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xterminal's review
4.0
George Evans, Buffalo & Rochelle (iUniverse, 2009)
Vanity press iUniverse has a program called Star that purports to be the books they think actually have a chance of becoming big in the open market. I'm not sure whether that's just something extra you pay for or whether there are actual people at iUniverse reading these manuscripts and judging. If the latter, though, my confidence in their taste (which, to be fair, was never all that high) went into the dumpster. Buffalo & Rochelle, the first book of short fiction from George Evans, is not a Star book. It's possible that I've read more iUniverse books than anyone who doesn't get paid to, both in the Star program and not, and I have never read a book published by iUniverse that deserves the Star imprint more than Buffalo & Rochelle. Lest that seem like I'm damning the book with faint praise, I don't mean to. This is a very good book, and it's all the more impressive for being one of those very rare vanity-published books that, I believe, actually has a chance of getting picked up by a bigger press.
Evans starts off with a bang, an autobiographical story about the death of his son in a car accident. From there, it... snaps straight into wry comedy in the second story. Eh? The juxtaposition really does jar, but it's the only one like it in the book; the rest of the stories slide almost seamlessly into one another, generally following the same pattern (let's take regular people and put them into ludicrous situations). They're fun, and I like them, save for some gratuitous profanity (about halfway through the book, I emailed Evans' brother, a friend of mine, with the one-liner “George likes John Updike, doesn't he?”. The affirmative reply was not a surprise.). But what really floored me about this book was “The View from the Back of the Bus”, its final story. I can't tell you why, you'll just have to read it. You probably won't pick up on it at first, though Evans does leave one big clue, but when you figure out what's going on here, it's just glorious. All the sudden, things start to make sense, and all the ludicrous situations from earlier stories—a couple whose home used to be a homeless shelter, an acting class who must pretend to be trees, and many more—start seeming not quite so ludicrous. Once he set the framework, Evans could have done anything with that story and I'd have followed gladly along.
Despite my earlier “this guy is a brother of a friend” disclosure, I did promise not to soft-pedal this review, and I wouldn't say I liked the book if I didn't. I do a few handfuls of solicited reviews this year (in fact, there's a second in this ish—Lonesome Point), and there have been times when those have been the worst reviews I've written in the entire year. So, yeah, if I hated this, I'd tell you. And I'll admit I was waffling until I hit “The View from the Back of the Bus”. But that story knocked my rating up a full star. This is good stuff. Get it. *** ½
Vanity press iUniverse has a program called Star that purports to be the books they think actually have a chance of becoming big in the open market. I'm not sure whether that's just something extra you pay for or whether there are actual people at iUniverse reading these manuscripts and judging. If the latter, though, my confidence in their taste (which, to be fair, was never all that high) went into the dumpster. Buffalo & Rochelle, the first book of short fiction from George Evans, is not a Star book. It's possible that I've read more iUniverse books than anyone who doesn't get paid to, both in the Star program and not, and I have never read a book published by iUniverse that deserves the Star imprint more than Buffalo & Rochelle. Lest that seem like I'm damning the book with faint praise, I don't mean to. This is a very good book, and it's all the more impressive for being one of those very rare vanity-published books that, I believe, actually has a chance of getting picked up by a bigger press.
Evans starts off with a bang, an autobiographical story about the death of his son in a car accident. From there, it... snaps straight into wry comedy in the second story. Eh? The juxtaposition really does jar, but it's the only one like it in the book; the rest of the stories slide almost seamlessly into one another, generally following the same pattern (let's take regular people and put them into ludicrous situations). They're fun, and I like them, save for some gratuitous profanity (about halfway through the book, I emailed Evans' brother, a friend of mine, with the one-liner “George likes John Updike, doesn't he?”. The affirmative reply was not a surprise.). But what really floored me about this book was “The View from the Back of the Bus”, its final story. I can't tell you why, you'll just have to read it. You probably won't pick up on it at first, though Evans does leave one big clue, but when you figure out what's going on here, it's just glorious. All the sudden, things start to make sense, and all the ludicrous situations from earlier stories—a couple whose home used to be a homeless shelter, an acting class who must pretend to be trees, and many more—start seeming not quite so ludicrous. Once he set the framework, Evans could have done anything with that story and I'd have followed gladly along.
Despite my earlier “this guy is a brother of a friend” disclosure, I did promise not to soft-pedal this review, and I wouldn't say I liked the book if I didn't. I do a few handfuls of solicited reviews this year (in fact, there's a second in this ish—Lonesome Point), and there have been times when those have been the worst reviews I've written in the entire year. So, yeah, if I hated this, I'd tell you. And I'll admit I was waffling until I hit “The View from the Back of the Bus”. But that story knocked my rating up a full star. This is good stuff. Get it. *** ½
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