Status Updates From Working Backwards from the ...

Beano's Deal: The weirdest story in a weird collection. This is not a negative for me. Roberege kills it at weird. I think this is a critique of capitalism, but also the story of a very frustrated chimp.

Earthquake is the least of these. It thinks it is deep. Not so much.

Whatever Happened to Bill Brody" "Their cab driver is a woman whose teeth are going in every direction except the ones you'd expect from teeth."

Burn Ward-Maybe the best so far. A series of conversations between men in the burn ward. Roberge is definitely fixated on bodily ruin at what that does to the soul. This one is gutting, but also occasionally grimly funny until it is not.

Border Radio. The sins of our fathers. The value of a life. All of these are weird stories -- this very brief one about generational evil might be the weirdest.

Love and Hope and Sex and Dreams - Physically painful. The quietest self-loathing imaginable.
Swiss Engineering - Less successful as a character study, but no less depressing as a whole. IT is a miracle Roberge stayed alive. Guessing he couldn't work up the energy.

These very brief stories are truly warped. I know from reading his memoir that Roberge is fascinating, talented, and not quite right.

Working Backwards From the Worst Moment of My Life - The title is spot on. The world's strangest moral quandary.

The Exterminator manages to be fully funny and fully tragic in the space of a few pages. "Rat is pest of the month" is a line I feel like I am going to use again.

"I want this. I want lost days."