Lydia Peelle

A couple of World War I-era grifters from Kentucky find themselves with a stunning, if "a touch hot," black mare named The Midnight Cool. The younger of the two, Charles, gets a job supplying mules to the war front and tries to better himself for love of a girl (the daughter of the man who fleeced him with the mare). The abused mare becomes a heavy-handed symbol of the unrequited love the fleecer had for a servant girl who feared and hated him and his rapist's ways. Glad to be done with this book, really.… (altro)

One of the National Book Foundations "5 Under 35"

Indisputably excellent stories. I read one or two at a time over the better part of a year. The problem with short stories is that they are harder to remember, because, as a reader, you spend less time with a story than a novel, and that's less time for the characters to get under your skin and into your brain - which Peele's characters absolutely do. I think the ones I will remember longest are the first story ("Mule Killers") and the title story.

Quotes

We watch them, and the rules that have been strung in our heads like thick cables fray and unravel in a dazzling arc of sparks. -from Sweethearts of the Rodeo, p. 57

But there's a danger to picturing a place without you in it. After a while you can start to feel like nothing at all. -from The Still Point, p. 75

It flashed past with a ringing in my ears, left me staggering with irrelevance. -p. 81

...as if he can buy his way back to a beginning. -from Reasons for and Advantages of Breathing, p. 99

We say the same things we always do, slicing back through the scar tissue in one another's heart. -p. 101

When people talk about the South being haunted, it's true. But it's not the places that are haunted, it's the people. -from This is Not a Love Story, p. 121

It exhausts me to think about it, even now. Like trying to hold a drowning man's head above water. -p. 126

"...and it takes years off my life. Years. No matter how hard you work, it's a gamble and the house always wins." -from Kidding Season, p. 151

I imagine he doesn't play music anymore for the same reason I don't do drugs anymore: you can only push up to the edge so many times before you realize the one thing on the other side is your own mortality, with no one waiting there to keep your grave clean. -from Shadow on a Weary Land, p. 165

My mind, before I ruined it, was a beautiful thing. -p. 166

Every mammal on earth, I've read, from mouse to man to mammoth, goes through roughly the same number of heartbeats in a lifetime. -p. 171… (altro)