Emporium: Stories

Rating:
Summary: Shows Lots of Promise
Review: Make no mistake, Adam Johnson can write a mean short story, and maybe he will be the "next big thing," but the hype around this collection is perhaps more a reflection of his potential than of the stories themselves. His shtick (and I like it), is to explore very basic and universal themes, such as loneliness, coming of age, love, death, and other such favorites (often though teenage protagonists) in imaginative and slightly surreal, semi-absurd settings.

For example, in the first story we meet a teenage sniper who works for the Palo Alto police, dropping dot-com burnouts on a daily basis. While he does grapple with the issue of empathy, his more pressing concern is fitting in with the older guys and getting a date. The second story is about a night guard at a zoo who is tasked with killing certain animals each night, but the real story is about his attempt to relate to his son, who can't cope with his father no longer being a policeman. In these, and all the stories, Johnson manages to evoke of a lot of sympathy for his characters, as well as humor ranging from dark, to wry, to just plain funny. He's able to create these quirky, yet wholly believable settings (even the snowbound 1960s Canadian space research center), and populate them with characters you want to know more about All of this is accomplished with zero self-indulgence and a high level of prose.

Where the stories tend to falter a bit is the endings-they all end on pretty much the exact same note. Not quite despair, but the tangy hollowness of isolation. This wouldn't be a problem for a novel say, but when all the stories in a collection leave the same taste in the mouth at the end, it gets old. Still, Johnson is definitely a talent to watch for, and these stories do exhibit loads of promise, but they're not as completely stunning as some reviewers might lead you to believe....

Rating:
Summary: Believe the Hype!
Review: This is an amazing collection of stories, with characters and situations that are wildly imaginative and testosterone-laden (that goes for the female characters too!). Your Own Backyard is my favorite, a frantic but insightful tale of how a father finds himself trying to connect with his adolescent son, and The Canadanaut, the most bizarre story here, is just plain laugh-out-loud funny. My only reservation is with most of the endings; the author, in attempting to show that there really is no end to the stories of our lives, has a habit of cutting the ending short, which leaves the reader puzzled and frustrated. Still, a minor complaint about the most entertaining and thoughtful prose I've read in a long time. I look forward to more by Mr. Johnson.

Rating:
Summary: amazing collection
Review: This is easily one of the best short story collections I've ever read. "Your Own Backyard" alone is worth the cover price. Everything else is a bonus and an incredible bonus at that. These stories are strange and creepy and fiery while still managing to be grounded in the emotional terrain of family life, teen angst, the day to day strain of living. I first read "Your Own Backyard" years ago when it appeared in a Scribners collection of workshop fiction. It didn't feel like a workshop story then and it still doesn't. A reviewer said that they thought his stories smacked of the workshop mill. Nothing could be further from the truth.