Aliens in the Prime of Their Lives: Stories

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Aliens in the Prime of Their Lives: Stories

3.94 of 5 stars 3.94 · rating details · 197 ratings · 46 reviews

Dark and brilliant tales capturing the strangeness of human (and almost-human) life.

In this, his first collection of stories since his celebrated, award-winning Last Days of the Dog-Men, Brad Watson takes us even deeper into the riotous, appalling, and mournful oddity of human beings.

In prose so perfectly pitched as to suggest some celestial harmony, he writes about ever...more

Hardcover, 268 pages

Published March 22nd 2010 by W. W. Norton & Company (first published 2010)

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May 15, 2013 Jenny Shank rated it 4 of 5 stars

Brad Watson’s “Aliens” Serves Up Despair, with a Side of Humor
Aliens in the Prime of Their Lives
by Brad Watson
W.W. Norton and Company, 268 pages, $23.95

In Brad Watson’s new story collection, Aliens in the Prime of Their Lives, most of the families crumble, some almost as quickly as they form. Watson grew up in Mississippi, has taught creative writing at the University of Wyoming since 2005, and sets most of his stories in the American South. Although family disintegration is a common subject for...more Brad Watson’s “Aliens” Serves Up Despair, with a Side of Humor
Aliens in the Prime of Their Lives
by Brad Watson
W.W. Norton and Company, 268 pages, $23.95

In Brad Watson’s new story collection, Aliens in the Prime of Their Lives, most of the families crumble, some almost as quickly as they form. Watson grew up in Mississippi, has taught creative writing at the University of Wyoming since 2005, and sets most of his stories in the American South. Although family disintegration is a common subject for short fiction, Watson’s stories are full of surprises, often involving a note of the uncanny, such as a disturbing fortune teller who might be a gypsy, and a mysterious couple who could be escapees from a mental institution, or, as they claim in the absorbing title story, aliens from another planet.

In several stories, women have a craving to eat dirt—the practice called geophagy, once common in Mississippi among poor white and black women—that in Watson’s stories gives the women an otherworldly quality, as though they have one foot among the living and one among the dead.

In Watson’s stories, the children are often mentally sturdier than the adults who are supposed to take care of them. “Vacuum” is told from the perspectives of three young brothers whose father has run off with a maid, and whose mother is suffering from depression. When the boys’ mother doesn’t feel like cooking or cleaning, they go looking for help, first from the family’s former maid and caretaker, then from a dissolute, retired doctor who lives nearby. In “Visitation,” which originally appeared in The New Yorker, a “despair”-suffering dad named Loomis is separated from his wife and son, who have moved to Southern California (from where isn’t stated). Every three weeks, Loomis flies out to visit his son, staying with him in a dreary hotel, “a bleak place in which to do one’s part in raising a child.” More often than not, it’s the boy that plays the role of shoring up his dad’s spirits. As a character in “Water Dog God,” a disturbing story of incest and mental illness, says, “Well, the world ain’t no place for a child these days.”

Even the dogs can be psychologically more healthful than their caretakers in Watson’s stories, which is especially true in the story “Terrible Argument,” about a couple who “drank heavily and often had terrible arguments late in the evening.” One fight escalates until the man shoots himself in his foot, and at the end of the story the perspective switches quite convincingly to that of the couple’s poor, beleaguered dog, adopted by one family after another that presents him with “a new set of baffling circumstances.”

In a few cases, Watson’s characters never even get the chance to try to form a family or adopt a dog. In the intense “Fallen Nellie,” Watson imagines the quick, hard life of a woman whose body is discovered outside in a beach town, wearing only a swimsuit. The omniscient voice of the narrator is at once distant from Nellie and intimately familiar with her. “She was one of those people anywhere between thirty-two and fifty,” a description of Nellie begins, but then it zeroes in on her, pinning her as “a girl who would act on a dare,” abandoned by her parents and raised by a grandmother who “didn’t turn on her or give up when she started acting just like her mama had, going wild with boys, with booze, with pills, with weed, and generally trashy acting out.”

Nellie ends up a public beach “Hangout whore” who “grasped at others to decrease her speed, Biloxi gamblers, itinerant roofers, lonely old snowbirds, and finally mostly regular local trash, reaching for them as she sped past, and at this speed they had no faces, no names.” “Fallen Nellie” reads like the expanded biography of a murder victim you’d read about in a small article in the local paper, and it evokes great sympathy.

