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Transitory
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In the stories in Transitory, unearthly figures appear on a city street, a man seeks forgiveness for a decades-old crime, a filmmaker's closest friendships are tested by his obsessions, the crew of a vessel in the North Atlantic witness unearthly visions in the sky, and students become fixated by a mysterious short film.
Paperback, 196 pages
Published
August 15th 2016
by Civil Coping Mechanisms
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Showing 1-47
I might be a bit favorably disposed towards this one, yes.
In Transitory, Tobias Carroll's stellar debut collection of stories from Civil Coping Mechanisms, art is the dark star around which its satellites of broken artists orbit. The men and women who make the weird films and stark soundtracks that populate Transitory are permitted some degree of detachment. Not so their audience of obsessives.
"Everything about it seemed truncated: there was a ghost of a note in the opening credits that seemed absent; the title itself—A Hoax Cantata—hovered a beat too ...more
"Everything about it seemed truncated: there was a ghost of a note in the opening credits that seemed absent; the title itself—A Hoax Cantata—hovered a beat too ...more
Feb 19, 2018
Jeff Jackson
added it
I thought I'd reviewed this ages ago. It's a wonderful collection. Here's what I wrote about it elsewhere: “The stories in Tobias Carroll’s Transitory sneak up on you. They wear their inventions lightly, casually exploring an impressive range of styles and effects. Filled with haunting mysteries, sly humor, and tender melancholy, these companionable tales promise to lodge themselves in your memory. You’ll want to revisit them again and again, right down to the liner notes.”
I'm completely biased because Tobias is a good friend whose debut short story collection I cannot objectively review. But I will say that it was a much enjoyed and long anticipated trip getting to read the stories that came out of my friend's head. I loved it all the more knowing Toby's affinity for good whisky, 90s indie and punk rock, dive bars, New Jersey, and taking the long way home. If you like those things, you will likely enjoy these tales too. I look forward to reading his next one.
The drinks flowed for the late-twenties and early-thirties someones who weren't certain of anything but uncertainty. Carroll constructs a sea of relationships hinged on damning quests for approval and the purgatory of doubt, both obvious for the reader but not for the characters. Transitory is tense when you step back from it, but if you dive in head first, its a flowing and poised voice for the modern confused, for distraught youth piloting their limbs to destinations unknown yet somehow invigo
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