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Synopsis
Written with understanding and familiarity, these seven stories present characters who are coming into their own as they discover and rediscover themselves. In "Chuck Paa," a young man in flight from his mother seeks and finds employment in an upscale world, which can never quite become his own. The title story, "The Rose City," tells how a shared lost love brings together two friends who reunite to reflect on their past, their present, and what lies ahead. With the same insight and daring of The Danish Girl, The Rose City secures David Ebershoff's reputation as a writer of rare talent and sensitivity.
"[A] tender and darkly funny collection of stories." (The New York Times Book Review)
"Lyrical yet searingly graphic, it is truly literary territory. An important body of work." (Chicago Tribune)
Book Magazine
Absentee fathers, troubled mothers and emotionally seized young men populate this meditation on sexual identity. By far, the author is at his sharpest and most compelling when writing of adolescence: In "The Dress," which conjures the sweetly moving 1998 film My Life in Pink, a "girl-boy" is mesmerized by a trunk of old gowns, while in "Regime," a chubby preteen with shameful desires almost starves himself out of existence. The natural ease and warmth displayed in these stories is less evident in many of the other tales. For example, the dire, unsatisfying story "Chuck Paa," which opens the collection, is an unsavory narrative about a pitiable young man. It shares with several other pieces the tendency to lag and occasionally over-explain, to give certain actions undeserved significance. Though perhaps a little too neat, the book ends on a gratifying note, with the concluding story's young hero leaving his shame behind.
—Chris Borris
(Excerpted Review)