Mr. Tall

Book 10 of my 2019 Reading Challenge

read from January 23 - 27

Mr. Tall

by Tony Earley

Summary (via the book jacket)

published 2014

In Mr. Tall, his first story collection in two decades, Tony Earley brings us seven rueful, bittersweet, riotous studies of characters, both ordinary and mythical, seeking to make sense of the world transforming around them. He demonstrates once again the prodigious story-telling gifts that have made him one of the most accomplished writers of his generation.

In the title story, a lonely young bride terrifyingly shares a remote mountain valley with a larger-than-life neighbor, while the grieving widow of "The Cryptozoologist" is sure she's been visited by a Southern variant of Bigfoot. "Have You Seen the Stolen Girl?" introduces us to the ghost of Jesse James, who plagues an elderly woman in the wake of a neighborhood girl's abduction. In "Haunted Castles of the Barrier Islands," an empty-nest couple stumble through an impenetrable Outer Banks fog, seeking a new life to replace the one they have lost, while "Yard Art" follows the estranged wife of a famous country singer as she searches for an undiscovered statue by an enigmatic artist. In the concluding novella, "Jack and the Mad Dog," we find Jack - the giant killer of stories - in full flight from threats both canine and existential.

Earley indelibly maps previously undiscovered territories of the human heart in these melancholy, comic, and occasionally strange stories. Along the way, he leads us on a journey from contemporary Nashville to a fantastical land of talking dogs and flying trees, teaching us at every step that, even in the most familiar locales, the ordinary is never just that.

My Opinion

3 stars

I'm squarely in the middle on this read.  I have a few notes on each story but basically it was fine while I was reading it and it was fine when it was over.  That probably sounds more negative than I mean it to but it's ok to have a read be solid through and through; there may not have been a "wow" story for me but there also wasn't a "clunker" which is unusual and a pleasant surprise for a book of short stories, especially ones that are so varied like in this collection.

"Haunted Castles of the Barrier Islands": Good, descriptive writing but not the best storyline. I didn't care that the time with the characters was over.

"Mr. Tall": I felt the emotions with this one. It had a resolution ending but also felt too short which is the mark of a good short story for me. I laughed out loud at her description of adjusting to sex with her husband, "He had insisted on prodding her with it the whole time it was "Interested," and not just in the place she had expected him to prod her with it, but wherever it happened to be aimed."

"The Cryptozoologist": It took me a minute to make the connection between this story and "Mr. Tall".  That helped my interest a little but my mind kept wandering during this story until the last few paragraphs - what an ending.

"Have You Seen the Stolen Girl?": Short but good.

"Yard Art": This one was probably my favorite.

"Just Married": Really nice flow, shows the randomness of intersecting lives.

"Jack and the Mad Dog": The story was fine but after all the previous stories were pretty firmly set in realism it was odd to have this one be so fantastical and it took me a minute to get settled in. It took a twist I wasn't expecting - really good ending.