Review: Elegantly Crafted Stories with Great Dialogue
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 02 2, 2012
Three stories make up this collection, but they pack a punch.  Elegantly crafted, carefully structured, they are also filled with dialogue that resonates true.  Example: "Jamie, I'll follow you anywhere, you daft sod!"  I finished the stories a couple days ago, and the characters are still haunting me.  In the first story, Round Trip, the author introduces a half dozen fully fleshed characters in about the same number of pages -- an amazing feat.  But ultimately the main character isn't even a person.The second story, Poison, is more traditional in its structure and denouement, but no less devastating.  Surprises everywhere here.  The third story could remind you of Dostoyevsky, depicting a descent into a special sort of madness which seems somehow totally credible.  Reading stories this good, I realized I've been missing something.  The short story is by definition more compressed, more distilled, and the language more powerful.  I highly recommend Donna Brown's Double-take Tales.