Red Ant House

Every story in the collection is beautifully written, but the title story is, honestly, one of my all time favorite short stories!

These stories of drifting, down-and-out, disenfranchised characters searching for redemption read with the bleakness of the landscape of one of Georgia O'Keeffe's Southwestern paintings - which is no coincidence as that is the setting. The circumstances of each of these stories are odd, a fact that adds to their drawing power. We get to peek behind the scenes within a hypnotist's trailer as well as within the mind of a child waiting to meet a man who may be a pedophile.Author Cummings' stories take place in the realm of endless deserts and bleached skies, and her brilliant prose sears with the power of a relentless sun.Super-fine.

If you like impeccable prose combined with the dark details that make us all human, mixed in with a little surrealism, this collection is for you. Ann Cummins is a masterful writer--no wonder she gets the great quote from Dave Eggers!--and I will look forward to her future work. Each one of these stories packs a very powerful punch and will leave you emotionally affected, no matter how tough you think you are. :)

2003 is shaping up to be a really great year for short story lovers. Already this year John Murray published "A Few Short Notes on Tropical Butterflies," ZZ Packer published "Drinking Coffee Elsewhere," and now Ann Cummins gives us the terrific "Red Ant House." These stories are the best single collection I've read since Flannery O'Conner published "A Good Man is Hard to Find." The characters are real and the stories are memorable. I've read Cummins in the "New Yorker" and in the "Best American Short Stories," but it is a real treat to have 12 of her stories in one book. She's just about as good as it gets when it comes to short stories. Happy reading!

Ann Cummins is fantastic! I read the title story in McSweeney's and then flipped when I found out about this collection. Her stories, mostly concerning working class folk, are both tender and brutal. the OilCan highly recommends