carimayhew's review
5.0
Without Expiration
Credit where credit’s due, the writing in this anthology is exquisite, poetic even. I would compare it to the writings of Sylvia Plath.
The unifying theme is about the human tendency to hold onto things long after its absolutely necessary, and how we stubbornly hold onto things (even when they no longer serve us as they once did).
Yet each individual story has its own individual themes also. (I won’t go into them all because I don’t to spoil the surprise for anyone.) The tome covers just about every aspect of the human condition.
As each short story progresses, the context of the themes seems to change greatly, but gradually, just as how I’d imagine the earth’s tectonic plates might move. The ground beneath your feet at the beginning of each story leaves you somewhere completely different by the end.
These stories have a real grit to them and are very original. I was invested in the outcome of every character.
The story titled “A study in discontinuity” was particularly cleverly written. And I thought that the stories couldn’t get much stranger after the one titled “A thousand counted and uncounted debts”, but then came an even stranger story in “Amen”.
I was perpetually entertained and would definitely read from this author again.
Credit where credit’s due, the writing in this anthology is exquisite, poetic even. I would compare it to the writings of Sylvia Plath.
The unifying theme is about the human tendency to hold onto things long after its absolutely necessary, and how we stubbornly hold onto things (even when they no longer serve us as they once did).
Yet each individual story has its own individual themes also. (I won’t go into them all because I don’t to spoil the surprise for anyone.) The tome covers just about every aspect of the human condition.
As each short story progresses, the context of the themes seems to change greatly, but gradually, just as how I’d imagine the earth’s tectonic plates might move. The ground beneath your feet at the beginning of each story leaves you somewhere completely different by the end.
These stories have a real grit to them and are very original. I was invested in the outcome of every character.
The story titled “A study in discontinuity” was particularly cleverly written. And I thought that the stories couldn’t get much stranger after the one titled “A thousand counted and uncounted debts”, but then came an even stranger story in “Amen”.
I was perpetually entertained and would definitely read from this author again.
samhouston's review
4.0
William R. Hincy’s Without Expiration is one of the most unusual short story anthologies that I’ve read in a while. The twelve stories, many of which have previously been published in literary reviews, share a common theme. Are good people capable of doing things as bad as those done by bad people on a regular basis? And what about bad people – are they capable of on occasion producing the kind good deed that would make good people proud? And most importantly (at least to me), is if the answer to both questions is yes, just how big a difference is there, really, between “bad” people and “good” people (excluding, of course, the psychopaths among us). Only the great scorekeeper in the sky can answer that one.
As almost always happens in any short story collection that I read, a few favorite stories loudly made themselves known to me. In the case of Without Expiration, there are four of them: “Left to Soak,” “Friendly Stranger,” “A Study in Discontinuity,” and “Flying.”
“Left to Soak” is the story of a couple that has made it through forty-four years of marriage despite the husband literally not washing or drying a single dish the entire time. Even while hospitalized, all the wife can think of is the sink full of dirty dishes that inevitably awaits her attention when she gets home. What I love most about this one is the incredible amount of tension that builds right up to the moment that Helen gets her first glimpse of the kitchen sink. Has Hank actually cleaned up after himself in her absence – or not?
“Friendly Stranger” is one of those stories with a narrator I can identify with from the very first sentence (most of us living in big cities will probably see at least a little of ourselves in this guy) when he says, “…my sole goal in life is to avoid waiting at a red light for more than one rotation.” Setting a weird series of events in motion, one day a jerk in a blue Infiniti cuts our friendly stranger off just as it looks like he will be the last guy to make it through the red light. The jerk does make it through, but friendly stranger doesn’t. And what happens next, catches both men – and me – by surprise.
“A Study in Discontinuity” and “Flying” are very different stories, but I am hard-pressed to determine which are the good and which are the bad people in either story. In the first, a woman comes out of a coma every so often only to remind her husband of his sins against her, sins that are ancient history to him but still fresh memories for her. The second is about a father and son whose relationship would be described as “strained,” at best. Whose fault that is, is open to question.
Bottom Line: Without Expiration is a compilation of wild short stories that range from pure comedy to pure tragedy. There is even one that I read twice (because it is so entertaining) without ever figuring out exactly what the author was aiming for. I figure that’s the one that the back of the book describes as “absurd.” Has to be.
As almost always happens in any short story collection that I read, a few favorite stories loudly made themselves known to me. In the case of Without Expiration, there are four of them: “Left to Soak,” “Friendly Stranger,” “A Study in Discontinuity,” and “Flying.”
“Left to Soak” is the story of a couple that has made it through forty-four years of marriage despite the husband literally not washing or drying a single dish the entire time. Even while hospitalized, all the wife can think of is the sink full of dirty dishes that inevitably awaits her attention when she gets home. What I love most about this one is the incredible amount of tension that builds right up to the moment that Helen gets her first glimpse of the kitchen sink. Has Hank actually cleaned up after himself in her absence – or not?
“Friendly Stranger” is one of those stories with a narrator I can identify with from the very first sentence (most of us living in big cities will probably see at least a little of ourselves in this guy) when he says, “…my sole goal in life is to avoid waiting at a red light for more than one rotation.” Setting a weird series of events in motion, one day a jerk in a blue Infiniti cuts our friendly stranger off just as it looks like he will be the last guy to make it through the red light. The jerk does make it through, but friendly stranger doesn’t. And what happens next, catches both men – and me – by surprise.
“A Study in Discontinuity” and “Flying” are very different stories, but I am hard-pressed to determine which are the good and which are the bad people in either story. In the first, a woman comes out of a coma every so often only to remind her husband of his sins against her, sins that are ancient history to him but still fresh memories for her. The second is about a father and son whose relationship would be described as “strained,” at best. Whose fault that is, is open to question.
Bottom Line: Without Expiration is a compilation of wild short stories that range from pure comedy to pure tragedy. There is even one that I read twice (because it is so entertaining) without ever figuring out exactly what the author was aiming for. I figure that’s the one that the back of the book describes as “absurd.” Has to be.
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