The Secret Goldfish
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
An extraordinary collection of short stories from an author who is set to become one of America’s leading literary voices.
In the tradition of Raymond Carver or Tobias Wolff, these are all-encompassing stories of the American psyche, of love and loss and of the landscape and its people.
A goldfish circles in its bowl, refusing to die, becoming the silent focus of a difficult family life; a pianist loses his talents as he is forced to question the meaning of love and commitment. Through a blend of lyricism and humour, these stories of ordinary human dilemmas take flight and become mythical and universal. David Means is a rare writer who transports us to the heart of what it is to be human.
Reviews
‘Means evokes a deep, troubling pathos without a speck of sentimentality. The same could be said of his work in general … Means is a fine writer, superior to many of his more famous contemporaries … His prose is now reliably well-judged, often masterful’ Michel Faber, Guardian
‘Means weaves punchy tales that arrive straight at the violent heart of a relationship. He writes in ‘A Visit From Jesus’: “The World, this world this great country of his, could eat anything, absolutely anything up.” Means shows us, with intense honesty, just how this is done’ Carl Wilkinson, Observer
‘The short story is Mean’s natural medium: in his hands it seems as elemental a form as the landscape from which he patiently carves it – he takes you to places you don’t want to visit, but makes you understand why you have to go there’ Daily Telegraph.
‘Short stories is a form at which he excels. Reading these stories is like being resensitised, woken up to the astonishing possibilities of language’ The Sunday Business Post
About the author
David Means was born and raised in Michigan. He now lives in Nyack, New York with his wife and twins.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The characters in this imaginative and penetrating story collection a man hounded by lightning strikes, a driver blown off the Mackinac bridge, a pianist whose fingers stop working, a woman who slaughters her boyfriend after ambiguous consultations with Jesus and the devil, a bog man roused from his shallow grave are beset by bolts from the blue. Sometimes the victims and sometimes the perpetrators of calamity, they struggle to extract meaning and the occasional glimpses of grace and beauty from the chaos and brutality that disrupt their lives. Means, author of the acclaimed story collection Assorted Fire Events, probes a broad range of social registers, from junkies and criminals festering in the postindustrial decay of northern Michigan's iron range to the chilly adulteries of the artsy New York haute bourgeoisie, linking them into a bleak, sometimes apocalyptic panorama of the precariousness of life in a country that "could eat anything, absolutely anything, up." His uncompromising vision rarely indulges anything more comforting than harsh poetic epiphanies, inexplicable moments of clarity gleaned from random encounters with destruction; the story "Michigan Death Trip," a litany of demise from nonnatural causes, is emblematic of the book's sensibility. But every so often, as with the titular goldfish who endures, and even prevails, when his tank is neglected by a family in the throes of divorce, a happy ending slips through.
