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A Waste of Shame and Other Sad Tales of the Appalachian Foothills
by
Fiction. As the Russian great Anton Chekov infamously noted, when a loaded rifle appears on page one, it absolutely must go off. In A WASTE OF SHAME Geoffrey Smagacz does not ignore this dramatic principle. Before the last page is turned, someone sadly pulls the trigger. Smagacz debuts a short novel and an accompanying collection of short stories written in a vein that car
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Paperback, 192 pages
Published
December 15th 2013
by Wiseblood Books
(first published September 25th 2013)
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Community Reviews
Showing 1-53
I LOVED this book.
A Waste of Shame perfectly describes how mind blowingly numbing rural life can be. I know, I've lived there. You could spend your whole life looking for something exciting or even a literate conversation.
The stories after the first one became so beautifully, lucidly, imaginatively real they were breathtaking. and the prose, oh the prose
Highly recommended
A Waste of Shame perfectly describes how mind blowingly numbing rural life can be. I know, I've lived there. You could spend your whole life looking for something exciting or even a literate conversation.
The stories after the first one became so beautifully, lucidly, imaginatively real they were breathtaking. and the prose, oh the prose
Highly recommended
With simple, elegant language -- language pared down to only the right word -- the novel A Waste of Shame draws the reader into the stark world of going nowhere. We meet a post-high school group of friends trapped in the small town they grew up in. The drama begins in the very first paragraph and holds on to the very last word. There is a sense that life has already happened for the characters in this novel. It doesn't get any better; it doesn't get any worse. Everyone is trapped. Kevin, the nar
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3.5 stars really. I enjoyed reading it; felt like I was reading the beginning of a good novelists career. Maybe woulda been 4 stars but it did feel a little too much like short stories strung together, and it had a short story ending. But I'll read whatever he writes next.
The story was ok. Interesting to have a novel with short stories included. I won this book through goodreads.
Jul 11, 2016
Karen Carroll
added it
Probably one of the worst books I've ever read. In addition, like many B movies, it gives readers a very negative opinion of a particular group of people as a whole.
In the interest of full disclosure - I won a free copy of this book through a Goodreads giveaway.
The novel/novella after which the book takes its title makes up the bulk of the work. It is a tale of a circle of young people, trapped in a small town, seemingly doomed to live and relive sad episodes that largely focus on who is sleeping with whom and on the threads upon which friends and family relationships are built and broken. I can't say that I found it very appealing. The author is able to c ...more
The novel/novella after which the book takes its title makes up the bulk of the work. It is a tale of a circle of young people, trapped in a small town, seemingly doomed to live and relive sad episodes that largely focus on who is sleeping with whom and on the threads upon which friends and family relationships are built and broken. I can't say that I found it very appealing. The author is able to c ...more
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