Despite the overwhelming atmosphere of despair, there are a few moments of humor in Aliens in the Prime of Their Lives. Something terrible has happened to the narrator of “The Misses Moses,” but we never find out what. He goes to interview for a room in a house owned by two old maiden sisters who prepare him homemade pimento cheese, their home decorated with “old, expensive rugs and drapes in some late stage of decrepitude, their worn, exhausted fibers a molecular stage above disintegration.” In “Are You Mr. Lonelee?” a widower rents out his house after his wife dies, unable to confront with her belongings and memory. But then he gets drunk one night and forgets that he has a renter, an armed, obese woman who has a comic confrontation with him when he intrudes.

Watson’s stories are sad ones, for the most part, so why would anyone want to read a book of sad stories? In this case, for the insights they offer, the beauty of their prose, and the unexpected places they take the reader along the way.

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Jan 30, 2011 Sherard H rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction

A Flash of Something Interesting

“Aliens in the Prime of Their Lives”
by Brad Watson
W. W. Norton & Company
New York, 2010

Short. Powerful. Enigmatic. These are words that could readily describe Brad Watson’s collection of short stories, Aliens in the Prime of Their Lives. Having previously published a finalist for the National Book Award, The Heaven of Mercury, and Sue Kaufman Award winning Last Days of the Dog-Men, there is no doubt that Watson is a heavyweight in short and flash-fiction. This...more A Flash of Something Interesting

“Aliens in the Prime of Their Lives”
by Brad Watson
W. W. Norton & Company
New York, 2010

Short. Powerful. Enigmatic. These are words that could readily describe Brad Watson’s collection of short stories, Aliens in the Prime of Their Lives. Having previously published a finalist for the National Book Award, The Heaven of Mercury, and Sue Kaufman Award winning Last Days of the Dog-Men, there is no doubt that Watson is a heavyweight in short and flash-fiction. This latest piece sees shorts such as “Fallen Nellie,” concerning a woman who’s corpse was found in the wilderness, “Carl’s Outside,” focusing on a father attempting to teach his son—a young boy growing up before his very eyes—how to ride a bicycle, and “Ordinary Monsters,” a collection of flash pieces including a couple in the midst of a plane crashing to zombies who find themselves perpetually sexually aroused. (Stiff. Get it?)

Watson tends to orbit certain themes in his stories, such as young boys with brothers, fathers in disconcerted marriages with emotionally distant sons, and lower class/absolute poverty generally anchored in the South. His stories are typically set in the past—typically decades in the past—and imply a sense of reflection from the narrator on the way things were “before.” Watson also does not shy away from human sexuality, including passages such as “I saw her little patch of frazzly hair and sex like a busted lip[…],” and “She took off her brassiere. My God. Her little breasts were beautiful: small, a little heavy on the bottom, sloping down then up to what looked to be a pair of hard, erect, hazelnut nipples,” (90, 201). Watson rarely fails to deliver abrupt, contemplative endings to his stories, leaving the reader attached to the realistic and sometimes surreal worlds he has created in merely a few pages.

“Noon” was especially stunning, in both its topic and its symbolism. “Are You Mr. Lonelee?” and “The Misses Moses” were also well crafted. One thing that I have noticed, however, is that while Watson will write about both sexes in third person limited, the stories that contain a first person narrator are all from a male perspective. I think that this may be a fear or a habit that Watson will have to overcome, because while some stories such as “Noon” were good, they could have been made more powerful by use of first person. And while there were queues to the settings that some of the stories were set in, I think that they could have been made stronger in imagery by providing more concrete information about the places and eras that they were set in. Overall, however, it is clear to see how Watson became the recipient of several awards, based on his writings in Aliens in the Prime of Their Lives. While no awards have been mentioned yet, I would consider placing this novel on a watch list for one in the next year or two.

As a side note, I thought it was a little unusual that Watson had the publisher print “PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA” on a visible part of the back flap, even when the book is closed. Why have something like that written there? What is he trying to imply? Also, the word “penumbra” appears in two different stories. It’s an unusual word, so it’s hard not to notice.(less)

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Jun 01, 2012 Melki rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: short-stories

I loved Brad Watson's previous book of short stories, Last Days of the Dog-Men: Stories. The stories in this book don't quite measure up to the ones in that book; some of them seem almost experimental in nature. Divorce and men trying to reconnect with their estranged sons during limited visitation hours are popular themes. There're also a few about men trying to understand women. (Hell, I am one, and I don't understand them!)

