Book Review of BROTHERS: Insightful stories with gritty, existential empathy

“Nothing matters anymore. Nothing.” So begins one story at the heart of Mitchell Waldman’s outstanding new short story collection, Brothers, Fathers, and Other Strangers. Fortunately, everything matters in Waldman’s book of stories featuring boys and men who might optimistically be described as “having a tough time.” Waldman has crafted a collection in which each story shines like a beacon on a string of interconnected lights. At a deep level, every moment in these matters a great deal. Every scene, every action, every conversation carries the weight of the world—most of all, every character.

The men in these heartfelt stories experience a kind of sandpaper empathy for the people and events around them. At best, they have a rough understanding of why they are who they are. These men struggle, sometimes miserably, sometimes humorously—often both. Waldman’s greatest skill is that he transfers his characters’ gritty empathy to his readers, letting us care for these men as their lives swirl around them.

These stories lend themselves well to comparisons with some of the greats of modern short story writing. Two clear progenitors would be Raymond Carver for existentialism and Charles Bukowski for emotional tone. Among contemporary short story masters, Michael Keith’s sad-boy mortality and Robert Scotellaro’s craggy disquiet make great companion writers for Waldman’s universe of complicated and unsettled characters.

While men’s experiences are central in the book, women aren’t absent. Appropriately, the women who appear in these stories are equally troubled by life. They aren’t relegated to stereotypes such as mother-substitutes or objects of desire. Most important, the men’s problems aren’t contrived to be the fault of women, as too much male-focused American literature has done at its worst. The insight that men are, for better or worse, the shapers of our own fate is another notable strength of this excellent collection of connected stories. --John Sheirer, author of Stumbling Through Adulthood