Troublemakers [Paperback]

In "The New Year", "The Greatest Goddamn Thing" and "Torture", the narrators are teenage boys, whose primary role in each is as sidekick or witness to another person's pain. In the first story, a cuckolded and abandoned father takes an axe to a deer. In the second, a brother just out of jail leads him into an all night bar party complete with gun, fire, and sex. And in the third, a neighbor is stranded on his roof by an irate wife, and no one calls for help. In each case, there's a kind of sad desperation to it all. Desperation is also present in two stories ("The End of Romance" and "Roger's New Life") that follow a UPS driver with a flaccid marriage, two kids, and a shaky grip on sanity. These are the most distant of the collection, as the protagonist is clearly cracking up and it becomes harder and harder to identify with his tenuous grip on reality. A rather similar character is the focus of the longest story, "Limbs," sharing a troubled marriage, kid, and in this case, friends of dubious character.

Two Chicago-set stories stick out: "The Politics of Correctness" abandons the world of the unemployed and lower-class for the world of academia and a struggling young English professor who must contend with the drug dealer who menaces his home, and the uber-PC people in his department. One sense this is a very personal story from McNally, and while it's not bad, it's not particularly original or noteworthy either. My own favorite is "The First of Your Last Chances," which stands out if only because it has a happy ending. Both funny and tender, it's a welcome respite from the heaviness of the other ten stories. The collection as a whole reveals a great new talent, I'll look forward to his next work.

The remaining eight are a mixed bag. "The New Year" is fantastic, but "The End of Romance" is not. "The First of Your Last Chances" seemed a bit too crafty, but I ultimately loved the story, which features a hilarious S&M vignette and a real cute ending. "The Politics of Correctness" was a wonderful story all the way through, my favorite in the collection. "The Greatest Goddamn Thing" didn't do it for me -- it all seemed too forced, and I didn't buy the narrator's voice. "Roger's New Life" just never seemed to go anywhere (a detached 3rd person pov, reminiscent of Raymond Carver), while "Torture" was strong from start to finish, though I'm not sure if it's a story that has a real direction. And the last and the longest, "Limbs," is a winner.

I wouldn't consider any of these stories as bad -- they are all finely written, and McNally's got a very nice, easy style. Many of the stories were very funny and thoroughly enjoyable.

- SJW

As a fan of the writing of Richard Yates and Raymond Carver (who John introduced me to), I can tell you that he learned his craft from the writings of these masters. His characters are believable, the dialogue is simple but powerful and the settings are described in the most minimal detail, but yet you have a feel of exactly where you are and who these people are. McNally's characters exist through their dialogue and that is what makes his stories powerful.

I highly recommend this collection of stories. Some are disturbing, others are more lighthearted. However, the writing is tremendous and you get inside these characters almost immediately. The art of the written word is not lost. People like John McNally are keeping it alive.