From Booklist
The power of DeMarinis' deliciously disconcerting short stories is generated by his card-shark ability to transform the realistic into the bizarre. In his first book of short stories since the outstanding retrospective collection,
Borrowed Hearts (1999), and following his eighth crazy novel,
Sky Full of Sand (2003), DeMarinis begins with a set of linked, brilliantly off-kilter yet dead-on stories about a guy named Moss who fulfills his dream of working in the defense industry only to find that there is no surefire defense against the enemies within. The 13 incandescent tales that follow each portray a man who has lost his edge, or who decides it's not worth honing one, many of whom are entangled with women who appear kooky and vulnerable but are, instead, focused and tough. Loaded with startlingly vivid details, unusually skewed psychological insights, and ravishingly poetic apocalyptic intimations, DeMarinis' cunning, cuttingly funny short stories track the psychic damage done by war and the chilling shadow of nuclear weapons even as they celebrate our rising, however unsteadily, from the ashes.
Donna SeamanCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
