10/08/2005: "New Review"

In the interests of fair and unbiased reporting, I'll make a point to post all the reviews I can find here on the blog. The glowing reviews and the stinkers, in order to give you all a fair and unbiased spectrum of readerly reactions. This one, I must say, might fall into the latter category.

This is from KIRKUS, the US review:

Kirkus Reviews
Stories of blood, guts, dog-fighting and sex addiction. Opening with a story about a broken-handed ex-prizefighter who watches his nephew fall through thin ice, and moving into a story about an alcoholic father who puts all his hopes on an estranged son's basketball game, Davidson's debut collection engages the Hemingway-esque tradition of terse prose describing toughened men who suffer while hiding their scars. The characters, wounded, and often wounding others and themselves, rarely seem to get what they want. Often they seem to frustrate their own ambitions: A man who loses his leg to a shark holes up, masturbates and then tries and fails to find love with a pretty young woman who has lost her arms. The dog-fighter turns out not to be able to have children with his wife, and in a midnight frenzy throws himself to his own dogs. The sex addict remains terminally addicted, imagining walls of genitals, attending orgies, unsure he can love even his own child. In the midst of these uncomfortable stories lurk certain fragmentary hopes, and a few reflective insights. At one point, the battered prizefighter claims: "Reach a certain experience level, you don't fight without reason. You've seen to many boxers hurt, killed even, to treat matches as dick-swinging contests." Nevertheless, these characters seem always to be fighting, swinging dicks and plowing ahead, hurt and hurting. Thick with bleak characters and thin on redemption, Davidson moves from one unsavory battered character to another. The relentless, unforgiving nature of these difficult worlds makes for heavy reading.

I can't argue with the review---my feeling has always been, if someone's cool enough to read the book, they have the right to say whatever they want about it. But a few things, that anyone who's read the collection will know: it wasn't a shark biting off anyone's leg, but rather a killer whale. And the character in A MEAN UTILITY, the dogfighting story, doesn't do what this review seems to suggest he does. Still, I can understand the reviewer's reaction. Not everyone's cuppa tea.

I'll post more as they become available.

---Craig.

Replies: 6 Comments

on Tuesday, November 1st, Onyeka George Nwelue said

I am thrilled by this wonderful sources...great

on Wednesday, October 12th, Mike Paris said

On the subject of reviews, I just came across this one by way of Google:

http://www.sickamongthepure.com/files/2005/10/16_reading/reading.html

'If Dave Eggers (A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius) and Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club) had a child to raise as a literary prodigy, Craig Davidson would be the end result of their experiment.'

What is with reviewers (not just literary but of all stripes) coming up with these ridiculously contrived "if they mated" sentences?

I think this review is largely positive, but its not much more of the same "if you like this, then you'll also like this" variety you mentioned in an earlier posting.

I'm going to go watch Fight Club now.

on Wednesday, October 12th, mikeparis@dal.ca">Mike Paris said

on Wednesday, October 12th, Mike Paris said

On the subject of reviews, I just came across this one by way of Google:

http://www.sickamongthepure.com/files/2005/10/16_reading/reading.html

"If Dave Eggers (A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius) and Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club) had a child to raise as a literary prodigy, Craig Davidson would be the end result of their experiment."

What is with reviewers (not just literary but of all stripes) coming up with these ridiculously contrived "if they mated" sentences?

I think this review is largely positive, but its not much more of the same "if you like this, then you'll also like this" variety you mentioned in an earlier posting.

I'm going to go watch Fight Club now.

on Wednesday, October 12th, mikeparis@dal.cca">Mike Paris said

on Sunday, October 9th, john_lofranco@yahoo.ca">Jlo said

I don't think this is such a bad review. "Thick with bleak characters and thin on redemption, Davidson moves from one unsavory battered character to another."
I agree with this completely, but I think that's what makes the book a good read.

"The relentless, unforgiving nature of these difficult worlds makes for heavy reading." Also true, but if you are looking for a light read, probably you should look elsewhere. I think you should take this as a compliment. Your book is heavy--there are some light spots, to good effect, but being heavy (and TOUGH) is what the book does best. Not everyone's cuppa tea, but at least he got it, even if he didn't like it.