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Life on Mars
A middle-aged sportswriter gets a new lease on life with a heart transplant and develops an intimate relationship with his donated heart. Two brothers find in their rotting family tree the tangled roots of a dark childhood memory. A young woman travels to Thailand to reconnect body and sould and returns home, physically transformed, to face the wrath of her estranged mother. A divorced man struggling to rediscover his place in the world hits the road from California to Newfoundland, guided by an irascible talking squid.
Life on Mars, Lori McNulty's wild debut collection, sears the heart with blinding black humour and whiplash fast prose. With a flawless talent for juxtaposing the absurd with the everyday, violence and discord with redemption and metamorphosis, McNulty takes readers on an unexpected ride into the core of human existence.
Blending aesthetic styles from high realism to the fable-esque, Life on Mars devours life's numbing tragedies and exhilarating passions with ravenous appetite. These are raw, moving, strange stories — an unforgettable reckoning for our disconnected times.
Life on Mars, Lori McNulty's wild debut collection, sears the heart with blinding black humour and whiplash fast prose. With a flawless talent for juxtaposing the absurd with the everyday, violence and discord with redemption and metamorphosis, McNulty takes readers on an unexpected ride into the core of human existence.
Blending aesthetic styles from high realism to the fable-esque, Life on Mars devours life's numbing tragedies and exhilarating passions with ravenous appetite. These are raw, moving, strange stories — an unforgettable reckoning for our disconnected times.
- GenresShort Stories
290 pages, Paperback
Published March 7, 2017
102 people want to read
About the author
Lori McNulty
1 book3 followersLori McNulty was born in Ottawa but has lived across Canada. Her work has appeared in the Fiddlehead, the New Quarterly, PRISM International, the Dalhousie Review, Descant, and the Globe and Mail as well as a number of anthologies. She has twice been nominated for the Journey Prize, making the shortlist in 2014 for her story "Monsoon Season." She has also been a finalist for the CBC Short Story Prize, the CBC Creative Nonfiction Prize, and the Edna Staebler Personal Essay Contest. A digital storyteller and global traveler, she now lives in Vancouver.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
May 26, 2017
McNulty is a stylist. She crafts one hell of a sentence and layers her images. When it works, it's brilliant. In some of these stories, I felt like she herself became lost in them and they drifted off a cliff. It's not just that the endings were untidy, it's that I was left confused as to what I was holding. But others moved me deeply.
Thematically, there wasn't a single thread tying these pieces together. I liked that. I think every story had some mention of Mars, usually offhanded. This came off as a device and didn't add anything. It was unnecessary.
The joy in this collection is the author's embrace of the absurdities of this world and parallel ones, her willingness to look through the eyes of tremendously diverse characters, and the wordplay. Here are a few passages that struck me either with their rhythm or their ability to observe uniquely (or both):
-There are men who move mountains. Men who conquer the world, soil clinging to their heels. Marcus was a broken bridge over a spent creek.
-Gus and Mom and he and Gus and Pinky and Joe and the sharp, bottomless world tuck a rusty hook in his mouth, hoisting him over the city twenty storeys. His swooning face a wrecking ball, Donny cracks a bloody fat-lipped grin, the momentum in him growing, knowing he'll never be able to avoid the crash.
-She's in her room right now rereading her favourite soppy romance novel about a lovestruck hog badger who stalks his own predators and shreds them ear to ear until the right female sow soothes his lonely heart.
-Fran's tone prompted Jess to straighten her spine
-She savoured small pleasures. Cooking herb-crusted halibut together. Head-clearing marathon runs through the park. I was itchy for a chance to uproot, something in me was always kicking at darkness, trying to shake something loose She grew frustrated by my inability to hold on to steady work. All my grand schemes to battle climate injustice were just talk.
-"Motherfucking diesel surveillance moon candy on the cocksucking beach!" ... There are words in his beard, life jolting in his eyes when you offer him your coat.
-What have you got for a hungry, pawing grief
-...he was flooded with dreams of bricklayers, of immigrants writhing up from the mouth of the Hudson to dig ditches, lay down tracks, the tenement tramps who had built the city with their bare hands
Thematically, there wasn't a single thread tying these pieces together. I liked that. I think every story had some mention of Mars, usually offhanded. This came off as a device and didn't add anything. It was unnecessary.
The joy in this collection is the author's embrace of the absurdities of this world and parallel ones, her willingness to look through the eyes of tremendously diverse characters, and the wordplay. Here are a few passages that struck me either with their rhythm or their ability to observe uniquely (or both):
-There are men who move mountains. Men who conquer the world, soil clinging to their heels. Marcus was a broken bridge over a spent creek.
