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Why the Long Face?
by
Ron MacLean
Fiction. Fifteen stories, at once playful and serious, simple and layered, familiar and not. Gertrude Stein and Buffy the Vampire Slayer track down the bridal party to save a Las Vegas wedding. An ambivalent geneticist disappears himself in Texas scrub country. A five-year-old in search of her lost mother walks a high-wire between her home and her lesbian neighbor's. These...more
Paperback, 210 pages
Published
by Swank Books
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Ron MacLean is an artist who knows what he’s doing. He asks you to trust that he will tell you a story. He asks you to trust that there’s a good chance you’ll take away more than you imagined. Not every story in Why the Long Face is for all tastes, they weren’t all mine. Yet each one offers beauty.
“Las Vegas Wedding” plays like a recurring dream, a surreal snowball of nonlinear narrative, gradually rolling, forwards – and then backwards, adding layers of situations and characters – lik...more
“Las Vegas Wedding” plays like a recurring dream, a surreal snowball of nonlinear narrative, gradually rolling, forwards – and then backwards, adding layers of situations and characters – lik...more
Most short story collections are usually a grab-bag; some good, some bad, some obviously just included to fill out the page count.
Why the Long Face? is the exception to the rule. Ron Maclean's collection of short stories vary in their style, subject matter, prose, and impact, yet every story shines as a perfect example of what a short story should be. MacLean's stories convey the emotions of the characters, the longing and suffering, confusion and contemplation, with elegance and skill...more
Why the Long Face? is the exception to the rule. Ron Maclean's collection of short stories vary in their style, subject matter, prose, and impact, yet every story shines as a perfect example of what a short story should be. MacLean's stories convey the emotions of the characters, the longing and suffering, confusion and contemplation, with elegance and skill...more
The fifteen stories in Ron MacLean's superb collection examine life through a variety of prisms. In some stories, the constraints of the physical world are heightened or tweaked, while others evoke the altered reality associated with dreams. What remains consistent throughout these stories is MacLean's ability to create compelling and sympathetic characters. From the grief-stricken father and daughter in the moving "Aerialist" to the troubled couples in "South of Why," MacLea...more
I'm a bit wary of non-genre short story collections -- they're often full of self-absorbed postmodernism, stories that seem to have been written for their own sake rather than to entertain or enlighten. I was surprised, then, to discover how much I loved this collection. The stories are by turns funny, luminous, and even frightening. Thanks, Mr. MacLean, for surprising me.
Cynthia Reeser
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Review here: http://www.newpages.com/bookreviews/2009...
Armand
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A nicely written collection of short stories that delves deep into the psyches of lost souls. Good stuff.
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Ron’s fiction has appeared in GQ, Greensboro Review, Prism International, Night Train and other quarterlies. He is a recipient of the Frederick Exley Award for Short Fiction and a Pushcart Prize nominee. When he teaches, he does so at Grub Street, Boston’s independent writing center.
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