The Evil B.B. Chow and Other Stories

I'm normally not a big fan of short stories. I buy anthologies and feel lucky to find one story that doesn't bore me to tears. So I guess I wasn't too disappointed when I attended a writing conference in New York to find that "The Evil B.B. Chow and Other Stories" had sold out and all that was left was "Candyfreak." It's hard to be bored by candy. But I enjoyed reading "Candyfreak," so I tracked down a few of Steve Almond's stories online. Well, OK, several stories. None of which bored me, and a few of which I liked. I felt I owed it to him to buy his book(s). My personal favorites here were "The Problem of Human Consumption" and "Summer, As In Love." Almond is at his best when writing about star-crossed and otherwise failed love affairs. These stories struck me as more romantic than the ones in his first collection, "My Life In Heavy Metal," which I suspect would have a greater appeal for young men (although I liked "Valentino"). On the lighter side, "The Soul Molecule" was also weirdly enchanting. I have only a few niggling criticisms. The ending of the title story seemed too dramatic for the story. The main character in "I Am As I Am" seemed too adult in his viewpoint (which may have been intentional). And I won't even go into stallions versus soldering guns. These were all petty in the scheme of things. What I really didn't get was "Larsen's Novel." I mean, I (apparently) lead a more sheltered life than Larsen, but from the excerpts I guess his book was about as inspired as my own first endeavor. Is Almond hinting at something here? Like maybe this is why I can't sell my first novel? This is more truth than I'm prepared to handle in my current fragile state.

A book of short stories is like a box of chocolates. No, no, just kidding. But Steve Almond's second collection of short fiction, "The Evil BB Chow and Other Stories" certainly is a delicious treat. Almond most recently garnered critical acclaim for his non-fiction book, "Candy Freak," a tale of one man's quest to record (and consume) the last independent candy bars in the U.S. While not fiction, the book showcased Almond's gift to mix serious and bust-your-gut funny scenes into one narrative. A talent that has blossomed since his first collection of stories, "My Life in Heavy Metal.," which was more autobiographical, full of self-depreciating humor and well worth a read. In "The Evil BB Chow," he now uses humor to even better effect, catching the reader off guard with hilarious phrases and insights, making the sum of his scenes equal to more than their parts. He has upped the ante for his characters as well, creating intimate portrayals of everyday life that delve into very difficult situations, with dire consequences. In the title story, we learn how a smart, savvy woman falls for a schlub, only to regret it. "Appropriate Sex" is the story of a college teacher's flirt with disaster, in the form of a student who isn't "interested in appropriate sex." In my favorite story, "The Soul Molecule," the narrator, Jim, finds himself being initiated into a family of "abductees" over brunch. At the point when the family has laid it all out, and Jim realizes they are not kidding and are waiting for him to accept their truth, he stops and notes, "It was that look you get from any kind of true believer, this mountain of pity sort of wobbling on a pea of doubt." There are disturbing stories here as well: "I Am As I Am" is about a teenager who accidentally smashes a catcher's head with a bat in pick-up ball game; "The Problem of Human Consumption," in which a widower and his daughter trying to move on, and "Skull," which offers much more than we ever wanted to know about a girl with one eye. The only sour note for me was the lengthy "Lincoln, Arisen," not so much because it was hard to follow, but more because it didn't seem to fit with the collection. A period piece, albeit with a fantasy slant, and a pattern of surreal dream sequences just knocked me out of "The Evil BB Chow"'s enjoyable universe. Overall, this is definitely a blue-ribbon book. Almond's style is incredibly pleasing, flowing from the page in a stream of clarity and carrying the reader through both the heartbreakingly sad and the uproariously funny. Almond is the kind of writer who you wish was your friend, so that, maybe over drinks at a bar, he might continue to tell you the stories that wouldn't fit in the book.

Steve Almond's obsession to satisfy his sweet tooth fueled the intelligence and humor of 2004's "Candyfreak." It's not surprising, then, that the characters inhabiting the dozen stories in "The Evil B.B. Chow" are "freaks," though of a less carb-addicted variety. Instead of chasing after elusive GooGoo Clusters and Owyhee Butter Toffees, "Chow"'s characters attempt to capture and retain love, redemption, and acceptance. Almond's humanity and empathy -- not to mention his sharp, elegant prose (the final paragraph of the title story could've been cribbed from Fitzgerald); his steady pacing; his handling of occasionally shocking (but never gratuitous) sexual material; and his ability to orchestrate surprising-yet-inevitable character reversals -- make this collection sweeter than "Candyfreak" and weightier than his first story collection, "My Life in Heavy Metal." Razor-sharp humor balances the book's recurrent failed relationships, deaths, feelings of loneliness and acts of deceit, but Almond's more interested in epiphanies and ambiguity than cheap yucks. Plus, Almond demonstrates that the best humor stems from loss, which means that if we're laughing along with Maureen and Marco (from the title story) over the epithets she's assigned her exes -- "Behind the Music" Man, The Incredible Rowing Man, The Sperminator -- our tone is slightly shameful and nervous because we've all labeled our failures similarly, or, worse, we wonder how we've been labeled. Ultimately, though, Almond's stories have more to do with the ripple effect of isolated moments than with reductionist labels. In one of the collection's more powerful stories, "I Am As I Am," a single swing of a bat at a pick-up baseball game shows how fate and circumstance can shatter a boy's preconceived notions about security, permanence, community, and self. In "The Problem of Human Consumption," a widower and his daughter simultaneously and silently remember a day with the deceased wife/mother, but from very different perspectives. This memory at once explains the father & daughter's distance and their unspoken connection. "Human Consumption" also contains one of the book's many thematically resonant passages: "These are the mysteries that consume [Paul] as he sits on his daughter's bed with his hands in his lap. They [the mysteries] matter as much as any of the others, the fact that people die for no good reason, that they choose to hate when love becomes unbearable, that a certain part of them, starved of happiness, gives up, shuts down, goes into hiding." Where there's hiding there's seeking, and plenty of stories are about seeking for things lost long ago -- usually blind love or blissful naiveté. (In Almond's world the two are synonymous.) Though he keeps intrusions to a minimum, a narrator will occasionally note characters caught in a significant moment as it's happening, flash forward and then note both how the characters interpret the present moment from the future and

Almond's best stories to date---isn't it strange to encounter a writer who treats the human condition with such gravitas? A powerful collection.

I've read all of Steve Almond's books, the first one cold, at that (My Life in Heavy Metal), and I was instantly hooked. In The Evil BB Chow, Almond continues to dazzle without being showy, with amazing, poetic economy. Almond's words linger after you've read them, and you will find yourself thinking about certain stories days later. The Evil BB Chow may single-handedly pull the lost art of short story writing back from the abyss. Whether you're a writer yourself, or just like really compelling prose, you can't go wrong following Steve Almond from project to project.