Читать книгу The Unsettling - Peter Rock - Страница 2

“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

“Novelist Rock (The Ambidextrist) gathers 13 odd, haunting tales in a collection that borrows elements from genre fiction (the ghost; the stalker; the hitchhiker) while paying homage to literary lights (to Chekhov explicitly; to Poe and, one suspects, Murukami).”

—PUBLISHERS WEEKLY

“Rock has an eye for detail, with lucid, confident metaphors reminiscent of Annie Proulx.”

—WALL STREET JOURNAL

“A solid representation of this writer’s mature work, notable for its detached intensity.”

—KIRKUS