Jeff’s Reviews > A Field Guide to Murder & Fly Fishing > Status Update

"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.

"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.