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The Wonders of the Invisible World
The author of the highly acclaimed novels Jernigan (Pulitzer Prize Finalist) and Preston Falls (National Book Critics Cirlce Award Finalist) offers up a mordantly funny collection of short stories about the faulty bargains we make with ourselves to continure the high-wire act of living meaningful lives in late twentieth-century America.
Populated by highly educated men and women in combat with one another, with substance abuse, and above all with their own relentless self-awareness, the stories in The Wonders of the Invisible World take place in and around New York City, and put urbanism into uneasy conflict with a fleeting dream of rural happiness. Written with style and ferocious black humor, they confirm David Gates as one of the best-and funniest-writers of our time.
From the Trade Paperback edition.
Populated by highly educated men and women in combat with one another, with substance abuse, and above all with their own relentless self-awareness, the stories in The Wonders of the Invisible World take place in and around New York City, and put urbanism into uneasy conflict with a fleeting dream of rural happiness. Written with style and ferocious black humor, they confirm David Gates as one of the best-and funniest-writers of our time.
From the Trade Paperback edition.
257 pages, Paperback
First published June 15, 1999
15 people are currently reading
746 people want to read
About the author
David Gates
75 books79 followersDavid Gates (born January 8, 1947) is an American journalist and novelist. His first novel, Jernigan (1991), about a dysfunctional one-parent family, was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 1992 and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. This was followed by a second novel, Preston Falls (1998), and two short story collections, The Wonders of the Invisible World (1999) and A Hand Reached Down to Guide Me (2015). He has published short stories in The New Yorker, Tin House, Newsweek, The New York Times Book Review, Bookforum, Rolling Stone, H.O.W, The Oxford American, The Journal of Country Music, Esquire magazine, Ploughshares, GQ, Grand Street, TriQuarterly, and The Paris Review. Gates is also a Guggenheim Fellow.
Until 2008, he was a senior writer and editor in the Arts section at Newsweek magazine, specializing in articles on books and music.
He teaches in the graduate writing program at The University of Montana as well as at the Bennington Writing Seminars. Here he is a member of the Dog House Band, performing on the guitar, pedal steel, and vocals.
Until 2008, he was a senior writer and editor in the Arts section at Newsweek magazine, specializing in articles on books and music.
He teaches in the graduate writing program at The University of Montana as well as at the Bennington Writing Seminars. Here he is a member of the Dog House Band, performing on the guitar, pedal steel, and vocals.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 32 reviews
September 20, 2021
I knew David Gates (slightly) long, long ago when we both lived in Virginia. I had the impression that he was a musician, not a writer, and was a little surprised recently to discover that he's now the author of multiple works of fiction.
Well, music plays a minor part in several of these stories, so maybe I was right about that point. It provides subtle details and background about a character, like the first lines of the title story in this collection:
"When the subway door's about to close, you hear these two tones, like the phoebe's call: three one. I tried to find it once on the clarinet, out of curiosity, and all it is, it's just a third. D down to B-flat."
These ten stories are very thoughtfully composed, and also very modernist in the sense that each presents the outlook of a person who is alienated to some extent from normal sources of support. And who makes little progress in dealing with that alienation.
In the first story, a newly pregnant wife tries to hide from her short-tempered husband the fact that, in a weak moment, she drank a significant amount from their stash of brandy.
In another story, an elderly man joins his ex-wife (who apparently had cheated on him in times long past) and his furious son-in-law at a hospital where they come to terms with the implications of his daughter's traffic accident having occurred as she was exiting a local motel.
I particularly admired the way some of these stories are put together. On the other hand, the characters are not very likeable. Oh, they're clever; their conversations sparkle with bon mots. But in most cases their problems are their own fault—the consequence of piss-poor judgment and worse self-control. In some stories their problems are highlighted by the arrival of guests, nominally coming to admire an impressive "classic Connecticut" home or bucolic country getaway but instead calling attention to things that obviously are not clicking. Sometimes the guests too can be more than a little off-kilter.
So what is the author saying here? Is this his portrait of modern life? If so, why is every scenario depicted so different from the life I know? Sure, we all have problems, even if we avoid infidelity, addiction, etc. To keep with the musical motif, nobody gets out of here without singing the blues. But regardless of the craftsmanship of one's writing, it's not enough to show someone being sad. That's just a brand of self-indulgence, for which I've dinged other books before this one.
