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A Plea for Constant Motion
Long-shorlisted, 2018 ReLit Award (Short Story Category)
Quietly atmospheric and darkly foreboding, A Plea for Constant Motion is an ominous, and occasionally unnerving, new work of fiction by award-winning author Paul Carlucci Penetrating and visceral, yet always offset by small moments of tenderness and humour, A Plea for Constant Motion is a powerful examination of the innate desire in everyone to change their lives and strive for something better. Two couples share a disastrous dinner after their children are killed in a botched kidnapping overseas. A teacher with a passion for cartography orchestrates a bizarre apology after intentionally hitting a student. Desperate to be friends, a man ignores his neighbour’s strange behaviour to the peril of himself and others. A young girl babysits for a family friend, dimly aware that her presence is required for more than just childcare. Dexterously divided into two parts and a surreal intermission, the characters in these stories find themselves confronted by situations that leave them either struggling to escape or firmly rooted in place. Paul Carlucci’s formidable work is by turns familiar and disquieting, sober and surreal, a stark and carefully crafted examination of the human condition.
Quietly atmospheric and darkly foreboding, A Plea for Constant Motion is an ominous, and occasionally unnerving, new work of fiction by award-winning author Paul Carlucci Penetrating and visceral, yet always offset by small moments of tenderness and humour, A Plea for Constant Motion is a powerful examination of the innate desire in everyone to change their lives and strive for something better. Two couples share a disastrous dinner after their children are killed in a botched kidnapping overseas. A teacher with a passion for cartography orchestrates a bizarre apology after intentionally hitting a student. Desperate to be friends, a man ignores his neighbour’s strange behaviour to the peril of himself and others. A young girl babysits for a family friend, dimly aware that her presence is required for more than just childcare. Dexterously divided into two parts and a surreal intermission, the characters in these stories find themselves confronted by situations that leave them either struggling to escape or firmly rooted in place. Paul Carlucci’s formidable work is by turns familiar and disquieting, sober and surreal, a stark and carefully crafted examination of the human condition.
304 pages, Paperback
Published January 2, 2018
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83 people want to read
About the author
Paul Carlucci
5 books14 followersPaul Carlucci is the author of one novel, The Voyageur, and three story collections, The High-Rise in Fort Fierce, A Plea for Constant Motion, and The Secret Life of Fission. He won the Danuta Gleed Literary Award and has been shortlisted for an Ottawa Book Award and two ReLit Awards. Individually, a little more than twenty of his stories have been published in print and online journals and magazines, including The New Quarterly, The Malahat Review, Grain, and Apocalypse Confidential.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
December 17, 2016
Full disclosure: I know the writer, Paul Carlucci, and I like him.
But holy crow, I had no idea what bizarre forms of evil lurked in his imagination! He told me his stories were dark, but that was the understatement of the year. These stories explore the limits of human depravity. They are well-crafted, brutally intense and psychologically horrifying. Some of them will stay with me for the rest of my life, feeding my own lurid imagination and making me sick. I will never look at people the same way again. I've lost my innocence.
(P.S. This was an advance copy of the book. It'll be released in January. You can pre-order it at Amazon.ca. I recommend it to anyone who thinks they can handle it.)
But holy crow, I had no idea what bizarre forms of evil lurked in his imagination! He told me his stories were dark, but that was the understatement of the year. These stories explore the limits of human depravity. They are well-crafted, brutally intense and psychologically horrifying. Some of them will stay with me for the rest of my life, feeding my own lurid imagination and making me sick. I will never look at people the same way again. I've lost my innocence.
(P.S. This was an advance copy of the book. It'll be released in January. You can pre-order it at Amazon.ca. I recommend it to anyone who thinks they can handle it.)
May 6, 2017
There are a couple of gems in this one woven around some recurring themes. In Even Still we have the tale that is oh-so British Columbia, right down to the retired RCMP officer's finger tips bunched up into a fist and picking up the coastal elite effete to smash him into the wall of the 100 Mile House house deep beyond the divide between civilized BC and barbaric resource raping BC, or so some would like us to believe. In other stories there is the haunting notion of childhood trauma in various forms coming back to influence the adults years later, sometimes manifesting itself in acts of revenge against others to extinguish shame at having been caught in sin. There are even the various animals that play strong secondary roles. The flow and linkages between the stories are also noteworthy: migrations from Canada to Africa, coffins are either lived in or carved by those who stare at us, and booze comes back in many different forms, among other interesting linkages. And then there are the practical tips: how to score a botany lesson in Lusaka, a helpful user guide on how to key someone, or a way to judge if your money given to a charitable overseas organization, whether small or big, will be used appropriately (hint: it won't). A final comment on the handling of foreign adventures. It is often tempting for a Western tourist, or tourist-turned-author, when in a third world country to act as the awestruck visitor marveling at the primitive nature of the societies being visited and to use anthropological observations as a plot replacement tool. By and large the author sometimes skirts close to that line but thankfully does not cross it. Overall a very enjoyable collection of stories.
