"Bobby Gould meets Raskolnikov in Michael Rectenwald's story collection, which pops around from New York to Florida to L.A. to Pittsburgh. No location, however, is rendered as vividly as the minds of the collection's tormented protagonists. Guilt, remorse, self-loathing: that's what these guys eat for breakfast. They're a rogue's gallery of drunks, debtors, failed husbands, failed poets, failed professors, and if they're not under arrest they think they should be, or want to be, plead to be, or remember when they were. They ...
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"Bobby Gould meets Raskolnikov in Michael Rectenwald's story collection, which pops around from New York to Florida to L.A. to Pittsburgh. No location, however, is rendered as vividly as the minds of the collection's tormented protagonists. Guilt, remorse, self-loathing: that's what these guys eat for breakfast. They're a rogue's gallery of drunks, debtors, failed husbands, failed poets, failed professors, and if they're not under arrest they think they should be, or want to be, plead to be, or remember when they were. They lust, connive, accuse, prevaricate, contemplate murder, contemplate suicide. But they're capable of a kind of crude poetry. One says, 'Misery loves company, but ecstasy and despair have one thing in common; they want to be left alone.' Another says, 'I was going to pick up my second wife's stepdaughter of her third marriage. That was supposed to feel normal.' Normal in Rectenwald's America is, at best, hair-pulling anxiety, and at worst, much worse. One thinks of the forlorn losers of Raymond Carver, stuck in the predicaments of Franz Kafka. Throughout, one laughs. With recognition. To keep from crying." -- Tim Tomlinson, fiction editor, Ducts (... co-founder, New York Writers Workshop
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Add this copy of The Thief and other Stories to cart. $6.43, new condition, Sold by Ingram Customer Returns Center rated 5.0 out of 5 stars, ships from NV, USA, published 2013 by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform.
Add this copy of The Thief and Other Stories to cart. $24.35, good condition, Sold by Bonita rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Newport Coast, CA, UNITED STATES, published 2013 by CreateSpace Independent Publis.
Add this copy of The Thief and Other Stories to cart. $52.63, new condition, Sold by Bonita rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Newport Coast, CA, UNITED STATES, published 2013 by CreateSpace Independent Publis.
