Welcome Thieves
Stories
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
“Funny and propulsive” short stories blending black humor and sharply intelligent imagination (Sam Lipsyte, author of The Fun Parts).
In twelve virtuosic stories, Sean Beaudoin trains his absurdist’s eye on the ridiculous perplexities of adult life. From muddling through after the apocalypse (“Base Omega Has Twelve Dictates”) to the knowing smirk of “You Too Can Graduate with a Degree in Contextual Semiotics,” Beaudoin’s stories are edgy and profane, bittersweet and angry, bemused and sardonic. Yet they’re always tinged with heart.
The author of Wise Young Fool, The Infects, and You Killed Wesley Payne follows in the tradition of Vonnegut and Saunders with “a deviously spellbinding collection of short stories,” filled with playfulness, pathos, and a variety of young protagonists struggling to adapt to the bizarre and sometimes brutal world of adulthood (Garth Stein).
“The character-driven tales are darkly comedic, filled with misfits like Primo and The Albatross, Danny and Steak, Sad Girl, Razr and Roy Boi, and Butterfly and Cher—characters so compelling that they are at once savage and powerless, redemptive and sardonic. . . . [They] fill the pages of Welcome Thieves, their complexities and frailties enough to recommend Beaudoin as a student and brilliant interpreter of human nature.” —The Kansas City Star
“Thrilling and mercilessly readable, the stories in Welcome Thieves go off like a string of firecrackers, sizzling and popping with a narrative velocity that is equal parts grit and polish. Beaudoin is definitely a writer to watch.” —Jonathan Evison, author of This Is Your Life, Harriet Chance!
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In his first collection of stories for adults, YA author Beaudoin (Wise Young Fool) captures the sardonic exasperation of late adolescence and early adulthood with sharp dialogue that's strung through set pieces, mixing the everyday and the absurd. Many of the characters are contumacious dreamers. In the opener, "Nick in Nine (9) Movements," a teenage boy in a hardcore band begins reluctantly to accept the responsibilities of adulthood before an offer from erstwhile bandmate Duff brings on an ironic revelation. The lingo is snappy in sections, but often falls flat: "He's won a partial scholarship to a place in Ohio... Something State. Dude name of Pell good for a grant." In the later stories, Beaudoin leaves behind the acerbic wisenheimers for more reflective, truly humorous characters such as young Krua in "Base Omega Has Twelve Dictates," who lives in a surreal, dark encampment run by Larry Our Leader. In the standout, "Tiffany Marzano's Got a Record," Jake and Tiffany haul donated belongings of the recently deceased amid an unnamed health crisis in 1992 San Francisco. Jake, who worries that "the virus is secretly eating into his brain, occluding his thoughts," finds an ally in fellow outsider Tiffany. Beaudoin is a clever, if sometimes cloying, guide to the comical, awkward, and revelatory cusp where youthful levity becomes maturity.