May 25, 2017
Read the entire review here http://bit.ly/2rD3Bdf
Turning to the About the Author page at the back of Paul Carlucci’s A Plea for Constant Motion, I was surprised to find a young man looking out at me in black and white. Carlucci’s prose reads with a thickness of symbolism and confidence normally reserved for those men who have been writing for thirty-plus years.
Another fun fact delivered by the Author page is that Carlucci describes himself as a “recovering transient” who’s spent over a decade wandering the globe. So it comes as no shock to find within the pages proper of A Plea for Constant Motion a diverse and shifting set of locations for Carlucci’s stories fitting together like a jigsaw puzzle.
Like a stage play, the book is divided into two acts and an intermission. The first act covers a number of depressing stories across the landscape of Canada (including one set in my own city of Hamilton). The intermission is a bizarre story hiding in the forests of British Columbia. Act II is generally set against the golden backdrop of Africa. The book never stays in the same place for more than thirty or so pages before shifting to a new place again. This constant motion speaks to the title and likely to Carlucci’s life as a transient.
Turning to the About the Author page at the back of Paul Carlucci’s A Plea for Constant Motion, I was surprised to find a young man looking out at me in black and white. Carlucci’s prose reads with a thickness of symbolism and confidence normally reserved for those men who have been writing for thirty-plus years.
Another fun fact delivered by the Author page is that Carlucci describes himself as a “recovering transient” who’s spent over a decade wandering the globe. So it comes as no shock to find within the pages proper of A Plea for Constant Motion a diverse and shifting set of locations for Carlucci’s stories fitting together like a jigsaw puzzle.
Like a stage play, the book is divided into two acts and an intermission. The first act covers a number of depressing stories across the landscape of Canada (including one set in my own city of Hamilton). The intermission is a bizarre story hiding in the forests of British Columbia. Act II is generally set against the golden backdrop of Africa. The book never stays in the same place for more than thirty or so pages before shifting to a new place again. This constant motion speaks to the title and likely to Carlucci’s life as a transient.
June 9, 2024
This collection of stories quite possibly includes the saddest, most broken cast of characters I've read in a long time. The first half of the collection include stories loosely tied together, as some characters and situations recur in each story. An 'intermission' introduces a dark (yes, even after the first half, it got darker...) story that seemed dystopian and apocalyptic. The second half focuses on mostly on foreigners in Nambia. In fact, while reading, I kept thinking the country itself was a character as well.
The commonality between these three parts can be found in the title. I'm not certain it's the people Carlucci writes about that require constant motion, or if it's the world that does not stop moving, but there is never a sense of stillness or peace. There is, however, hopelessness, and this made me sad. I kept waiting for one - just one - happy ending, but Carlucci didn't deliver. What he did deliver was a haunting look at loss, and the truth that sometimes life doesn't always turn out the way we wish.
The commonality between these three parts can be found in the title. I'm not certain it's the people Carlucci writes about that require constant motion, or if it's the world that does not stop moving, but there is never a sense of stillness or peace. There is, however, hopelessness, and this made me sad. I kept waiting for one - just one - happy ending, but Carlucci didn't deliver. What he did deliver was a haunting look at loss, and the truth that sometimes life doesn't always turn out the way we wish.
January 25, 2025
I think that this book was very good, and the problem for me was simply that it and I were not compatible. I enjoyed the writing and the characters, the variation between stories was good but with a loose sense of them being tied together but not dependent. A few of the stories were standouts to me and I found myself invested, whereas others I would realize I wasn’t quite sure what was going on but would just plow through and get to the next story rather than go back and catch up. The stories were not, like, super uplifting, which is again not a problem with the book but I think not compatible with me reading it, I prefer more variation there. And also I read it straight through so I could return it to the library but I think this book would have benefitted from a longer reading period and moving back and forth between other books. So I think this is likely a 4 or 5 star book for some readers and for me it still was worth my read but not a big winner. It just didn’t keep me in it.
December 16, 2019
Dark, disturbing and beautifully written.
July 6, 2025
I don't remember this book at all, not a great sign.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews