Aftermath review in The Collagist
Posted on 18. Apr, 2012 by Scott in Uncategorized
This is the kind of review writers fantasize about. Here are some highlights:
“At minimum, a writer’s writer—the “definition of obscurity,” according to Deborah Treisman, fiction editor of The New Yorker—does not reach the sizable audience he or she so richly deserves, despite placing work in respected literary periodicals and receiving a variety of awards. Operating in obscurity has its benefits, however: a writer’s writer often takes narrative risks that leave other capable writers agape with wonder…
The eight stories in Aftermath utilize a deep sense of place to reveal character and crank up the tension. The book balances the sophisticated turmoil of inner lives with just enough engaging plot elements to keep readers turning pages. Nadelson is comfortable writing about his native New Jersey, but bold—and skillful—enough to offer a story set in Jerusalem without it seeming like the work of a tourist, even if the characters in that story (”Oslo”) literally tour the city…
The collection’s bookends—”Dolph Schayes’s Broken Arm” and “West End”—are first-person narratives, but the six stories between them are told in the third person, a point of view that conveys Nadelson’s easy authority as he delves into the private lives of young men, boys, and couples in the midst of trouble. Critics looking to cast these off as mere domestic stories will find expansive, worldly complications throughout; history, politics, and religion are just three of the Big Ideas swimming laps in these rippling pools….”
Read the whole review here: http://www.dzancbooks.org/the-collagist/2012/4/13/aftermath-by-scott-nadelson-hawthorn.html