Don't Make Me Stop Now: Stories by Michael Parker

From the Publisher

In these funny, heartbreaking, and frighteningly perceptive stories, Michael Parker shows us, for better or worse, the mechanics of the male mind. The men here—no matter how culpable, deceptive, idealistic, dangerous, flirtatious, gullible, undecided, obsessed, callous, or illogically logical—trust in the power of love and in the women who reel them in or do their best to leave them behind.

Publishers Weekly

Love's unfortunate side effects dominate the majority of stories in Parker's latest (after If You Want Me to Stay), in which characters, haunted by romances past, are frequently driven to extremes. In "I Will Clean Your Attic," Laura, desperate for companionship after her husband leaves her, befriends handyman B.R. Bradshaw after a freak winter storm buries her Southern town in snow and ice. In "Muddy Water, Turn to Wine," college dropout James, who is just beginning to recover from a year-old breakup, takes waitress Erin on a road trip to her father's funeral the morning after their one-night stand. In "The Right to Remain," Sanderson is so devastated by the departure of his girlfriend that he burns his house down in a bid to win back her affection. Though most stories sympathetically treat emotionally wounded or stunted characters, "Hidden Meanings, Treatment of Time, Supreme Irony, and Life Experiences in the song `Ain't Gonna Bump No More No Big Fat Woman' " is an unwieldy one-off in the form of a critical essay penned by a jilted woman. Parker's prose is pristine, but readers may tire of similarly suffering protagonists. (Jan.) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

A collection chock-full of breakups and breakdowns-just about everybody here is in the midst of a downward spiral or unwittingly beginning one. But that's not to say that these latest stories by Parker (If You Want Me to Stay, 2005, etc.) are all downers. Though many of the men he writes about (and they are mostly men) have slipped into alcohol, drugs or just garden-variety dissolution, his prose is efficient and Carver-esque, with little moral posturing. And he has a sense of humor: One story, framed as a term paper by a mediocre college student, devolves from an earnest attempt to parse the meaning of a novelty hit into a rant about a split with a boyfriend to a lecture about the professor's own prejudices; its wild discursiveness gives the story both depth and a comic lift. The best are empathetic but clearheaded portraits of folks who've hit the skids: The narrator of "The Right to Remain" is well aware of how drinking has wrecked his relationships but can't bring himself to stop stalking his ex, and the narrator of "What Happens Next" is constantly shadowed by the memory of how his grandmother died on his watch when he was a reckless teen. And the finest piece in the collection, "Go Ugly Early," neatly captures two decades of domestic worry and regret in a mere 20 pages-if the narrator had only had one or two fewer drinks, he wonders, would he have wound up with the right woman instead of the one he married? Parker knows his characters deeply, has his style down and isn't budging from his chosen theme, so any flaws here are mainly matters of execution. A story in which a reconciling couple go gem-mining is almost hackneyed in plot and setting, and "Everything Was Paid For" is anoverlong and unconvincing tale of a crank addict's increasing confusion about his-and his girlfriend's-loyalties. Overall: solid, carefully composed glimpses into domestic dysfunction.

What People Are Saying

“Only Michael Parker can tell a story you don’t want to quit about folks you don’t want to leave. . . . He has us all in mind—all of us who are needy and scared and running fast from the past, all of us who believe in magic and miracle, all of us beleaguered and bewitched by love.” —Lee K. Abbott

Product Details

• Table of Contents

Table of Contents