A Stranger in This World

This marvelous debut collection heralded the introduction of a story teller with prodigious gifts. "A Stranger In This World" is inhabited by characters who are all on the outside, individuals who are alienated due to economics, talent or happenstance. And, they are all trying to cut their way out of the emotional nets that have snared them. Canty has the ability to enthrall readers with revealing narrative and a connoisseur's eye for significant detail. His opening lines compel further exploration, such as that found in "King of the Elephants": "The third time we put my mother in the hospital, my father and I had already moved to Florida, to Jacksonville Beach." Or, "Safety" begins with: "Marian is in the bedroom, Saturday afternoon talking to her sister on the telephone, when her two-year-old Will walks in with a plastic bag over his head." It might seem that the author's themes are gloomy; this is not the case. But rather they seem to reveal the contradictions found in every human being. Kevin Canty promised to be and is a writer we will neither ignore or forget. - Gail Cooke

Canty's first collection of stories explores ordinary lives at moments of fateful decision, and human nature at its most consciously perverse. In simple, atmospheric prose, Canty climbs inside his characters' heads, examining their motivations, whims, memories and desires, all of which go into their next action - the one that's going to affect life for some time to come. The stories are told from a single point of view although Canty uses both first-person and third-person narration, and writes in either present or past tense. In the opening story, "king of the elephants," a boy on the edge of manhood is caught between self-preservation and guilt, misery and the unknown. His father is a drunk and his mother is a crazy drunk who's just turned up in a hospital 1,500 miles away. The narrator's first decision - will he tell his father about the call or cut his ties with his mother right then? Each step of the way the boy, impelled by conscience, chooses misery until the reader, relieved by the boy's sense of responsibility, wonders if he will ever be strong enough or selfish enough to preserve himself. Where "king of the elephants" is poignant, "pretty judy" is shocking, repellant. Paul, 15, "wanted this to be happening in his imagination." "This" is his shame-ridden sexual obsession with a retarded neighbor. Canty's language brings all of Paul's confused, hot-wired, charged feelings to the surface, boiling with the desire to do the right thing without giving up the wrong thing. Where the ending to "king of the elephants" offers a certain release of tension in inevitability, the end of "pretty judy" cranks up the tension with consequences unfolding into the story's unseen future. Canty's unhappy characters watch themselves with helpless detachment. In "Safety" Marian is a bored, frazzled wife and mother of a two-year-old whose marriage is falling apart. Marian observes her resentments, bitter words and coldness with a vicious self-hatred and satisfaction known to us all. In "Junk," Parker is more deeply mired in self-loathing - the habit of years of drug and alcohol abuse and a fascinating dissolute wife. Although he has made a new start the reappearance of his wife undoes him in a moment: "There is no other life...the person that you are is the person you're going to be." Even from such fatalism, he views his irrevocable decisions with a sour detachment that leaves all the "if-onlys" pitiably attached. Self-deception is a favorite theme, along with the self-knowledge we bury; the family ties that bind, the unhappiness we choose. "It was like I had two parts of my brain," says one character and it's this duality of nature Canty most successfully explores. A few stories, like "great falls, 1966," in which a man who may or may not be dying is caught in the wrangling of his son and grandson are wholly enigmatic; a few, like "dogs, " are wholly fatalistic, or, like "the victim" describe a series of events mostly beyond the central character's con

This book really caught me off-guard. I bought it because of the sultry-looking young man on the cover, but it was the writing inside that really made me tingle. These are the types of stories that have waited since the dawning of man to be written: a young man torn between his dysfunctional parents and the life that awaits him if only he could break the ties that bind; a recovering drug addict haunted by a former lover and a past he can never escape; a disgruntled dog catcher finds his conscience; a young Gen-X couple lured to a double-wide trailer by the sea and disaster. These are stories about the ignored, the allegedly "inconsequential" members of our society. Kevin Canty writes with stark honesty about their lives and thoughts, and reveals their lives to be far more interesting, shocking, and heart-wrenching than one could have ever suspected. Simply brilliant!

Kevin Canty- please write more books! If you are still teaching creative writing at UM- do that too! Don't sleep, just write. I never knew where to expect this book to take me, but enjoyed the ride all the way. The upside down trailor- genius!

This collection of short stories is succinct, smart and, best of all, not condescending to the stories' characters or the reader. Each story is compact and powerful. Canty's writing style is simple and beautiful. I consider this one of the best contemporary short story collections. Please read it! Best Stories: Dogs and Pretty Judy.