My Life in Heavy Metal
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
From the New York Times–bestselling author and Dear Sugars columnist, an arousing story collection exploring modern love in the age of hook-up culture.
Steve Almond’s My Life in Heavy Metal presents twelve passion-fueled stories—including his Pushcart Prize-winning story “The Pass”—that take a clear-eyed view of relationships between young men and women who have come of age in an era without innocence. These are powerful and resonant stories of love and lust that bring to life a generation’s search for connection in a fragmented world.
In the title story, an El Paso newspaper clerk assigned to review the heavy metal bands playing local arenas is drawn in by the primal music, fueling a torrid affair with a Mexican-American woman that will change him forever. In “Geek Player, Love Slayer,” a thirty-three-year-old woman harbors a secret crush on the young computer repairman in her office-until her ardor is unleashed at an after-work party. In “Valentino,” two teenagers in their last summer before college experience a sexual awakening inspired by the romantic legend of a movie star from long ago.
A book The Guardian called “hip social satire,” My Life in Heavy Metal captures the moments when the fires of passion burn over and subside into embers of pain and longing.
“[A] gifted storyteller . . . [Almond] writes with a loose, anthropological humor.” —The New York Times Book Review
“Fourteen delightful debut stories.” —Kirkus Reviews, starred review
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This collection of 12 short stories is populated by some interesting characters in problematic situations and some not-so-interesting ones in situations familiar enough to be trite. The title story is an example of the latter, with its lackluster pop music critic caught in bed with a new conquest by his college lover. More successful is "Among the Ik," in which aging Professor Rodgers, uneasy with his adult children, recalls a bizarre experience from his early life in academia. Telling about it tests his coming to terms with widowhood; even a second reading of this poignant story is rewarding. "Geek Player, Love Slayer" is an update on the old-fashioned office romance and features a female reporter with a raunchy vocabulary that belies her 33 years. She engages in "lurid banter with Computer Boy" Lance, who can talk to machines. "How to Love a Republican" is thoroughly entertaining, with a James Carvill wannabe meeting his young Mary Matalin when they are in New Hampshire doing "issue work." The aftermath of the election dooms the romance, but the story is a humorous success. The narrator of "The Body in Extremis" is a 34-year-old composition teacher (Almond teaches creative writing at Boston College and Emerson College), who has an "essential problem": "Sexual ideation dominated my thoughts," he declares. This final story casts a narcissistic shadow over the preceding fiction, but there's enough intelligence, angst and humor woven through the collection to please the young audience at which it is aimed.
