Last Call by Blair Oliver, Kyle Torke (Editor), M. Stefan Strozier (Designed by)
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(Paperback)
- Pub. Date: August 2007
- 148pp
- Sales Rank: 381,178
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Product Details
- Pub. Date: August 2007
- Publisher: World Audience, Inc.
- Format: Paperback, 148pp
- Sales Rank: 381,178
- ISBN-13: 9781934209745
- ISBN: 1934209740
Synopsis
"Last Call is the most deserving collection I have read in a long, long time and I am silenced for how splendid and days later my heart still aches from reading these powerful stories about the contrary lives of the beings we call human."
--Robert Olmstead, author of Coal Black Horse, Stay Here With Me, and River Dogs
"In a stripped-down, elegant prose, Blair Oliver's collected short stories, Last Call, explores the disconnect between who we are, and who we believe we are; whether success or failure, child or parent, it is a process of discovery that uncovers the essential bits and pieces of what it means, finally, to be human. Told with a wry and lively wit, these stories range wide and hit hard. It's the rarest kind of treat-a collection you'll want to read and re-read."
--Claire Davis, author of Winter Range, Season of the Snake, and Labors of the Heart
"Last Call studies fathers, wives, husbands, and a geography that ranges from the Rocky Mountains to the pine barrens of coastal New Jersey. This is a collection of stories that hunts down the subject of marriage like a wary prey, circling it, repeating patterns with variations, observing both from a distance and up close. Blair Oliver captures the moments we fall out of love and its root causes in these beautiful and lean short stories."
--Brian Kiteley, author of Still Life with Insects, I Know Many Songs, But I Cannot Sing, and The 3 A.M. Epiphany
Customer Reviews
Last Callby Anonymous
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October 25, 2007: I encountered some essays by Blair Oliver in Yellowstone Journal and was hooked by the freshness of the voice and the honesty behind them not everything ended happy or beautiful. Since then, I kept hoping to find a collection of those pieces. Instead, I found this, a collection of short stories that just might be the most promising debut collection in years (and with Nathan Englander, Junot Diaz, and Nell Freudenburger out there, these have been very good years for the short story.) The stories blur the line between the comic and the melancholic, often mining humor out of unexpected places. The characters tend to be men who have fallen in love without ever liking their love objects. They are drawn to extreme behavior and respond inappropriately to the stuff of life. In other words, very real people with open flaws. Oliver draws them with unerring sympathy. It is this sympathy that gives this collection real heart.
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