Status Updates From A Field Guide to Murder & F...

"Keepers": 5/5 - refreshing and surprising, this story was arranged perfectly at the end of the collection, giving readers a lot of the strengths of earlier stories, with an important variation. Also, a nice "bookend" (no pun intended) to the titular Fly Fishing.

But beneath the frustration was an increasing undertow of worry.

"The Foreigner": 3/5 - very atmospheric, very Murakami's Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge, great tension and a fair plot resolution, but thematically, kind of a 6th Sense ending.

If Haruki Murakami wrote The Sun Also Rises...

"Diamondback Mountain": 3/5 - a short-lived ski romance.

Meditations on lust.

"Scrimshaw": 3/5 - a very well-written story, convincing and immersive, but with the texture of memory foam, only given definition by the reader's preconceptions.

"Six Feet under the Prairie": 5/5 - a young man in Colorado takes a construction job for the summer that ends up changing his life. Powerful symbolism, powerful thematically, awe-inspiring description.

"The Money Pill": 4/5 - maybe it's like, red pill, blue pill, black pill, money pill? I missed something here and it's probably just me. Definitely a powerful story. Authentic and bewildering, something like your first time reading The Sun Also Rises.

"Steal Your Face": 5/5 - less satisfying, maybe, than some of the preceding stories, but such a visionary, unforgettable ride. Jeff follows the Grateful Dead to Red Rocks.

"A week of rain at the end of May turns the lawns green, and the buds on the beeches and maples burst overnight in leaves so perfectly formed they seem altogether too good to be true."

"The Dragon of Conchagua": 5/5 - treated to another Amazonian story, this one just as vivid and transporting, with a more definitive and yet more enigmatic ending. Brilliant.

“There’s no dragon, John. I don’t know why you keep bringing it up.”John shook his head, puzzled. “I never mentioned anything about a dragon.”“But you were thinking it. If you think it, you don’t have to say it.”


So good.

"A Winter Break in Rome": 5/5 - Tim Weed's stories always surprise me in one way or another. This one was unconventional in its pacing with the conflict sort of peaking halfway through the story, leaving the reader to figure out how the thematic resolution was still developing. Understated, heartbreaking, undeniable.

There seems to be something ugly in the air, a whiff of ancient savagery seeping up through the flagstones.

"The Mouth of the Tropics": 4/5 - A story about the conflict of studying versus protecting the Amazon--yes, please. Very evocative, immersive and vivid, but not much of a resolution.

"The Afternoon Client": 5/5 - perhaps the titular murder--another flawless, compelling story. This one about a fishing guide.

"Tower Eight": 5/5 - this is one of the best short stories I've ever read--my review wouldn't do it justice. Reminds me a little of "The Last Rung on the Ladder."

Weed's ability to infuse a sentence with layers of meaning is like an artist creating a complex two-dimensional image with depth out of layers of paint:
"It must have been even better from his perspective, twenty or thirty feet above the snow, wind whistling around his ears, his shadow tracking across the dimpled slope like the shadow of a soaring bird, or an alter ego, or the final glimpse of a departing soul."

The dialogue here is impeccable. Like it would be harder to sustain disbelief than suspend it.

these shorts showcase how good a writer tim weed really is, almost hard to believe:

He made a show of putting the remaining ones back in his coat pocket, but his fist stayed closed when he took it out and I think he must have taken the extras, too. In the end, it probably didn’t matter.

"The Camp at Cutthroat Lake": 5/5 - saturated with a sense of lurking dread, this story relies on the symbolism of an otherwise innocuous fishing trip, and the subtle character development doled out sparingly across only a few pages. Impeccable pacing and foreshadowing, thought-provoking and vivid.

The Camp At Cutthroat Lake 4✨ Makes me nostalgic for fishing with my dad. Jack's an unnecessarily jealous nasty lil shit.