Another Perfect Catastrophe: And Other Stories

Barkley is a master storyteller. In this collection of finely crafted fiction, we meet ordinary people who grapple with ordinary dilemmas -- fractured marriages, friendships that can no longer be sustained, impending death, loss, boredom, love, and longing. These stories compel with their honesty and attention to the small details of everyday life. Barkley mines the exchanges between parents and adult children, husbands and wives, friends, and lovers, and brings these stories alive with subtlety, humor, and poignancy. Barkley's characters have the kinds of quirkiness that makes them memorable -- from Tommy Kesler's trick of folding paper lanterns and setting them on fire in "The Way It's Lasted," to the incomparable Lisk in "Those Imagined Lives," who concocts a plan to hunt a Chevy Impala in the Utah desert (to name just two). This collection explores the intricacies of the human heart, how that heart merges with others, cracks, repairs. Barkley's range shines in this collection, especially in the title story ("Another Perfect Catastrophe"), "Those Imagined Lives," "19 Amenities," "The Small Machine," and "St. Jimmy." Each story ends with a quiet epiphany, a way of looking at the world that sustains and moves, and uncovers the extraordinary in the ordinary. I didn't want the book to end.

Barkley manages to serve tragedy with a side of humor certain to make you smile even as you find tears springing to your eyes. Never satisfied with the easy irony or pat answer, Barkley's stories speak to the human experience and all of its complexity. Smart, funny, and touching, these stories will live inside of you long after you have put the book down.

Barkley has the incredible ability to find the significant in the ordinary, the profound in the simple, from broken bottles to pieces of steel. Each story quietly draws from the stuff of everyday life and shows characters hemmed in and liberated by the objects that surround them. Wonderfully imaginative, humerous and smart. I loved this book.

At times hilarious, at times devastating, always captivating, this is a Must Read. Unlike so many contemporary writers, Barkley does not fall back on easy irony or smug judgment when presenting the fears and joys of his stunningly realistic characters. This is an author who loves his characters, despite their weaknesses, and you will love them too. A truly memorable collection.