I guess if David Gates wanted to write about this, he needed to provide more clues to to the reasons his people are so screwed up. He does that for Faye in "The Crazy Thought" (my favorite), but I missed an explanation for her husband's behavior, and for pretty much everyone else's.
The book's epigraph is that bit of scripture in which Jesus exorcizes the unclean spirits, which call themselves Legion. I could accept the idea that these characters are beset by unclean spirits. However, nobody's driving them out. Having arrived at this perspective, maybe I should re-read the last story, which is about a stroke victim who has found religion.
Well, music plays a minor part in several of these stories, so maybe I was right about that point. It provides subtle details and background about a character, like the first lines of the title story in this collection:
"When the subway door's about to close, you hear these two tones, like the phoebe's call: three one. I tried to find it once on the clarinet, out of curiosity, and all it is, it's just a third. D down to B-flat."
These ten stories are very thoughtfully composed, and also very modernist in the sense that each presents the outlook of a person who is alienated to some extent from normal sources of support. And who makes little progress in dealing with that alienation.
In the first story, a newly pregnant wife tries to hide from her short-tempered husband the fact that, in a weak moment, she drank a significant amount from their stash of brandy.
In another story, an elderly man joins his ex-wife (who apparently had cheated on him in times long past) and his furious son-in-law at a hospital where they come to terms with the implications of his daughter's traffic accident having occurred as she was exiting a local motel.
I particularly admired the way some of these stories are put together. On the other hand, the characters are not very likeable. Oh, they're clever; their conversations sparkle with bon mots. But in most cases their problems are their own fault—the consequence of piss-poor judgment and worse self-control. In some stories their problems are highlighted by the arrival of guests, nominally coming to admire an impressive "classic Connecticut" home or bucolic country getaway but instead calling attention to things that obviously are not clicking. Sometimes the guests too can be more than a little off-kilter.
So what is the author saying here? Is this his portrait of modern life? If so, why is every scenario depicted so different from the life I know? Sure, we all have problems, even if we avoid infidelity, addiction, etc. To keep with the musical motif, nobody gets out of here without singing the blues. But regardless of the craftsmanship of one's writing, it's not enough to show someone being sad. That's just a brand of self-indulgence, for which I've dinged other books before this one.
I guess if David Gates wanted to write about this, he needed to provide more clues to to the reasons his people are so screwed up. He does that for Faye in "The Crazy Thought" (my favorite), but I missed an explanation for her husband's behavior, and for pretty much everyone else's.
The book's epigraph is that bit of scripture in which Jesus exorcizes the unclean spirits, which call themselves Legion. I could accept the idea that these characters are beset by unclean spirits. However, nobody's driving them out. Having arrived at this perspective, maybe I should re-read the last story, which is about a stroke victim who has found religion.
January 22, 2018
"The Mail Lady" is one of my favorite short stories ever written. The rest is merely good, a couple of really excellent pieces making up for a couple of below-average ones and the rest just solidly sitting there.
November 17, 2018
I was hoping to enjoy this book, as I've liked both of the author's novels. But his short stories are (to this reader anyway) just the same cynical/angry/smartass character over and over again.
March 28, 2014
Mr. Gates is a good read. I definitely could be projecting, but I feel like Gates and I would be chums. Judging from the stories/characters he appears to enjoy liquor, jazz music, academia and agnosticism (if not full blown atheism) and progressive politics, which I can totally appreciate. But it's that same love of intellectual pursuits and ivory tower type thinking, that trips me up at times slightly. The language is stilted at places, and a bit highfalutin, but overall I seemed to understand the sensibility of his narrators (which are mostly maladjusted malcontents written in the first person point of view with a propensity for infidelity - which is the one aspect I do not share). All in all, a quality acerbic, cathartic read, flush with charm and wit. *Insert irony (regarding the pretentious language - hehe) here.*
August 19, 2010
I’m not even sure why I disliked this, except it tapped into what I like to call the Mad Men paradox: intellectually excellent, but no joy, no bristling dark energy to capture the imagination.
(Also, for what it’s worth, I first read the story “The Bad Thing” in Jeffrey Eugenide’s collection My Mistress’s Sparrow is Dead , and it stood out as one of the better. I had this book on my shelf before I read that one, but didn’t realize until reading it now that it opened with that same story. Again, it was one of the better ones. So… yeah.)
