"These stories take you on a sardonic ride as curvy as it is bodacious. Sardonic, curvy, bodacious. Yeah, that's what I said."
--Julie Ann Weinstein, Flashes From the Other World
The Confession Booth9 Odd Stories of People In Motion (fiction)
by David Boyne
Book Description
Lively, offbeat, short stories set in New England, Manhattan, San Francisco, and the rain-soaked Northwest. From the darkly hilarious lampoon, NEWTON'S COMEUPPANCE (the author's entry into the venerable shaggy dog genre) in which a beach-combing golden retriever discovers secret anti-gravity technology -- and the entire world is transformed -- for better and for worse. To THE CONFESSION BOOTH, in which a lean and hungry (and horny) young lawyer discovers emotional release -- as well as insightful career counseling -- inside the Pink Pussycat Theatre.
Other stories are quietly unsettling, and contain common themes and actions that may or may not be connected. In THE IMMIGRANT, we follow the history professor who may or may not have witnessed a murder, and who takes the book he finds under the body of a homeless man. The 11-year-old boy at the center of IN THE NAME OF THE FATHER, also steals a book, this time from the library in his home town.
In the story THE SURVIVOR , we experience the point-of-view of a middle-aged woman as she responds to the overwhelming power of accident. And in the story OUT IN THE COLD, we go inside the mind and world-view of a 19-year-old in the grip of rage.
Then there are stories of small-scale ridiculousness, including THE DAWN OF JOY, an oddly romantic "roommate from Hell" story. And BUMS: A NEW YORK CHRISTMAS STORY (which takes place in August... inside the Third St. Mens Shelter. Go figure.) In this over-the-top comic satire we get a big dose of large-scale ridiculousness that escalates into a city-wide riot.
Each story in this collection, while startlingly different, flows to an inevitable yet unexpected ending. And the reader senses what the characters have discovered: Their world has changed.
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