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Rating: 
Summary: Beautiful, haunting Southern short stories...
Review: I loved reading this collection of short stories. The stories are dark, haunting, beautiful, and some even heartwarming. Mark Richard's stories are quite similar to Faulkner's work in that they are set in the South and have a gothic, no-nonsense quality to them that make them unforgettable. Richard's voice is one of brutal honesty, and I found myself nodding in agreement with various passages. My favorite stories are "Happiness of the Garden Variety," "The Ice at the Bottom of the World," "On the Rope," "The Theory of Man," and "Strays." The one bad thing about this collection is its lack of popularity. I cannot believe that such a beautiful book could go almost unnoticed, but that is often the case with true literary offerings. I feel bad enough that it took me ten years to give this collection a whirl. Mark Richard is a brilliant storyteller and I would have liked it if he had written other works. I shall give this wonderful piece of work all the word of mouth it deserves.
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Summary: The Ice at the Bottom of the World
Review: I've never read a short story collection like this one. I've since read it dozens of times and have sought out everything written by Mark Richard. The most frustrating thing about his books is that he doesn't write them fast enough.
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Summary: Macabre, hilarious, desperate, heartwarming
Review: Macabre, hilarious, desperate, heartwarming, Mark Richard's collection is stunning in its stark juxtaposition of a gamut of emotions and moods. The prose is sparse, and all the more evocative because of it. The world Richard depicts is itself sparse - his characters take their comfort where they can. It is a world of immense cruelty and immensely harsh beauty. There is pain in this washed out, painted over landscape of mudflats, fairgrounds and burning shacks, but also a piercing redemptive vision. As I read I found the first story superlative, then the next, then the next, right to the end. Books may not change your life, but this one may well leave its images searing your imagination for a long time. When I consider the lack of attention Mark Richard has received for his fiction, I'm tempted to believe there's no justice in the world at all, but then I realise that for such a gem of a book to exist at all is a kind of secret miracle. Witness it while you can.
Rating: 
Summary: Shame on Doubleday
Review: Mark Richard is simply the best current short story writer (with some competition from Tom Franklin). While no single story in this collection rivals Richard's "masterpiece," the story BIRDS FOR CHRISTMAS collected in CHARITY, each piece is subtle, precise, brilliant.However, the overall enjoyment of the book is hampered somewhat by the shameful job performed by the publisher (Doubleday). ICE AT THE BOTTOM OF THE WORLD feels like it's printed on two-ply paper towels shoved between dry cleaning shirt cardboards which serve as the cover. You worry something must be wrong with the book because the publisher did such a cost cutting - dismissive job in producing it.
Rating:
Summary: Shame on Doubleday
Review: The other nine are Allan Gurganus' "White People;" Lorrie Moore's "Like Life;" William Vollmann's "Rainbow Stories;" Robert Olen Butler's "Good Scent from a Strange Mountain;" Lewis Nordan's "Sugar Among the Freaks;" Walter Mosley's "Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned;" William Trevor's "Collected Stories;" Thom Jones' "Pugilist at Rest" and all of A. S. Byatt's stories. Mark Richard has talents that are so profound they transcend quantification or qualification, and if we continue to neglect great writers--such as Richard--into oblivion by declining their generous and gracious gifts in favor of the tv or other numbstruck visual entertainments, we deserve the perceptual pabulum we consume and the distrophy of our hearts and brains that will surely accompany such suspect diets. Buy this book today. If you don't agree with me, send me an e-mail and tell me why.....END
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