rachel_dacus's review
5.0
The sacred misfits that populate Mark Blickley's collection of short stories will surprise you, make you laugh, seem oddly familiar, and compel you to keep turning pages. Though all the people are quirky to the nth degree, their very uniqueness makes each one memorable. Every story reaches in and grabs your heart with the tender treatment of human failings and the unexpected moments of radiance that occur in unlikely places. Among my favorite stories were "Visiting Tennessee," for the strangest couple who meet at a funeral for Tennessee Williams, and "Daddy and the Tunnel Rat" whose magical realism takes the reader through death's opaque curtain to unite a father and son across two wars. Other stories that stayed in mind long after the book was closed are "Nuclear Family" for its portrait of America on the day Russia and America almost annihilated the planet, and "Kiwi" for the spare and elegant tale of a young boy's grief. This book makes me want to read everything by this master storyteller and to hope there will be lots more to come.
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