Ghosts of Chicago
McNally follows two smart and rambunctious novels with a triumphant return to the short story. His second collection (his award-winning debut was Troublemakers, 2000) is set in a precisely drawn yet mythical Chicago, McNally’s hometown. Spooky and tender with McNally’s signature mix of compassion and irony, these complex stories feature characters haunted by their dead and missing, dazed by drugs and obsession, and living in strange isolation. We meet a boy who finds wisdom in monster movies, and two beleaguered children’s television show hosts, most poignantly the very proper Miss Betsy, who is dramatically undone by her lover’s death in Korea. Legendary Chicagoans, from Nelson Algren to John Belushi and Walter Payton, headline the book’s curious melding of realism and aberration as McNally’s finely crafted prose plays in evocative counterpoint to the odd predicaments, shadowy tragedies, and unforeseen redemptions achieved in these imaginative and mysterious stories. McNally has always been an embracing and funny writer. He now reaches deeper psychic levels in these edgy, knowing, and rough yet entrancing short stories. --Donna Seaman