i know, i know. i keep on changing my rating of this one. added another star because i've decided "Knowing He Was Not My Kind Yet I Followed" is in my top 10 favorite short stories ever list. it kills. like a bayonet to the gut. that said, still found the white-maleness of the collection as a whole a bit obnoxious, but that's me. ( )

The 20 stories here, averaging 10 pages, are already running together in my memory as a kind of jambalaya of whackjob Southern losers, racists, and two-dimensional women. Sounds awful, especially if like me you're turned off by (almost) all things Southern, but when Hannah's prose takes wing it pulls off mind-boggling manoeuvres. Testimony of Pilot, one of three longer pieces, is a glorious freewheeling picaresque that slots comfortably into my top 3 short stories of the year. Coming Close to Donna and Eating Wife and Friends are vicious little chips of obsidian. But the three Civil War stories did next to nothing for me, and others like Quo Vadis, Smut and the tiring Return to Return just ain't as funny or as clever as they think they are. Overall another collection with very high highs and notable lows, which is better than having neither of those. ( )

The stories about Jeb Stuart, in particular. ( )

Good set of stories. “Mother Rooney Unscrolls the Hurt” a sequel/prequel to Geronimo Rex, (believe Hannah said it was the 1st story of his he liked, that took); weird stories of a future South that could be included in any Post-apocalyptic anthology. Funny stories about JEB Stuart and other Southern men. ( )

Barry Hannah was considered a writer's writer. He was also a distinctly Southern writer who could by turns be comedic, philosophical or poignant--sometimes all at once. Many stories in this collection of 20 take unexpected turns, and I came upon many turns of phrases that really struck me.

Still, I honestly and truly only enjoyed four of the stories in their entirety. I could have done without the rest, even if impressed by some of them, like "Mother Rooney Unscrolls the Hurt." I felt acutely depressed while reading that one, but as it went on I felt other things and none those feelings were pleasant. By the end, Mother Rooney had turned into a grotesquery that made me glad I was finished with the book.

There was at least one story that made me wonder what the hell I had just read. His characters are complexly pathetic and often surprisingly self-aware though that doesn't prevent them from being people you wouldn't want to meet in real life. Most of his male characters are psuedo intellectuals or macho lugs and the women absent or a bit despicable. He indulges in a casual usage of the n-word, which seems to me appropriate to the times and places in which the stories are set. Sex, when it happens, is sometimes rough, sometimes ridiculous. His settings include small 20th century Southern towns, the Civil War, the post-apocalyptic future, and Vietnam during America's war there.

The stories I did like quite a bit--each of them phenomenal--are: "Testimony of Pilot," "Midnight and I'm Not Yet Famous," "Our Secret Home," and "Eating Wife and Friends." All four are worthy of five stars and as unlike one another as an apple, an orange, a camel, and a seashell. I think that's what made it worthwhile though, as I say, there were places I didn't want to linger, characters I did not want to know, and emotions I prefer keeping tamped down. ( )