The View from the Seventh Layer

A great collection of short stories, very thought provoking. The "choose your own adventure" style story was a great "adult" version of the books I enjoyed as a child. I was also taken by the story with the ghost of Amy Elizabeth who haunts a priest and inspires him to produce inspriring sermons until he rejects her. There is even a tale about a Tribble for Star Trek fans. The tales were clever and imaginative and I enjoyed the whole book.

This collection of short stories are fabulous! I loved the Choose Your Own Adventure story, and "Little Slips of White Paper". I can't wait for Kevin's next book!

Kevin Brockmeier's writing in this book took my breath away. His use of language is awe-inspiring and his imagination is boundless. I am not, as a rule, a huge short story fan, but I couldn't put this book down and I can't wait for his next book. He touches places in the human heart and psyche that made me cry, gasp in recognition, and deeply remember. Finally, a great writer who inspires, asks questions and explores the human condition in deep ways, while at the same time entertaining.

The stories are real enough to bring tears to your eyes and fantastic in a way that makes you never want to leave. I can't wait for his next book- although there is something profoundly sad and a little disturbing about his writing. Reading "The View from the Seventh Layer" is like taking a vacation in an Escher print, and coming home to a Dali painting.

In a recent interview, Kevin Brockmeier described his approach to fiction in a way that could serve well as an apt summary of the contents of his captivating new short story collection: "I suppose I navigate the tension between the realistic and the fantastic largely by failing to recognize it," he observed, "though I don't know whether I would call this a working method or a blind spot. Typically, when I sit down to write, any fantasy I turn my mind to very quickly begins to seem stitched through with realism." By any measure, reality and fantasy mingle inextricably and with apparent ease in these 13 memorable stories. THE VIEW FROM THE SEVENTH LAYER contains four stories explicitly labeled "fables" that are among the most affecting in the collection. From a mute in a city where "everyone had the gift of song," who raises a collection of parakeets to share the sounds of his life ("A Fable Ending in the Sound of a Thousand Parakeets"), to a man who "happened to buy God's overcoat," only to discover the myriad prayers of humanity it housed ("A Fable With Slips of White Paper Spilling From the Pockets"), these stories boast the charm of a children's tale (not surprising, considering Brockmeier has authored two children's books) and yet are rich with mature emotion. The most strikingly original story in the collection is "The Human Soul as a Rube Goldberg Device: A Choose Your Own Adventure Story." It begins with the simple act of a man returning milk to a refrigerator. At the end of that two-page scene, the reader in effect becomes the protagonist of the tale, offered a choice between putting his "shoes on and going out for a walk" or "spending a quiet morning at home." Depending on that choice, and one made at the end of each subsequent scene, the reader is moved forward or back through the text until all choices eventually lead to the same ending, encompassing a heartbreaking tableau, "fading like a plume of smoke into the broken red skies of the city." Although the full piece covers 60 pages of text, the unique stories ensuing after each choice are much shorter, and the permutations of the tale feel infinite, inviting rereading in a spirit of experimentation and fresh discovery. Several of Brockmeier's stories are sharp and perceptive character studies. In the title story he introduces Olivia, a reclusive young woman who sells maps on a lush tropical island, her life the encapsulation of loneliness. "She would not been surprised," Brockmeier writes, "to learn that she had become invisible." Olivia categorizes people by the types of books they read, removes insects from the home of the widow who lives next door, and dreams of someone she calls "The Entity," who she imagines someday will come to claim her and end her emotional isolation. Another moving story is "Father John Melby and the Ghost of Amy Elizabeth." In it, a priest whose sermons are noteworthy principally for the yawns they induce in his congregants is visited by the spirit of a y