If the Sky Falls: Stories

I'm surprised that this collection of short stories hasn't gotten more attention. Each story is dark, stressful, compelling, character-driven, and well-written. One of my favorite stories is the stressful (in a good way) "Notes to a Future Self" about a brother reluctantly helping his sister who is in an abusive relationship. Montemarano's world is dark, but touching at the same time.

Rising literary star Nicholas Montemarano cuts to the chase. Each kernel of conflict is immediately apparent in his stories, accompanied by a pregnant air of frustration that seems sure to yield some rash outburst. Montemarano's new short-story collection If the Sky Falls sees him creating dark, self-contained worlds with little exposition, then populating each with a pack of troubled souls, often estranged family members or worn-down regular stiffs. "Sometimes you're not a very nice person," complains a disabled man to his caregiver, who narrates the story `Shift'. This gratingly nervy, self-conscious narrator loosely binds the stories together, as he probes each soft spot in family relations, each point of implication passed by matter of course. All the while, the egoism of our nameless narrator remains indelible. In `Shift', domestic routine and the demands of his charges, a convalescent couple, push him closer to the end of his work-day, and potential catastrophe. A crass carelessness on the part of the caregiver combines with a husband's petty instinct to initiate a battle of wills at the outset. "Don't leave them sharp, he says. I want them smooth. That way I won't scratch myself. His arm jabs near my face. I cannot hold his hand in place long enough to file his nails. Have you seen the scratches on my legs? he says. The closer his arm gets to my face the more his arm shakes. I tell myself I am not going to flinch. I would rather he hit me. I would rather he break my nose. Your eyes flutter like butterfly wings, he says. What happened? Did your mommy smack you around? He looks at his wife in her chair. Do you see his eyelids? he asks her. She opens her mouth wide, which means she's laughing, then she drools on her shirt. He tells me to wipe her chin. Our little butterfly boy, he says." Sacrificing punctuation to the gods of sparsity, Montemarano drives the pocket absurdities in his prose past the reader with barely a pause. The embedded dialog becomes repetitive, lulling one into acceptance of various off-beat scenarios: one man, emotionally shattered after his girlfriend's death, drives to a clinic to have himself shot; another throws a girlfriend's dog out of a residential high-rise; still another group of unfortunates are kidnapped and tortured over their nonexistent relationships with a man named Greg November. Each story explores a microcosm, a strange reality created or unchallenged by insular characters. In `Note to Future Self', a woman in an abusive relationship calls to ask her twin brother to help her get out. Extricating his sister from this situation becomes a battle for the narrator. Real danger mixes with a neurotic imagination to produce his particular brand of anxious cowardice. Themes of abandonment and familial spite found here and throughout If the Sky Falls could certainly make lesser writing unbearable, but Montemarano's genuine insight into human behavior br

Having read both "A Fine Place" and this latest collection, "If the Sky Falls," I'm convinced that Montemarano is the most important new writer to watch. In the tradition of Joyce Carol Oates, Jayne Anne Phillips, Tim O'Brien, and Don DeLillo, these stories hit a nerve and don't let up. He does what the supposed whiz kids of the moment seem to be afraid of doing, writing what risks most without promising redemption, using measured doses of experimentation that, like O'Brien and Phillips, not only serve the story but are necessary to the story, and writing with heartbreaking honesty, an overused term, but one that is more than applicable here. Nicholas Montemarano is not only the best writer to come on the scene in over a decade, he competes with the greatest of novelists and short story writers. This book more than deserves all the buzz surrounding it.

What makes Montemarano's dark world so alchemical is the way in which he creates a mythology out of the broken morality, vicious hate, unrealized dreams, and the many other bleak threads from which our society is woven. There is a quiet strength that runs through these stories. It is the strength of real self-taught morality. It is the strength of a person who is not afraid to examine the world around him. It is the strength of honesty. There is risk everwhere, and major accomplishment. This is exceptionally good work. If you are interested in contemporary literature, you should read Montemarano.