I received this book for free through Goodreads First Reads. Just started it, and while I'm not usually one for short stories, this author seems to hit hard and brief, cramming all kinds of strong and scary emotional trauma and impact into a few meagre pages.

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Continuing and appreciating it. The author's writing style is terse, but not at all removed; instead it sucks you in with a big dose of manly feeling as he tells you the brief, mired, and often violent moments of rednecks, incestuous rapists, damaged war veterans, poor people, dumb people, hopeless people, cows, or a mixture of all of the above, in the wooded boonies of some water-rich countryside. It's a summary that doesn't sound terribly appealing, and if executed by the average writer, would probably descend into some hack parody of every miserable rural stereotype imaginable. But this author knows what he's doing. I find myself paying attention to these messed up little stories and thinking that legitimate bursts of human experience are popping and bursting at me in sordid squirts.

My only complaint is that this collection so far does not seem to contain any happiness and good experience. Perhaps it's best that this book is as slim as it is, because even the best written stuff gets tiring after awhile if it never lightens up.