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Coronado: Stories (P.S.)
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From Publishers Weekly
Lehane (Mystic River) hints in the first of these five richly vernacular (and, save one, previously published) stories and one play that "a small town is a hard place to keep a secret." In "Running Out of Dog," two Vietnam vets return to their hometown of Eden, S.C., and become tragically entangled with the wife of a man whose rich family kept him out of the war. Class resentment similarly erupts in "Gone Down to Corpus," set in back-water Texas, 1970, as a group of high school football players breaks into the house of rich kid Lyle, who fumbled the big pass at the last game. They drunkenly wreck the house and are shocked by the appearance of Lyle's younger sister, Lurlene, who is eager to join the party. The collection's centerpiece is "Until Gwen," which has also been adapted by Lehane into a two-act play, Coronado. Transcribed, the play revolves around the edgy reunion of a hustler father and his son, Bobby, newly released after four years in prison. It quickly becomes apparent that Bobby's father has retrieved him only to find out where the heist loot is hidden, and Bobby, in turn, needs to know what happened to his girlfriend, Gwen. Powerfully envisioned lives, recounted unflinchingly. (Sept.)
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From School Library Journal
Adult/High School–In this collection of five short stories and a brief play, Lehane assembles a disparate cast, yet each individual takes part in a similar search for something elusive. In ICU, Daniel is hunted down by assailants and must hide in a hospital waiting room to survive. Until Gwen reunites a young man just released from prison with the father who corrupted him. Several of the pieces are set in the South, and their pacing is infused with the slowness of a Southern drawl. The mastery of the author's storytelling lies in his ability to create atmosphere. His characters are defined by the mood of the world around them, a world that is often confining and in which hope is thrown aside in favor of a grim pragmatism. Lehane populates his stories with people who are ordinary and reveals the extraordinary complexity of their lives. The decisions they face are unenviable and their choices somehow unavoidable. The author invents nuanced relationships in which murder and betrayal become acts of loyalty and friendship. Each story introduces a touch of the unlikely or unfortunate into otherwise mundane circumstances, then relays the consequences as events unfold. Haunting imagery lingers long after the book is closed.–Heidi Dolamore, San Mateo County Library, CA
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
--This text refers to the
edition.
24/12/2007
I'm struck act play that grew out of one of the stories. I should have read it earlier. Any 'collection' is, a priori, uneven, but each of the stories held my attention and 'Running out of Dog' and 'Before Gwen' are unforgettable. The stories also take Lehane away from his geographical base and demonstrate the range of his talent. I'm still waiting for that next novel, but Coronado has given me enough of a Lehane fix to help me tolerate the wait.
01/01/2007
I picked this book up because I had heard much of the author Dennis Lehane, and thought it would be worth trying his prose on for size (so to speak). It is, for me, and imperfect fit. Lehane is a talented writer, but there is something unrelentingly dark about this book. Every character seems to be caught in a downward spiral, without any hope of escape. Admittedly, there are a few very quick flashes of biting humor in the stories, but I just had that impatient feeling of wanting the book to be over. Although the characters and situations are different, they are all sinking under the stormy surface of life. His prose is stark and unstructured, in a style that I feel is similar to Raymond Carver, although he explains more than Carver every did. I found the book interesting and the characters were very real, but I guess it's just not he kind of thing I feel I need to experience again.
13/09/2006
After waiting 3 years since Shutter Island for DL's next book, this collection of short stories and a play came as a major disappointment.
Might DL have a writer's block problem?
Some of the stories are quite good, except ICU, which is a failed attempt at being kafkaesque. But they don't add up to a book. DL should have written a few more for a more solid collection.
The play is just plain bad. The scenes based on "Gwen" are so much weaker than the story. Filling it up with the triangle scenes and the doctor/patient scenes doesn't make it a real play. It is still just a collection of scenes. The dialogues are sometimes miserably juvenile, reminding me of high school efforts at drama. The father/son war of the Gwen-story does not bear being stretched anyway, the man's badness is so overdone, it ought to stay tucked away in a short story.
I think the best of the stories is "Gone down to Corpus". That is also juvenile, but in the sense of looking at young people who are feeling hopeless. Convincing, and very "economical", as the cover blurb announces. Economical probably stands for very short. "Running out of Dog" is a very violent and very bloody, well constructed story about another hopeless situation: when hope comes late to a man, it is dangerous. That's the aphorism around which it is constructed. Some more like these, and I would have given more stars.
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