Synopses & Reviews
American Falls is the first major collection of short stories from Barry Gifford, master of the dark side of the American reality. These stories range widely in style and period, from the 1950s to the present, from absurdist exercises to romantic tales, from stories about childhood innocence to novellas of murder and revenge.
In the title story, a Japanese-American motel operator chooses not give up a total stranger, a black man wanted for murder, when the police come searching for him. In "Room 584, The Starr Hotel," a man rants his outrage at an amorous couple in the room next door before he himself is arrested for having committed multiple murders. "The Unspoken" recounts the confessions of a man without a mouth who tells about the woman who loved him. And in this collections longest fiction, a novella called "The Lonely and the Lost," a small towns talented and colorful inhabitants solve their problems as best they can until it comes time for the devil to reap what they have sown.
Dark and light intermix in masterful chiaroscuro, dark becoming light, light revealing sinister or brooding complexity. No simple endings, only happy beginnings.
Synopsis
- From the award-winning author of Night People, Wild at Heart, Perdita Durango, and Wyoming
About the Author
The author of more than forty published works of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, which have been translated into more than twenty-five languages, Barry Gifford is an American writer in the European tradition, an hommes des lettres. His novel Wild at Heart was made into a film by David Lynch. The author of more than forty published works of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, which have been translated into more than twenty-five languages, Barry Gifford is one of the few contemporary American writers whose characters are familiar to audience around the world. Gifford lives in the San Francisco Bay area.