Foto dell'autore

John Fulton (1) (1967–)

Autore di More Than Enough: A Novel

Per altri autori con il nome John Fulton, vedi la pagina di disambiguazione.

3+ opere 49 membri 3 recensioni

Sull'Autore

John Fulton teaches in the MFA program at the University of Massachusetts-Boston.

Opere di John Fulton

Opere correlate

Conversations with Mormon Authors (2006) — Collaboratore — 3 copie
The World to Come (2015) — Collaboratore — 3 copie

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John Fulton's MORE THAN ENOUGH (2002) was a fortunate find at a GoodWill store. It's a classic coming of age story set in modern-day Salt Lake City. Steven is the fifteen year old narrator who, in the opening pages, is attacked and beaten by a group of 'entitled' Mormon boys for being an 'outsider,' and an atheist at that. His atheism comes from his father, who trails a long string of failures. His younger sister, Jenny, just wants to fit in, and his hard-working mother is just tired of her husband's empty promises. As the family slowly implodes, Steven is torn between loyalties, trying to keep the family together. This may have been a book aimed at a YA audience. Or maybe not, as its language and situations are brutally frank. Me? I was sucked in from page one. Not an especially happy story, but the writing is superb. (And a first novel too.) Very highly recommended.

- Tim Bazzett, author of the memoir, BOOKLOVER
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Segnalato
TimBazzett | Dec 31, 2023 |
There's a common theme to this collection - teenagers suffering because of parents who are neglectful, crazed, absent, dying or dead. All the stories are moving and you see lots of situations that are unexpected - boys who are intimidated by sexually aggressive girls, kids who rage against the world in small, believable ways when faced with a parent's death. But these aren't the clever, wisecracking teens and dopey, clueless parents that are the staple of so many TV sitcoms. The parents have all-too-common flaws and the kids are flailing about as they to try make sense of, or establish a resonable order for, their own lives.

A couple stories in the beginning of the collection are a little loopy, with wild premises ("Clean Away" and "The Troubled Dog"), but they're still well written and a fun ride, but then these give way to much straighter pieces that offer, as the opener "Braces" did, a moving portrait of a teenager struggling to cope with the problems their parents have created for them.

The 11 stories in the collection, generally set in the West (Utah and Arizona) are:

1. Braces - 22 pp - A teenaged boy's parents have just separated and the boy has to deal with a barrage of calls both from his alcoholic father, who begs the son to tell him where his mother has hidden his valuable antique Mustang, and from the boy's older sister, a runway who needs money. The mother has plans to sell the Mustang partly to pay for the braces the boy desperately needs and partly to get revenge against the husband for all the years he did nothing for the family.

2. Clean Away - 16 pp - A man trying to propose to his very reluctant "second girlfriend after his third wife," gets mistaken for Barry Manilow in a restaurant and then gets caught up in the glory of performing CPR on an overweight man with a bad heart who has just overindulged on a steak.

3. Rose - 6 pp - On her seventy-seventh birthday, Rose's husband has the nerve to die of a stroke on her while they're eating at her favorite restaurant. The short piece is her reflection of their life together - from meeting him when he was a young pilot, to the time during the Korean War when he was thought lost and dead, their failed attempts to raise children, their time owning a shop together, and finally to their blissfully close retirement.

4. Iceland - 6 pp - A young woman trying to escape her past in a small-town in South Dakota pairs up with a man in Florence, Italy, and invents a set of lies about who she is and where she's from.

5. The Troubled Dog - 25 pp - A woman gradually becomes unhinged as she travels with her two young boys from California to Michigan in order to spend Thanksgiving with her parents. She runs a man off the road because she thinks it's her husband who walked out on them, then kidnaps him even though he suffered serious injuries when she rammed his car. The story is told from the perspective of her 11-year-old son, Bennie, who has to contend with his crazy mother and his out-of-control little brother Bo, who likes to hold a toy gun that looks like a real one up to people and whose favorite character is the boy who turned into a dog in the Disney movie, Shaggy Dog. When things get really bad for the boys, Bo tries to turn into a dog himself.

6. Outlaws - 18 pp - A great piece about a 15-year-old boy who experiences the death of a parent when his drunk and stoned father falls off a ski lift. The son and his mother sink into a depression but the boy meets a mildly rebellious girl who talks him into small transgressions - eating a bag of Chips Ahoy at the 7-Eleven where she works, smoking and driving a car even though they're both underage. These "outlaw" acts give him a sense that he's defying the rules of a harsh, cruel world and gradually help him ease out of his depression.

7. Visions - 10 pp - An alcoholic overdoses a YMCA pool with chlorine and then has to deal with the guilt of blinding a young girl who'd gone in for a swim. When his wife hears the news, she leaves him and takes their two young boys with her.

8. First Sex - 8 pp - A straight-laced boy - a Mormon Eagle Scout, headed to study math at MIT - gets a "gift" (fellatio) on his 18th birthday from the wilder girl he's been tutoring in math. Instead of being thrilled and excited as most boys at that age would be, he's scared, intimidated and afraid he's let his religious mother down.

9. Liars - 22 pp - An unreliable father takes his teenage son and his current girlfriend on a ski trip on Christmas Eve day. The father, an expert skier, keeps skiing ahead of them, which is a perfect metaphor for his relationship with his son. He left his wife when the boy was an infant, and he's had lots of relationships since then, but he usually gets bored with people after six months. The story is a great examination of how the boy learns to stand up for himself while also discovering how he can connect to, or at least understand, his father.

10. Stealing - 2pp - A short-short about a father in an unhappy marriage taking his young boys for a joy ride in a Porsche that is not his, and his only interest is in gaining more speed as they accelerate their way over a mountain road.

11. Retribution - 58 pp - A great examination of the impact of cancer on family members without any of the usual maudlin, melodramatic weepiness. A 15-year-old girl, Rachel, is angry that she's in this situation, and she takes it out on the people around her. Her driver-ed instructor becomes a target of her hatred, and there's a fascinating exploration of all the ways she takes her rage out on him. She also begins writing cruel graffiti in the bathroom stalls, accusing her classmates of all kinds of sexual shenanigans. She becomes a photographer for the school yearbook and is charged with taking sports photos, but instead of capturing moments of victory, she takes shots of cheerleaders collapsing at the bottom of a failed pyramid and a swimmer fainting backward into the pool after she'd won a race. Suffering and pain are what attracts her, though no one else seems to understand. The novella itself offers excellent portraits of suffering in silence. The father can't talk about what's going on and has private crying spells in the kitchen when he's not down in the basement solitarily assembling ships in a bottle. There's also a tender relationship Rachel develops with a German boy who's initially overwhelmed by all of her sexual energy. An incredibly well-told and moving piece.



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Segnalato
johnluiz | Aug 6, 2013 |
Quite poor. Eminently forgettable. Summaries of characters rather than characters, tired ideas written up in tired language.
 
Segnalato
GeoffWyss | Jan 3, 2010 |

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Opere
3
Opere correlate
3
Utenti
49
Popolarità
#320,875
Voto
3.8
Recensioni
3
ISBN
21