-Gus and Mom and he and Gus and Pinky and Joe and the sharp, bottomless world tuck a rusty hook in his mouth, hoisting him over the city twenty storeys. His swooning face a wrecking ball, Donny cracks a bloody fat-lipped grin, the momentum in him growing, knowing he'll never be able to avoid the crash.
-She's in her room right now rereading her favourite soppy romance novel about a lovestruck hog badger who stalks his own predators and shreds them ear to ear until the right female sow soothes his lonely heart.
-Fran's tone prompted Jess to straighten her spine
-She savoured small pleasures. Cooking herb-crusted halibut together. Head-clearing marathon runs through the park. I was itchy for a chance to uproot, something in me was always kicking at darkness, trying to shake something loose She grew frustrated by my inability to hold on to steady work. All my grand schemes to battle climate injustice were just talk.
-"Motherfucking diesel surveillance moon candy on the cocksucking beach!" ... There are words in his beard, life jolting in his eyes when you offer him your coat.
-What have you got for a hungry, pawing grief
-...he was flooded with dreams of bricklayers, of immigrants writhing up from the mouth of the Hudson to dig ditches, lay down tracks, the tenement tramps who had built the city with their bare hands
April 26, 2017
A really interesting book that is dark and nuanced and complicated and hopeful - buy that is life and I'm sure the author's point. Life on Mars is full of stories about escaping from something and into something else. Sometimes people are escaping broken homes by pursuing estranged family, or broken relationships by chasing new ones, or escaping the anxiety of a doomed planet by saving one intelligent squid. The book will have a story for everybody. They may not be easy to read but they are well worth it.
July 22, 2017
This is a collection of short stories that have really nothing to do with life on Mars, at least if you expect that topic with little green men on a red planet. The only link with Mars is that somewhere in each story the word Mars is mentioned, if only fleetingly, and sometimes only in passing, for example someone lying down and looking at the sky and seeing Mars. There are no strange extraterrestrial creatures save at one point an eight-limbed entity and perhaps a partially sentient squid. These stories require investment of your time and energy to understand and appreciate, and oftentimes I had to circle back and re-read one or two to get it, sometimes feeling somewhat insufficiently intelligent to be reading this. The concepts are certainly very edgy at times, and some of the stories leave quite the mark such as the Thailand adventure. Unfortunately some others seem merely too self-engrossed with themselves to be either enlightening or entertaining, and after such an investment it is sometimes disappointing. It was this up and down quality of the stories that was my greatest concern. There are strikeouts and there are homeruns. Just remember the good ones, don't worry about the others and you'll be fine.
July 22, 2018
I’m never quite sure what to expect when I crack the cover on a book by a writer I haven’t experienced yet. So, I had no expectations when I launched into Lori McNulty’s short story collection “Life on Mars”. It was an eye-opener.
Right out of the gate it was apparent she writes with ferocity and pulls no punches. You will not fall asleep reading this story collection. The characters are sharp-edged, the dialogue is feisty and the stories explore controversial and unusual scenarios.
Honestly, I did not know what to make of some of the stories. One dealt with what can best be described as a female badger werewolf. Another story centers on a character who rescues a squid, keeps it in a tank in his house and develops a strong emotional attach to it. One story is titled “Polymarpussle Takes a Chance”.
I can’t say I enjoyed McNulty’s take on fiction. It was a bit too “out there” for my tastes. But she certainly carves out a unique niche for herself. She is the writer you can’t be equivocal about. If you like stories that burst through barriers, “Life on Mars” might be the ticket for you.
Right out of the gate it was apparent she writes with ferocity and pulls no punches. You will not fall asleep reading this story collection. The characters are sharp-edged, the dialogue is feisty and the stories explore controversial and unusual scenarios.
Honestly, I did not know what to make of some of the stories. One dealt with what can best be described as a female badger werewolf. Another story centers on a character who rescues a squid, keeps it in a tank in his house and develops a strong emotional attach to it. One story is titled “Polymarpussle Takes a Chance”.
I can’t say I enjoyed McNulty’s take on fiction. It was a bit too “out there” for my tastes. But she certainly carves out a unique niche for herself. She is the writer you can’t be equivocal about. If you like stories that burst through barriers, “Life on Mars” might be the ticket for you.
November 16, 2019
Occasional creative flourishes, but relentlessly pessimistic. Stories where nothing good ever happens aren’t actually realistic, and if you think they are you’re depressed.
At one point the lonely polio-stricken kid waiting on the sidelines of a football game reads a “legal thriller” and honestly, I was jealous.
At one point the lonely polio-stricken kid waiting on the sidelines of a football game reads a “legal thriller” and honestly, I was jealous.
March 12, 2017
Hopeful, passionate, desperate and raw, funny and illuminating. A book of short stories for those who will enjoy the process of savouring literary styles at the highest level. I am now incapable of escaping the characters that have burned their words and humanity into my consciousness.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews