Shines Bright. Paul Tremblay's Nineteen Snapshots of Dennisport and Kaylie Jones' The Occidental Tourist are both easily 5+ stars and the best of the bunch as far as my tastes are concerned.
Could've lived without: Dana Cameron's Ardent, Lizzie Skurnick's Spectacle Pond, Jedediah Berry's Twenty-Eight Scenes For Neglected Guests.
Best: William Hastings' Ten Year Plan, Elyssa East's Second Chance, David L. Ulin's La Jetée, Ben Greenman's Viva Regina, Dave Zeltserman's When Death Shines Bright. Paul Tremblay's Nineteen Snapshots of Dennisport and Kaylie Jones' The Occidental Tourist are both easily 5+ stars and the best of the bunch as far as my tastes are concerned.
Could've lived without: Dana Cameron's Ardent, Lizzie Skurnick's Spectacle Pond, Jedediah Berry's Twenty-Eight Scenes For Neglected Guests.
February 13, 2015
Cape Cod Noir by David Ulin
Beach vacation scenes and this series is about many other contributions from various writers in different districts.
Vacation never ends for the islanders when the summer season is over.
Many stories are about men who have been released from prison and how they live their lives on the cape.
I received this book from National Library Service for my BARD (Braille Audio Reading Device).
Beach vacation scenes and this series is about many other contributions from various writers in different districts.
Vacation never ends for the islanders when the summer season is over.
Many stories are about men who have been released from prison and how they live their lives on the cape.
I received this book from National Library Service for my BARD (Braille Audio Reading Device).
July 4, 2013
Not every story is a winner, but that would be hard to pull off in any collection of 15 or so short stories. Also, weirdly, some of them don't have much to do with Cape Cod, which is weird, seeing how it's in the title and all. Either way, some very good stuff in here, some regular good stuff in here, and some not-so-good stuff in here.
Read
October 18, 2014Definitely a walk on the dark side. These stories brought to life a side of Cape Cod that I hope to never actually know personally when I get there. I read this on my first trip to Nantucket and the words had my brain conjuring up similar story lines along the rock-filled Galen Avenue or near the tony shops on India Street A fun collection I'd recommend.
July 13, 2011
I'm in this anthology, but I can still give this 5-stars with a clear conscience based solely on Paul Tremblay's story in the anthology. It's that good a story! There's some good stuff in the rest of the anthology, but it's Tremblay's story that makes this a must read!
August 20, 2011
I love this series, and I think that this is one of the more readable books in it. I like how they included a map of the Cape to indicate where the stories take place. My favorites are "Ardent," "Nineteen Shots of Dennisport," "Second Chance," and "The Occidental Tourist."
April 9, 2012
Really enjoyed most of the short stories in this anthology. I actually got to see David Ulin at my college a few weeks ago and it was awesome to hear he wanted to bend the idea of a typical noir and shape it around Cape Cod which came out great. I would recommend picking up this book for sure.
April 2, 2015
2.5-I found this to be an uneven collection of stories, some very good, the best for me was "Ten Year Plan" by William Hastings. A few of the stories seemed to be written in unusual styles for the sake of the style rather than to better tell the tale.
November 15, 2011
nice creepy ass yankee death, murder, and crimes from akashic. this series is an incredibly entertaining and fun way to find new authors, as opposed to say..... GR's best books list of 2011
February 28, 2012
A high 3 - some of the stories were quite well done. Definitely much better than 'Barcelona Noir.'
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