An Evening Performance

The stories collected in > are easy to read, even gripping, and you might even end up sitting down and not getting up until you've finished the collection. Then you can go back and read your favorites again and again. Mine: "The Last of the Spanish Blood," "The Test," "Noise of Strangers." Read your favorites again and know that when Garrett (in the intro) calls the story a gift, he's speaking more truly than maybe even he realizes.

George Garrett is a consummate craftsman. There is no writer of short stories alive in America who can get you into a story faster than Garrett. If you want to learn how to write in this genre, there can be few better exemplars. It is true that you sometimes wish the stories ended more imaginatively, but they always do end inevitably--as they must. The pacing of Garrett's plots is always exactly right; his ear for dialogue never falters. The range of these stories is extensive, set as they are in small towns of the South (Florida), academic communities, military bases, Europe. The characters themselves include devilish boys, soldiers, mean-spirited academicians, small-town law. This collection, which will make you laugh and weep, is a book you'll want to travel with--it's definitely a book you'll be beating up.