The Unsettling

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Peter Rock. The Unsettling

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“This first collection of short stories truly lives up to its title. To leave the reader squirming seems to be Rock’s point; he claims that the stories are ‘driven by my obsessions and confusions.’ They are told in heartbreaking tones, and it is difficult not to picture the scenes Rock describes. Librarians will appreciate the first story, ‘Blooms,’ in which two men painstakingly clean mold from a basement collection while one tells a bleak story of his time reading books to a woman who has found herself temporarily blind. Another story, ‘The Silent Men,’ is told by a waitress searching for her lost dogs and for an explanation for the two customers who come to her restaurant weekly to stare at their uneaten food, not speak, and leave enormous tips. As the narrator becomes driven to understand them, she begins to receive strange phone calls about her dogs. Finally, the most intense of the stories in this collection, ‘The Disentangling,’ weaves together the chronicles of three bizarre characters: a homeless boy, a bizarre forensic scientist, and a bored young paraprofessional desperate for a thrill. In all the stories, there is an attempt to focus on that blurry line between a delicious mystery and one that is truly maddening. The collection, although complex, will be read quickly in stolen moments.”

—BOOKLIST, STARRED REVIEW

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Now, read, she said.

And that’s how it always was, after that. There was nothing showy about it, as if she was alone, unlacing her shoes, unbuttoning her shirt as he began to read. He turned the lamp up high and moved it closer to her; her shadow twisted low across the opposite wall, attached to his by her hand, checking that he was there. He flexed his bare toes on the cool floorboards.

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