(Also, for what it’s worth, I first read the story “The Bad Thing” in Jeffrey Eugenide’s collection My Mistress’s Sparrow is Dead , and it stood out as one of the better. I had this book on my shelf before I read that one, but didn’t realize until reading it now that it opened with that same story. Again, it was one of the better ones. So… yeah.)
February 24, 2016
Hated it so much I couldn't read it.
June 5, 2024
Many years ago, I read David Gates two excellent novels Jernigan and Preston Falls. In the last month i have read Gates two short story collections and they are just great. Gates is not for the overly sensitive reader. He has a brutal nasty wit and is keenly aware of the foibles and follies of men and women living in modern society. Gates main characters are male, female straight and gay and this is something I have rarely encountered in a contemporary American writer. His characters are fiendishly intelligent but frequently fiendish. If your world view is that the glass is always half empty and that pisses you off then David Gates is the writer for you.
March 11, 2022
One of my all time favourite short story collections. I read it about ten years ago and the author was unknown to me. The stories are well crafted and with beautiful spare language. He doesn't waste too many words. I adore the cover of this particular edition. The stories creep up on you and as the title and cover suggest are slowly revealed. Just a killer book. Look for it it second hand bookstore or the library, online to I guess for sure.
November 3, 2024
Another yawnsome Carveresque thing.
November 3, 2022
Excellent short stories.
March 24, 2014
4.5 out of 5 stars
Cut to the Chase:
Gates creates a hosts of characters who are ordinary, extraordinary, tragic, and believable: they are steeped in both cynicism and hope, they both loathe and love the environments around them, they talk to themselves, saying, “enough with the similes and sentimentalities!” yet often taking us there anyway. They’re meta — really meta — at times, always self-deprecating, make a host of mistakes and justifications (adultery, drugs, escape from the city to suburbia), and find small relief in their daily routines. The dialogue is quick, sparse, and effective, and the struggles are familiar and easy to empathize with… overall, this is one of the strongest short story collections I’ve read.
Greater Detail:
As always, with a short story collection, I prefer to do mini-synopses and let that speak for itself:
The Mail Lady – one of my favorites, we have here a born-again Christian who’s suffered a debilitating stroke trying to live within the confines of his new world: he struggles to communicate with those around him, and lives almost completely within his head, constantly misunderstood by his wife, finding both the irony and the absurdity in all that is around him.
The Bad Thing — a pregnant woman who drinks too much one night is torn between trying to justify to herself that things will be okay, while trying to figure out how to fill up the liquor bottle so her husband won’t find out what she’s done.
Star Baby — Billy leaves the city and his lovers to live in his family home. He finds himself sleeping in his parent’s bed, trying to deal with being gay in a smaller community, and watching his young nephew while his sister deals with her drug addiction.
Beating — a Jewish wife tries to come to terms with her extreme Leftist husband, a man who reads Pound and whose anger over the injustices rules him, while she quietly rents children’s movies and tries to come to terms with who they’ve both become.
Saturn — they’ve just bought a big house, and everyone seems to be visiting, things should be going so well – yet the young woman finds herself smoking dope, growing more anxious and promising herself: this is the last time, she hates this feeling…
Many of these characters make realizations which we almost blush to be made aware of — Uncle Billy in “Star Baby” is relieved when he finds he is not attracted to his young nephew – yet can’t help but think, yes, that is just the type of normal yet perverted thought we would probably think, at the most inappropriate moments. In “Saturn,” a young woman justifies her affair by noting that she separates herself from her lover with both a condom and a diaphragm, which must mean she’s given more of herself, been closer with, her husband. Still, they feel like thoroughly believable people; you empathize with them despite their sometimes awful choices and actions.
Comparisons to Other Authors:
Some of the over-thinkers remind me of characters from Haslett’s You are Not a Stranger Here or more meta/intense versions of Nick Hornby’s immature males (these are the grown-up versions here). “The Mail Lady” in particular reminds me of Julian Barnes’s collection The Lemon Table, though there’s a sparsity of language here (like all things Raymond Carver) mixed with sardonic humor that keeps the action constantly moving forward.