Watson really seems to shine when he's writing about children. The fir...more I loved Brad Watson's previous book of short stories, Last Days of the Dog-Men: Stories. The stories in this book don't quite measure up to the ones in that book; some of them seem almost experimental in nature. Divorce and men trying to reconnect with their estranged sons during limited visitation hours are popular themes. There're also a few about men trying to understand women. (Hell, I am one, and I don't understand them!)

Watson really seems to shine when he's writing about children. The first story in the book, Vacuum, is wonderful. Three young boys, concerned about their mother's depression, seek help from a retired doctor in their neighborhood.

He opened the door on up and stood there in it, wearing an old cracked pair of leather slippers on his white feet, a stinking-looking pair of pajama bottoms, and a tartan robe that had no belt. He fished a nonfilter Camel from a package in the breast pocket of the robe and lit it with a match from a book of matches and blew a cloud of smoke out over their heads where they stood in the carport looking up at him. The boys were astonished at the amount of gray-and-white-speckled hair on his stomach and chest. It was like he was wearing squirrel pelts there or something. It was hard not to stare. The middle brother looked past Dr. Hornegay into the den. He was hoping for a sight of Dr. Hornegay's wife, whom no one had seen in years because, word was, Dr. Hornegay's wife was ridden down by sadness and an extra one hundred and fifty pounds and no longer came up out of their basement. The only thing the middle brother could see in the den was a stretched-out La-Z-Boy on the headrest of which lay a scrawny yellow cat, looking right back at him. It gave him the creeps.

Later, the kids attempt to discover how a cowboy can jump off a roof onto a horse without hurting his nuts. I never thought about it before myself, but you just know I can't stop thinking about it now.
I loved these boys and would happily devour an entire novel devoted to them.

The other really standout story, Alamo Plaza, features a man reminiscing about a long ago family vacation, the highlight of which was a freak accident in which a man lost a toe in the motel swimming pool.

It was fantastic. It made the whole trip.

Watson remembers; to a kid, seeing a severed toe can easily be the most memorable part of an outing.(less)

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Dec 23, 2011 Jason rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction, short_stories

I read about three-quarters of the stories in this collection over the past year and as I don't plan to finish it, decided I would write a review now.

The stories in the collection could most easily be characterized as modern southern gothic. Their subjects are deeply dysfunctional families in deeply dysfunctional situations and often in deep pain. I started it a year ago and some of them are quite memorable. My back almost hurts thinking back to the boy who jumped off his roof onto a rocking hor...more

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Dec 20, 2010 Brian rated it 3 of 5 stars

This collection reminds me of Raymond Carver in some places, but mostly it recalls a host of great southern writers. Watson, however, never takes the expected turn or sticks to conventional wisdom. No piece better exemplifies this than the title novella. It’s probably the most Lynchian of the stories within the collection, and it might be my favorite. Every time I felt as though I was comfortable within the story, Watson shifts gears and pushes me in another direction.

Watson doesn't go to such e...more

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Aug 28, 2011 Anne Broyles rated it 3 of 5 stars

This is one of the best titles in a long time, and these short stories are each memorable. I wouldn't want to meet any of the characters, or live their often-bleak lives, but I love Watson's use of language. Here's an example:

"She was prone these days to wake in the middle of the night as if someone had called to her while she'd slept. A kind of fear held her heart with an intimate and gentle suppression, a strange hand inside her chest. She was terrified. Soft and narrow strips of light slipped...more

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Sep 09, 2011 Blake Fraina rated it 3 of 5 stars

"[T]he inexplicable everyday, the oddness of being, the senseless belonging to this and not that." This line, from the story "Alamo Plaza," seems to sum up the outlook of the disaffected characters in Brad Watson’s Aliens in the Prime of Their Lives.

I picked this book up thinking it would be similar to the quirky hipster tales of Kelly Link, Karen Russell or Aimee Bender, so I was surprised to find a collection that shared more in common with the subtle, disquieting stories of Raymond Carver. Th...more "[T]he inexplicable everyday, the oddness of being, the senseless belonging to this and not that." This line, from the story "Alamo Plaza," seems to sum up the outlook of the disaffected characters in Brad Watson’s Aliens in the Prime of Their Lives.

I picked this book up thinking it would be similar to the quirky hipster tales of Kelly Link, Karen Russell or Aimee Bender, so I was surprised to find a collection that shared more in common with the subtle, disquieting stories of Raymond Carver. That being said, I suspect I'm one of the few people out there who doesn't really "get" Carver, so perhaps the comparison shouldn't be viewed as great praise coming from me.

