2024 the best strangers in the world review
Price: $7.24
(as of Dec 11, 2024 22:03:09 UTC - Details)
A collection of powerful and polished short stories charts the narrow territory between the normal and the obsessional, the known and the shockingly violent, where people cross into a world of danger and risk, hope and disappointment. Tour.
Publisher : Doubleday; First Edition (July 1, 1994)
Language : English
Hardcover : 180 pages
ISBN-10 : 0385473877
ISBN-13 : 978-0385473873
Item Weight : 14.4 ounces
Dimensions : 6.25 x 1 x 9.5 inches
Reviewer: Jeff Weddle
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Brutal and Necessary
Review: I first read this book about 20 years ago and I am currently reading it again. It remains one of my favorite short story collections. Canty is good the way Raymond Carver was good. The way Larry Brown was good. A Stranger in this World is brutal and necessary. I wish there were more than five stars to give for this one.
Reviewer: John D. Harris
Rating: 3.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Where's the (Beef) Ending?
Review: These short stories are well written and interesting BUT none of them have a real ending. I could understand if a few of the stories in the collection left a reading "hanging" but seriously? All of them?
Reviewer: SGen
Rating: 3.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Pretty dark read in several of the stories
Review: Pretty dark read in several of the stories. Definitely not for the light hearted reader. Some pretty warped subject matter.
Reviewer: P. Dizon
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: It's got memorable scenes that you dont want to remember
Review: An excellent collection of stories. Interesting and thought provoking with memorable and unexpected scenarios. Makes you think what you'd do if someone points a gun to your head.
Reviewer: Lancer Kind
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: One of the very best short story collections
Review: Different styles of story delivery are present and all show the care and craftsmanship that Kevin Canty uses in creating story. I've cherished this book on my shelf for over ten years and I still go back to it and re-read one of Canty's stories here and there. If you love prose then you won't be disappointed.
Reviewer: Pauli
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: KEVIN CANTY IS ONE OF THE GREAT WRITERS OF OUR TIME.
Review: This author builds tension and character with a masterful addictive pace and skill. All of his books are truly compelling and a joy to read.
Reviewer: Lynn Harnett
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Haunting stories of conscious choice
Review: Canty's first collection of stories explores ordinary lives at moments of fateful decision, and human nature at its most consciously perverse.In simple, atmospheric prose, Canty climbs inside his characters' heads, examining their motivations, whims, memories and desires, all of which go into their next action - the one that's going to affect life for some time to come.The stories are told from a single point of view although Canty uses both first-person and third-person narration, and writes in either present or past tense.In the opening story, "king of the elephants," a boy on the edge of manhood is caught between self-preservation and guilt, misery and the unknown. His father is a drunk and his mother is a crazy drunk who's just turned up in a hospital 1,500 miles away. The narrator's first decision - will he tell his father about the call or cut his ties with his mother right then? Each step of the way the boy, impelled by conscience, chooses misery until the reader, relieved by the boy's sense of responsibility, wonders if he will ever be strong enough or selfish enough to preserve himself.Where "king of the elephants" is poignant, "pretty judy" is shocking, repellant. Paul, 15, "wanted this to be happening in his imagination." "This" is his shame-ridden sexual obsession with a retarded neighbor. Canty's language brings all of Paul's confused, hot-wired, charged feelings to the surface, boiling with the desire to do the right thing without giving up the wrong thing. Where the ending to "king of the elephants" offers a certain release of tension in inevitability, the end of "pretty judy" cranks up the tension with consequences unfolding into the story's unseen future.Canty's unhappy characters watch themselves with helpless detachment. In "Safety" Marian is a bored, frazzled wife and mother of a two-year-old whose marriage is falling apart. Marian observes her resentments, bitter words and coldness with a vicious self-hatred and satisfaction known to us all.In "Junk," Parker is more deeply mired in self-loathing - the habit of years of drug and alcohol abuse and a fascinating dissolute wife. Although he has made a new start the reappearance of his wife undoes him in a moment: "There is no other life...the person that you are is the person you're going to be." Even from such fatalism, he views his irrevocable decisions with a sour detachment that leaves all the "if-onlys" pitiably attached.Self-deception is a favorite theme, along with the self-knowledge we bury; the family ties that bind, the unhappiness we choose. "It was like I had two parts of my brain," says one character and it's this duality of nature Canty most successfully explores.A few stories, like "great falls, 1966," in which a man who may or may not be dying is caught in the wrangling of his son and grandson are wholly enigmatic; a few, like "dogs, " are wholly fatalistic, or, like "the victim" describe a series of events mostly beyond the central character's control. But most stories emphasize the steady progression of conscious choice.The writing is minimal without being terse, each word necessary and Canty evokes people who linger in the mind long after the book is closed.
Reviewer: Robert X Weaver
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Gritty and Gripping
Review: This book really caught me off-guard. I bought it because of the sultry-looking young man on the cover, but it was the writing inside that really made me tingle. These are the types of stories that have waited since the dawning of man to be written: a young man torn between his dysfunctional parents and the life that awaits him if only he could break the ties that bind; a recovering drug addict haunted by a former lover and a past he can never escape; a disgruntled dog catcher finds his conscience; a young Gen-X couple lured to a double-wide trailer by the sea and disaster. These are stories about the ignored, the allegedly "inconsequential" members of our society. Kevin Canty writes with stark honesty about their lives and thoughts, and reveals their lives to be far more interesting, shocking, and heart-wrenching than one could have ever suspected. Simply brilliant!