Cut to the Chase:
Gates creates a hosts of characters who are ordinary, extraordinary, tragic, and believable: they are steeped in both cynicism and hope, they both loathe and love the environments around them, they talk to themselves, saying, “enough with the similes and sentimentalities!” yet often taking us there anyway. They’re meta — really meta — at times, always self-deprecating, make a host of mistakes and justifications (adultery, drugs, escape from the city to suburbia), and find small relief in their daily routines. The dialogue is quick, sparse, and effective, and the struggles are familiar and easy to empathize with… overall, this is one of the strongest short story collections I’ve read.
Greater Detail:
As always, with a short story collection, I prefer to do mini-synopses and let that speak for itself:
The Mail Lady – one of my favorites, we have here a born-again Christian who’s suffered a debilitating stroke trying to live within the confines of his new world: he struggles to communicate with those around him, and lives almost completely within his head, constantly misunderstood by his wife, finding both the irony and the absurdity in all that is around him.
The Bad Thing — a pregnant woman who drinks too much one night is torn between trying to justify to herself that things will be okay, while trying to figure out how to fill up the liquor bottle so her husband won’t find out what she’s done.
Star Baby — Billy leaves the city and his lovers to live in his family home. He finds himself sleeping in his parent’s bed, trying to deal with being gay in a smaller community, and watching his young nephew while his sister deals with her drug addiction.
Beating — a Jewish wife tries to come to terms with her extreme Leftist husband, a man who reads Pound and whose anger over the injustices rules him, while she quietly rents children’s movies and tries to come to terms with who they’ve both become.
Saturn — they’ve just bought a big house, and everyone seems to be visiting, things should be going so well – yet the young woman finds herself smoking dope, growing more anxious and promising herself: this is the last time, she hates this feeling…
Many of these characters make realizations which we almost blush to be made aware of — Uncle Billy in “Star Baby” is relieved when he finds he is not attracted to his young nephew – yet can’t help but think, yes, that is just the type of normal yet perverted thought we would probably think, at the most inappropriate moments. In “Saturn,” a young woman justifies her affair by noting that she separates herself from her lover with both a condom and a diaphragm, which must mean she’s given more of herself, been closer with, her husband. Still, they feel like thoroughly believable people; you empathize with them despite their sometimes awful choices and actions.
Comparisons to Other Authors:
Some of the over-thinkers remind me of characters from Haslett’s You are Not a Stranger Here or more meta/intense versions of Nick Hornby’s immature males (these are the grown-up versions here). “The Mail Lady” in particular reminds me of Julian Barnes’s collection The Lemon Table, though there’s a sparsity of language here (like all things Raymond Carver) mixed with sardonic humor that keeps the action constantly moving forward.
February 28, 2015
I want to like this book. The quality of Gates’s writing is fantastic. These stories are very short, and the length of them is just about perfect. Gates builds characters swiftly, and the reader feels intimately aware immediately of what is happening. If you have read Raymond Carver and loved it, you will love David Gates. They write along similar lines and with the same attitude. They write about broken, everyday people, perhaps with slightly above-average intelligence and suspicious morals. The stories get into the grit of their neurotic and often wrecked lives. I don’t love the stories because they just seem to be absent of any hope. Those looking for redemption aren’t likely to find much here. In my opinion, there are 4 standout stories in the collection.
The Bad Thing — This story was difficult for me to read. A pregnant woman decides to drink heavily, and then has a crisis of conscience hoping that her unborn baby will be unaffected while simultaneously covering her tracks so that her husband will not discover her. One gets the feeling this won’t be the only time the child needs a bit of luck. Her husband loses his temper, and smashes his fist into the cupboard and calls her a whore. She thinks to herself, “Why was he confusing the drinking with the other? Then I got it. Obvious. It was all mixed up for him, all the same thing: the drinking, the other, anything that could make a woman free.” Whoa.
The title story - a lonely school administrator rides a subway to meet a woman…not his wife in Connecticut. He has had multiple affairs that have separated him from his wife and his daughter, the latter he regrets. He gets involved with a married grad student who becomes pregnant and has an abortion. He is a sad man, who does not form lasting relationships with women, and loses children.
The Intruder – A documentary maker (or maybe someone who claims to be but never really finishes his work) studies gay porn with the intent that he will make a documentary about producers of such material. His younger partner doesn’t seem to have much in common with them and there is seething animosity between them. He is an older intellectual, and the younger man is just not. Finally, he finds a movie that includes his partner and is shocked.
