A review by bent
The Bible Repairman and Other Stories by Tim Powers
2.0
I usually like Tim Powers, but I wasn't big on this collection of short stories. Half of them felt like fragments from novels rather than stories in their own right. The other half like mild ghost stories - not the scary ones of M. R. James, but ones that are mildly threatening. The former all seemed to start in the middle of the action, in a world that you don't really understand, and then come to some kind of indefinite conclusion. This was especially true of "The Bible Repairman" and "The Hour of Babel." "A Time to Cast Away Stones" was in this vein too, but it had a more complete conclusion. It was also the story I liked the least.
"The Bible Repairman" created an interesting world, but then didn't really do anything with it. "The Hour of Babel" had an interesting premise, but I never really felt like I understood it, and then it ended. "A Time to Cast Away Stones" I found boring for the most part, although there were glimpses of what could have been an interesting mythos.
The other three stories were the ghost stories, although there were kind of echoes of ghosts or spirits in all six stories. "A Soul in a Bottle," "Parallel Lines" and "A Journey of Only Two Paces" all concerned the efforts of the dead to come back to life, one by changing the past, and the other by possessing new bodies. Although mildly interesting and a little creepy, none of them achieved the dread or fright that this type of story would have at the hands of a ghost story master like James.
They refer to some authors as masters of the short story - Alice Munroe, Raymond Carver, Somerset Maugham - Powers seems to be the opposite. His work is better enjoyed as a novel, where he has more scope to flesh out the world that he's creating. And I found the comments that accompanied the stories - an explanation of his inspiration for each story - rather mundane and banal. They actually served as a detriment to the stories rather than as an enhancement. A disappointing read.
"The Bible Repairman" created an interesting world, but then didn't really do anything with it. "The Hour of Babel" had an interesting premise, but I never really felt like I understood it, and then it ended. "A Time to Cast Away Stones" I found boring for the most part, although there were glimpses of what could have been an interesting mythos.
The other three stories were the ghost stories, although there were kind of echoes of ghosts or spirits in all six stories. "A Soul in a Bottle," "Parallel Lines" and "A Journey of Only Two Paces" all concerned the efforts of the dead to come back to life, one by changing the past, and the other by possessing new bodies. Although mildly interesting and a little creepy, none of them achieved the dread or fright that this type of story would have at the hands of a ghost story master like James.
They refer to some authors as masters of the short story - Alice Munroe, Raymond Carver, Somerset Maugham - Powers seems to be the opposite. His work is better enjoyed as a novel, where he has more scope to flesh out the world that he's creating. And I found the comments that accompanied the stories - an explanation of his inspiration for each story - rather mundane and banal. They actually served as a detriment to the stories rather than as an enhancement. A disappointing read.