Watson’s prose is spare and perfectly distilled to create a vague, low grade tension throughout each piece. There often seems to be something lurking just outside the margins, something unspoken and potentially appalling. Something that exists always just beyond the reader’s peripheral vision. My favorite piece, "Terrible Argument," about the rapid disintegration of a marriage after one strange and violent episode, is told from the point of view of the couple’s bewildered and melancholy dog. Another, "Fallen Nellie," relates the unfortunate history of the corpse of a young woman lying about ten feet from a hiking trail. The author focuses his lens on the minutiae of his character’s lives, while the larger, and ostensibly more important issues, like racism, adultery, divorce, domestic violence, rape, incest, murder, serve as a backdrop or a by-product, kind of blurry and slightly surreal. This makes the experience of reading the stories more like scientific observation, as opposed to emotional engagement. I suspect this is the author’s intent.

But it’s not all doom and gloom. Watson still manages to insert scattered moments of dry, offbeat humor. Particularly in "The Misses Moses," in which a would be renter is doted upon by two spinster sisters or the opener, "Vacuum," wherein all hell breaks loose when a depressed mother of three nearly falls for the charms of an opportunistic neighbor. Ultimately though, both tales end on a poignant note.

I tend to shy away from contemporary short fiction, finding it more difficult to connect with than novel-length works. However, I approached Watson’s work with an open mind and was rewarded with a collection that was both atmospheric and thought provoking.
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Jan 28, 2011 Amanda rated it 5 of 5 stars

I would place Brad Watson's collection of short stories under the title of speculative fiction. While many of the stories happen in our known world, they frequently take on mystical qualities--not quite magical realism, but something new, fascinated with the sort of mythology humans have created for themselves of aliens and dreams. The title story uses aliens to represent the "what ifs" of life and is utterly heartbreaking. Watson uses many different techniques and achieves giving each story it...more

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Jun 23, 2011 Sara Habein rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: own

Brad Watson's collection of short stories ache with confusion and loneliness, and the result is akin to a lucid dream. Each of his stories recall the recent past, a pre-internet stillness that amplifies his characters' disconnect. While I enjoyed this collection, I finished with some uncertainty over what I'd just read. Not every story stuck with me, but the ones that did have made me curious to seek out Watson's other work.

(My full review can be found on Glorified Love Letters.)

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Jan 20, 2013 Lynda rated it 4 of 5 stars

My new favorite genre may be the short story. I have read several great collections over the last year. Watson's collection did not disappoint, although I felt some were better than others and a couple just didn't seem complete. Many left you wanting more, which is what a good short story should do. Watson has the ability to describe a scene with simple, concise prose. His characters and settings are all Southern to the core.

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Aug 08, 2010 Renee rated it 5 of 5 stars

A sample of stories with such well developed characters, I felt as though I could see through them, around them and right into their lives. Every story rang true. This is a collection of haunting stories that delves in the lives of ordinary people stricken by loneliness, longing and the lure of a better world. I look forward to reading more of Brad Watson.

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Mar 28, 2010 Patricia Geller rated it 5 of 5 stars

One scene of the Mom screaming about how hard she works as she vacumms in front of her 3 boys watching a loud tv, had me in stitches. They can't hear her distress but react by first trying to woo back their old maid with dirt, because she likes dirt, and then consults the local doctor. Brad Watson is so psychologically astute and great writer. Been both that mom and one of those kids.

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Jul 19, 2012 Carolyn rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: southern, short-story, fiction

Watson's stories are sometimes so acutely gripping - like Water Dog God - strange and otherworldly, though in the details so very this world: relationships and conversations so exact, and the mise en seine evocative.
Curiously, the Twilight Zone title story didn't really work for me, but every other one in the collection was perfect.

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Sep 11, 2010 Lawrence rated it 4 of 5 stars

I first read one of the story, Vacuum, in a recent issue of Granta. Liked the story and was eager to read the collection when it was eventually published. Vacuum, by turns funny, sad, bittersweet, is a highlight of the collection. So much is all too familiar in the story of the brothers: their mom is tired, overwhelmed by her life; they sense something is wrong, and try in their naive and immature way to make thing "alright" again. The image of them sitting on the couch, watching cartoons while...more

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Oct 19, 2011 Katie rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

It's really so good. The last novella/long story in the collection is so brilliant, and I liked all the other stories too, for their elements of: pimento cheese, spinsters, southern drunkenness, loneliness, sex, love, sadness, fried chicken, swearing. The things I always like to read about.

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Aug 06, 2011 Laura rated it 4 of 5 stars

This is a wonderful book of sometimes strange and always poignant short stories.

