These People Are Us

I wrote a review here when this book first came out, and somehow it's gone by the wayside, so here's part II which is more or less a faint memory of the first. Southerners often provide excellent characters for stories. Perhaps it's all the sweet potatoes, fried chicken, and mushroom-soup based casseroles that are consumed south of the Mason-Dixon that creates these masterful personality quirks that George captures so well. Every character he creates, I can not only envision, but tell you who they're related to, where they go to church, and what their drink of choice is. George, much like a character out of a Tom Waits song himself, writes from experiences and observations. He places the reader right in the heart of his narrators and creates a world around that's real enough to smell. He's just brilliant. The book...also brilliant.

With that we begin a trip, a trip down the backroads of the south. A trip that includes dogs benesth the porch, recycled beer cans, and midget plumbers! Everything that makes the South great!George has replaced Raymond Carver as my favorite short story writer.

No one writes like George Singleton. Every short story in this grand collection -- as good as, if not better than, J.D. Salinger's NINE STORIES -- is a classic gem. Told with tongue-in-cheek, "These People Are Us" views the world in Singleton's own inimitable vision, sliding through the cracks of life with a grand sweep. In stories that have been published in Playboy, Georgia Literary Review and other literary quarterlies, this collection sings as no other song can be sung. I wouldn't be a bit suprised if Singleton doesn't win the biggest awards in the land with this, his first book.

George Singleton is one of those writers who appears regularly in the best of quarterlies and reviews: Georgia Review, Shenandoah, Glimmer Train, Southern Review, even a couple stories in Playboy. This deserved collection has been a long time coming.And this is no lie: this boy can write. His stories penetrate the South, depicting narrators in all manner of fixes (taping over a wife's sonogram, caulking a house to within an inch of its life, reporting on a fake tornado, helping blind men shoot pool) in a prose that is as elegant as the Peabody, as savory as barbecue. He nails the Southern experience (call it, perhaps, Good Ol Boy lit), creating empathetic characters and the funniest situations this side the Mississippi. There are classics here ("Crawl Space," "Outlaw Head and Tail," and the title story jump immediately to mind), stories that deserve to be read for generations to come.Treat yourself: try this book.