The Mail Lady – Like Gregor Samsa in the Metamorphosis, we occupy the thoughts of a man no one can hear. The man is a born-again Christian who has suffered a debilitating stroke. His thoughts are fairly clear, but he cannot verbalize them. His wife patronizes or ignores him and seems bent on finding her life after he is gone. His life is absurd. I think this is the best story in the collection.
See my other reviews here!
The Bad Thing — This story was difficult for me to read. A pregnant woman decides to drink heavily, and then has a crisis of conscience hoping that her unborn baby will be unaffected while simultaneously covering her tracks so that her husband will not discover her. One gets the feeling this won’t be the only time the child needs a bit of luck. Her husband loses his temper, and smashes his fist into the cupboard and calls her a whore. She thinks to herself, “Why was he confusing the drinking with the other? Then I got it. Obvious. It was all mixed up for him, all the same thing: the drinking, the other, anything that could make a woman free.” Whoa.
The title story - a lonely school administrator rides a subway to meet a woman…not his wife in Connecticut. He has had multiple affairs that have separated him from his wife and his daughter, the latter he regrets. He gets involved with a married grad student who becomes pregnant and has an abortion. He is a sad man, who does not form lasting relationships with women, and loses children.
The Intruder – A documentary maker (or maybe someone who claims to be but never really finishes his work) studies gay porn with the intent that he will make a documentary about producers of such material. His younger partner doesn’t seem to have much in common with them and there is seething animosity between them. He is an older intellectual, and the younger man is just not. Finally, he finds a movie that includes his partner and is shocked.
The Mail Lady – Like Gregor Samsa in the Metamorphosis, we occupy the thoughts of a man no one can hear. The man is a born-again Christian who has suffered a debilitating stroke. His thoughts are fairly clear, but he cannot verbalize them. His wife patronizes or ignores him and seems bent on finding her life after he is gone. His life is absurd. I think this is the best story in the collection.
See my other reviews here!
May 31, 2012
Wonderful glimpse inside the character's heads. Raw emotion. Lots of internal monologue In a stream-of-consciousness style at times. It's amazing to me how well Gates can develop a character in such a short time through language choice in use of dialogue, a lot of internal monologue, and descriptive beats. He paints an incredibly clear picture of who these characters are as people in only a few pages. I've never read anything like it. A must-read if you're a writer.
The stories are not happy, although some of them have happy endings (most don't, and some are seriously depressing). But the writing is excellent and powerful. The characters are so strong that Gates is able to provoke strong emotions in me and put me in a very pensive mood.
The most biting, emotional, hurtful (powerful) dialogue I have ever read (especially the last line of "The Intruder"), although in my first novel I strive to achieve a similar feel woven through one POV in the first ~half. (This is only one element of the novel, and it's something for the character to grow from, so I hope it doesn't put people off too much. Reading this collection of stories is kind of depressing, because Gates doesn't show much of an upside.)
All of the stories have really poignant endings, most of which leave you a bit stunned. Of the 10, only 1 ends in action; the rest end in either dialogue or inner monologue (mostly the latter). I think I should keep that in mind for my own writing...
The stories are not happy, although some of them have happy endings (most don't, and some are seriously depressing). But the writing is excellent and powerful. The characters are so strong that Gates is able to provoke strong emotions in me and put me in a very pensive mood.
The most biting, emotional, hurtful (powerful) dialogue I have ever read (especially the last line of "The Intruder"), although in my first novel I strive to achieve a similar feel woven through one POV in the first ~half. (This is only one element of the novel, and it's something for the character to grow from, so I hope it doesn't put people off too much. Reading this collection of stories is kind of depressing, because Gates doesn't show much of an upside.)
All of the stories have really poignant endings, most of which leave you a bit stunned. Of the 10, only 1 ends in action; the rest end in either dialogue or inner monologue (mostly the latter). I think I should keep that in mind for my own writing...
January 24, 2009
10 short stories. i like short stories. i liked this book well enough, but it was wanting. i wanted more from the characters i guess. all the reviews compare the author to chandler. i wasn’t so fond of chandler. the stories weren’t uplifiting. they were realistic and a little depressing.
one of the characters in the last story said something like, “i am more important than my pleasures.” actual quote to come when i get home. he was saying it about his bacon and egg breakfast. it was one of his pleasures, and he’d had it every day for 40 years. but that type of food was bad for him now, and he needed to realize his life was more important than that small pleasure. i need to realize that and embrace it.
so if nothing else, i got that quote to think about.
one of the characters in the last story said something like, “i am more important than my pleasures.” actual quote to come when i get home. he was saying it about his bacon and egg breakfast. it was one of his pleasures, and he’d had it every day for 40 years. but that type of food was bad for him now, and he needed to realize his life was more important than that small pleasure. i need to realize that and embrace it.
so if nothing else, i got that quote to think about.
