Eccentric Circles
Stories
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- $7.99
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- $7.99
Publisher Description
At a young man’s funeral, the undertaker offers his thoughts on lifestyle, along with a hot tip on the big stakes race that afternoon. In another bizarre burial twist, two feuding misfit brothers speed across America in a battered Chevy, trying to fulfill their mother’s dying wish.
Meanwhile, the second craziest person in Casper, Wyoming, contemplates infidelity with the first, a young beauty who climbs through his window; a chance meeting with a nine-year-old boy on a bicycle finishes off a marriage; and a nude dancer in New Orleans, mistaken for a prostitute, is asked to take a check. (“The check is good, Catherine. Absolutely.”)
These are just a few of the compelling people and situations you will encounter in this wide-ranging selection of short fiction from Larry Duberstein. Some of Duberstein’s characters do move in eccentric social circles and the patterns of his literary art make larger and even more eccentric circles. No one is exempted, however, from the clear truth of consequence: “The lizard’s egg will hatch, and out will come the lizard.”
Humming with irony, humor, and an infectious enthusiasm for life at every level, these tales feature the same crystalline diction, the unique mix of sympathy, wit, and insight, that distinguish Larry Duberstein’s highly acclaimed novels.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Drawn from all walks of life, the characters in this engaging collection of 15 stories move in private orbits, occa sionally connecting which occasionally intersect with those of others. In ``Domestic Tranquility,'' a married couple take turns destroying each other's cherished personal belongings in an internecine running feud. In ``Devereaux's Existence,'' a homeless alcoholic, once a journalist, ludicrously acts as his own lawyer when charged as a peeping Tom. Observed with great sympathy and humor, Duberstein's people labor under illusions, as witness the shy salesman who feels liberated when he takes home a New Orleans nude dancer for a $250 tryst, or the Manhattan lawyer who represents and befriends a former high-school classmate charged with assaulting a bag lady. Quietly moving tales of coping with adversity include ``Fishing for Gorillas,'' about a girl's weird dreams when her mother becomes paralyzed, and ``The Off Season,'' in which a gay couple bravely face the terminal illness (cancer and possibly AIDS) of one of them. Whether he is writing about a mortician at the racetrack, a mafioso stuffed in a trunk or a philandering yuppie Boston attorney, Duberstein ( Carnovsky's Retreat ) puts his finger on extraordinary moments in seemingly ordinary lives.
