Overview
"An entire book of good stories. . . . [Leung] gains trust the old-fashioned way—through confidence, craftsmanship and compassion. There are no shortcuts here, no tricks or gimmicks, no glib patinas to conceal weak underpinnings. . . . This is a book about loss, twined irrevocably with hope, a hope that surges below the surface of all life. . . . Read [it] and see a bold new writer making himself vulnerable on the page. He gives us all hope."—Chris Offutt
Born to a Chinese father and Euro-American mother, Brian Leung is a native of California, where he is now an assistant professor at California State University, Northridge. He received an M.F.A in creative writing from Indiana University.
Synopsis
Winner of the 2002 Mary McCarthy Prize in Short Fiction, selected by Chris Offutt.
Kirkus Reviews
Eleven elegiac debut stories, winner of the 2002 Mary McCarthy Prize, about the fragility of people's connections both to one another and to their roots. Most of the pieces tie back in one way or another to Blue Falls, Washington, a classic American small town fallen on hard times. In "Six Ways to Jump Off A Bridge," Parker, a retired Chinese-American chicken farmer, stands on his deck to watch police investigate a suicide on the nearby bridge built as a tourist attraction over Blue Falls and considers what constitutes the irrevocable moment that led a stranger to suicide or cost Parker his relationship with his only daughter. That daughter appears later in "Who Knew Her Best," transformed into a porn star named Zen and facing her own irrevocable moment. In "Good Company," Madeleine, who runs a Blue Falls diner, fights intrusive commercial development of the town while being invaded herself by cancer, and in "Desdemona's Ruin," Madeleine's sister, having left Blue Falls years earlier, waits too long to return. Dexter of "Executing Dexter" is a baby made of bread with which two Blue Falls fourth-grade outsiders-a middle-class black newcomer and his white trash friend-act out their anger and neediness. Several stories deal with characters who share Leung's Chinese heritage. "White Hand" confronts issues of ethnic allegiance directly, but the ethnicity of the separated couple in "Dog Sleep" is only another undercurrent in their marital discord. Other tales focus on gay men, with a refreshing emphasis on the emotional rather than sexual. In "Leases," a man recommits himself to his wife in the apartment where for years, with her knowledge, he has met gay lovers. Finally, in the title story, alongtime gay couple take a cross-country road trip to discover the true parameters of their love. With quiet sureness, first-timer Leung offers stories almost radical in their humane inclusiveness.