October 10, 2013
When I think about just how much I enjoyed reading David Gates’ The Wonders of the Invisible World, I have to laugh. I got the book completely by mistake. I mooched it thinking it was a collection by David Schickler who wrote Kissing in Manhattan, another book I loved.
I find it difficult to write about books that I liked. It’s hard because I often come up, “I liked it because it was good” which is just about the lamest most unhelpful thing to say. It also doesn’t help that I recently read Salon’s bunch of bullshit about the death of literary criticism.
Read the rest on iwilldare.com
I find it difficult to write about books that I liked. It’s hard because I often come up, “I liked it because it was good” which is just about the lamest most unhelpful thing to say. It also doesn’t help that I recently read Salon’s bunch of bullshit about the death of literary criticism.
Read the rest on iwilldare.com
June 12, 2014
David Gates wrote two quirky, critically acclaimed novels ("Jernigan" and "Preston Falls") in the 90's that I liked well enough to read twice each (and maybe will again). I wasn't aware of this short story collection published as a book in 1999 until recently. As with most short story collections, I enjoyed some more than others, but mostly more over less. All in all, darkly funny, poignant, smart character-driven stories that illustrate how human lives are messy and how we contribute to that mess in spite of ourselves.
February 21, 2016
A good set of short stories. They do what great short stories should do, which is to immediately take the reader into the lives of others. There are recurrent themes throughout the stories, and the angry dissolute characters seem a little too similar. They also feel like the main protagonists of his novels, Jernigan and Preston Falls. But a number of the stories are written from different perspectives - a woman, and old man for example - and this helps to provide variety. David Gates is a good writer, though I accept that his recurrent themes will be to everyone's tastes.
December 3, 2009
I've been savoring this collection over the past few months, finally finished it. David's work intrigued me before I met him at Bennington. I "The Wronged Husband" in Ploughshares before I started the MFA program. That's included in this collection, and "The Mail Lady," the last piece, is an incredible story. Every one is fresh, a bit caustic, and so like the author...:)
October 9, 2014
I stumbled across this book, withdrawn from the local library.
I'm not a fan of short stories, I want more when reading, I need to discover the characters and places, however ,these stories have sucked me in from the opening sentences, each one unusual and yet including the ordinary rituals of life.
I'm not a fan of short stories, I want more when reading, I need to discover the characters and places, however ,these stories have sucked me in from the opening sentences, each one unusual and yet including the ordinary rituals of life.
November 2, 2016
I am not typically a fan of short stories, especially when the story ends while leaving me wanting more or at least a resolution. I especially don't like short stories about unlikeable people, and that's what this collection is. It's just not for me. The writing was ok, particularly with the realistic conversations, but just not enough to redeem them for me. 2 stars
May 8, 2009
I read a couple of the stories from this collection and enjoyed them a while back but the book definitely reads well as a collection.
Definitely very New York, even though some of the stories take place elsewhere.
Definitely very New York, even though some of the stories take place elsewhere.
June 16, 2010
i didn't finish it due to lack of interest. the stories were mellow and uninteresting. i was reading it just to get over it and decided against better judgement, that i shouldn't give the book that kind of treatment. so i put it down.
September 27, 2007
Some good, some not. Didn't hold my interest. Hard to wade through.
June 5, 2008
Good, but still no Jernigan.
Read
May 1, 2011I'm just not feeling this collection. Some people have given it such great reviews that I won't pitch it, but I'm putting it back on the shelf for now. Maybe another time it'll be more "me."
Read
August 4, 2011brilliant characters.
September 9, 2011
Oh, the agony of self-awareness! Brilliant stories! Expertly crafted! Memorable cahracters1 Emotionally complex plots! A must read!
September 21, 2014
Raw, pitch-perfect American stories. Gates really knows how to write a conversation. These people are angry and lovely all at once. Recommended!
February 16, 2015
Can't wait for his new book to be published this spring, so went back to the book I've re-read the least.
May 28, 2015
Well written, interesting, true to life, short stories. Loved this book.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 32 reviews