I live on the Gulf Coast, and it was a nice surprise to see some of the areas I'm familiar with included in some of them.

I read this book on a recommendation and I'm glad I did. These are the type of stories of real people and mostly real situations that make me feel I could write like this, too.

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Sep 06, 2011 Caroline rated it 4 of 5 stars

Excellent short stories! Imaginative, haunting and unmistakenablly heartbreaking. My favorites are water dog god, noon, and aliens in the prime of their lives (last one being the best I've read in a long time.)

Deft, interesting writing similar to Raymond Carver.

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Oct 02, 2012 Tom rated it 5 of 5 stars

Story by story, I savored every page. I started it after hearing Brad Watson read The Misses Moses. Edgy, quirky, dark, deeply Southern and contemporary at the same time. Suggested accompaniment- the finest bourbon you can afford.

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May 08, 2010 Alyson Hagy rated it 5 of 5 stars

I've known Brad Watson for a while, so I'm not likely to be neutral on the topic of this book. My favorite stories: "Vacuum," "Visitation," "Water God Dog," and "Aliens in the Prime of Their Lives." Yet it is a bit foolish to think of one story above another in this finely-tuned collection. Each piece should be savored for its humor, its dark shadows, the big-hearted failures of its characters. And they should be read as the faces in a large family are read--with care. LAST DAYS OF THE DOG-MEN i...more

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May 20, 2013 Christine rated it 5 of 5 stars

This brilliant, darkly comic, sometimes sad, always imaginative and inventive story collection is unlike any I've ever read. Watson is a humanist of the first order, and also a truly original fiction writer.

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Jul 27, 2011 Rudy rated it 5 of 5 stars

Odd, beguiling set of short stories that I will not soon forget.

I had a portion of my novel critiqued by this writer who is a professor at the University of Wyoming.

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Mar 03, 2012 Kristen Gunther rated it 5 of 5 stars

The last piece in this collection leaves me gobsmacked, every time. And I just love "Terrible Argument" so very much. And "Fallen Nellie." Oh gosh, this book.

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Jan 28, 2011 Daryl rated it 4 of 5 stars

Imaginative, disturbing glimpses of what might lie behind the the thin veil of consensual reality that we seldom question. Yet look not too long nor too deeply, lest you fall in.

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Jan 12, 2011 Brenda Nguyen rated it 3 of 5 stars

Interesting people in interesting positions, but I didn't feel connected to any of them. Aliens have a hard time connecting with other aliens, after all. . .

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Feb 21, 2010 John rated it 4 of 5 stars

a cross between raymond carver, richard ford and david lynch. each story takes a wonderfully unexpected, usually inspired weird/odd/brilliant turn. deft, moving characterizations. watson's is a world of great compassion amidst (comical) violence, where the boundaries between human, animal and otherworldly are blurred. a very unique american voice. thoroughly enjoyed.

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Apr 03, 2010 Steven Pattison rated it 3 of 5 stars

A solid collection of offbeat melodrama (the good kind) type of stories about families, relationships, lovers and childhood. These stories remind me a little of stuff by Annie Proulx or the Tobias Wolff's story collection book "Back in the world".

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Apr 20, 2010 Robin Cabot rated it 3 of 5 stars

Torn over what to rate this book. A couple of the stories, especially the title novella, deserve fours. Hope you friends enjoy!

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Nov 15, 2010 Kristopher Kelly rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: favorites

Okay, disclaimer: I had Brad Watson as a creative writing professor for several years back in my undergraduate days. With that in mind, this collection of short stories was a really emotional ride for me. A lot of the stories focus on the disintegration of relationships, and as a guy with a divorce only three years in his past, the details in these stories and the amount of incredible poetry and sadness Watson brings to his material really hit home. There's maybe one or two stories in here that...more

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Jun 03, 2010 Darlin' Neal rated it 5 of 5 stars

This collection is full of gorgeous prose and I love what he does with form. Lots of great characters. Read it.

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Jan 14, 2012 David rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction

I saw Brad Watson read from this collection at the PEN/Faulkner awards. Too bad it didn't win that or any other award. Fantastic stories, fantastic writing. Highly recommended.

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About Brad Watson

Brad Watson teaches creative writing at the University of Wyoming, Laramie. His first collection, Last Days of the Dog-Men, won the Sue Kauffman Award for First Fiction from the American Academy of Arts & Letters; his first novel, The Heaven of Mercury, was a finalist for the National Book Award. His new short story collection, Aliens in the Prime of their Lives, will be published by Norton &...more

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