I got this because it won a Bram Stoker Award for Superior Collection. I wanted to read some decent horror and this is set in the Tenderloin which contains some of my favorite areas in San Francisco. In particular I love the theatre district where many theatres rub up against dive bars and strip clubs in an uneasy alliance. There are some cool buildings here and Dashiell Hammett wrote The Maltese Falcon. The Tenderloin is its place, not cleaned up and prettified for the tourists and the yuppies - San Francisco needs more of that, frankly, otherwise it just feels like a big clean amusement park.

The stories in this were just okay for me. There were too many stories that were more or less the same story and I found that irritating. I actually preferred the brief mention of various recurring Tenderloin characters to the actual stories. It was all too predictable for me. Also bothersome were some repeated inaccuracies, mainly that Wild Irish Rose is whiskey. It's not whiskey - it's heavily fortified wine. I know this because it was liquor of choice for many of the hardcore alcoholics that frequented the Walgreen's in the Student Ghetto in Albuquerque. They drank it every day of the week except for Sundays when alcohol wasn't sold and they bought and drank Listerine.

This wasn't terrible, it was just too repetitious for me to really enjoy it, but it has its moments. Not terrible, not great - just okay. ( )

Despite the flavorful title, Gene O' Neill's Taste of Tenderloin doesn't feature eight stories dedicated to culinary tales, but instead it's his ode to the San Francisco Tenderloin District, bent on making the area a vivid, magical place all its own.

The first story, “Lost Patrol”, is not necessarily a traditional story with a beginning, middle and end. Instead it's a character profile, short, but vivid, with a delicate stretch of story surrounding it. Like an appetizer, there's not much here, but enough to get a good taste of what's to come.

Next comes “Magic Words”, an old school urban fantasy tale of dark magic and a mysterious homeless woman who one night, taking only a promise for the future as payment, gives a man the exact words he needed to move forward in his life. Unlike a lot of other stories, this one doesn't try to present a “be careful what you ask for” moral. Instead it just presents itself as it is, adding an element of mysticism to the Tenderloin.

“Tombstones in His Eyes” tackles the overlapping tales of the junkies on the street, using some very interesting symbolism. Again, O' Neill doesn't so much tell a story as present a character and their tale, in the good and bad, for the reader's viewing.

“Bushido” is also lovely, the tale of a man who finds salvation in the streets walking alongside doom. But the imagery and the climax bear a strong resemblance to the previous tale, and so it lessens some of the impact.

“Balance” follows a vet suffering from a disconnect with reality. It's hard to watch Declan's version of getting more control over the world around him, since he can't seem to control his own brain functions. But this story, like the other so far, is present unflinchingly, with little effort to make the reader sympathize with the characters. Instead O' Neill just beckons you to come and listen.

With “The Apotheosis of Nathan McKee” O'Neill ties the people of the Tenderloin and the stories in this collection together firmly, making each minor, barely mentioned character the owner of their own story. Nathan, interchangeable with the attack victim in “Bushido”, discovers a beating has left him not only for with a complete lack of desire for the booze he used to drug himself, but it's given him a unique ability. Only he's not quite sure what to do with it. The first overall positive tale, without a bittersweet touch, it possesses a delicate aspect of intriguing urban fantasy.

In “Bruised Soul” Mickey D, an ex boxer abandoned to the streets by time and suffering from damage taken through the length of his career, hits the streets after a stint in a mental facility, only to discover the good things have gotten that much worse in his absence and the bad things, of course, never change. It's his new neighbor that piques his interest this time around, an exotic woman named Jenna who seems to have a peculiar ability. Threaded just as finely is an end question, what is real and what has Micky D imagined, without the heavy-handedness of other stories.

Finally is “5150”, the first first person story in the collection. Here the lead might not seem like a true member of the Tenderloin, but by the sad, shattering end of this cop's life you can see every character story so far caught up in this one tale.

Readers should be warned that these characters seem fleshy and real, their tales often dark and hopeless. It is easy to get pulled into the hopeless feeling of this collection.

Taste of Tenderloin is a tight network of precise details and emotion presented, but firmly held back from influencing the reader in each story. A delicate balance of realism, surrealism and unique storytelling makes it a compelling read. ( )

From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. Haunting, lyrical and often uncomfortably realistic, this slim collection of eight short stories plunges the reader into the darker side of San Francisco. Altered states of consciousness—minds changed by grief, chemistry or too much hard living—are everywhere. In Magic Words, an advertising executive pays a homeless woman a high price for transient success. Poignant and plausible almost to a fault, Tombstones in His Eyes twists the horrors of drug addiction into something harder, sharper and scarier. In The Apotheosis of Nathan McKee, a brokenhearted father's descent into insanity—or is it merely invisibility?—makes normalcy seem all too tenuous. The best story of the bunch, 5150, documents the final moments of a worn-out cop about to retire. O'Neill's deft, authentic prose resonates with the weight of sad reality, erasing the line between knowledge and fear. (Aug.)
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