Posts by Angus

Story Review: About Jessie Mae by James Purdy

About Jessie Mae is about, well, Jessie Mae. According to her distant cousin Myrtle, she is well-off but she is untidy and dirty. She leaves her jewelry…

Thoughts on Short Fiction: Angus’s Top Five Short Stories (of the Year)

Let’s get straight to it: I cannot make a list of my five all-time favorite short stories. That is sheer torture considering the small number of spots…

Story Review: The Trouble with Mrs. Blynn, the Trouble with the World by Patricia Highsmith

The Trouble with Mrs. Blynn, the Trouble with the World is about the dying Mrs. Palmer and the last few concerns that she has in mind. She…

Story Review: Dumbness Is Everything by Harold Brodkey

Dumbness Is Everything is … wait. Let me just say that this piece may contain explicit language. So keep reading! With that out of the way, this…

Book Review: Tenth of December by George Saunders

Tenth of December is a collection of stories about the human condition as exposed to social and economic struggle. This I observed and noted in a reading…

Story Review: Going for a Beer by Robert Coover

Going for a Beer compresses a man’s story of beers and adulteries into a single paragraph of about a thousand words. It seems like an easy feat…

Story Review: The Tree Line, Kansas, 1934 by David Means

The Tree Line, Kansas, 1934 is about FBI agent Lee’s memory of a stake out that he was assigned to with a younger agent named Barnes. Now…

Story Review: Chablis by Donald Barthelme

Chablis is my first foray into what I now believe is the wonderful world of Donald Barthelme’s fiction. I’ve been wary of trying out his works before…