Sightings: Stories (Break Away Books) - Softcover

Hollars, B.J.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0253008387 ISBN 13: 9780253008381

Publisher: Indiana University Press, 2013

Synopsis

B. J. Hollars's debut short story collection offers ten thematically linked tales, all of which are out to subvert conventional notions of the Midwestern coming-of-age story. The stories feature an assemblage of Bigfoot believers, Civil War reenactors, misidentified Eskimos, and grief-stricken clowns, among other outcasts incapable of finding a place in their worlds. In these marvelous stories, we can join a family on a very 21st-century trip along the Oregon Trail, watch as a boy builds a brother from a vacuum cleaner, follow a sandlot baseball team as it struggles to overcome an invasion by its Native American neighbors, and experience how a high school basketball squad takes to Sasquatch roaming its court. This genre-bending collection charts a bizarre pathway through the thickets of life on the road to adulthood. Pushing the limits of realism, these stories capture the peculiar rites of passage of growing up Midwestern.

About this title

Review:

All of these stories represent a talented tightrope walk between genres and a gentle lesson in craftsmanship for aspiring storytellers . . . An imaginatively sculpted collection of absurdist concepts applied liberally to the equally preposterous notion of growing up.--Kirkus Reviews

Hollars provides plenty of material in these pages for both enjoyment and close reading.--The Show Me Librarian

Like Bradbury, Hollars manages to invoke the sights, sounds, and smells of small town America through the eyes of his teenage heroes -- and with as much ease.--The Lit Pub

The 10 stories in Sightings are all spins on classic 'coming-of-age' tales, and Hollars admits to a fascination with the genre. . . . Indeed, in every story Hollars finds a way to undercut the sentimentality that seems to be a staple of many coming of age stories, whether it's by incorporating surreal elements in 'Sightings' and 'The Clowns, ' or using an unreliable narrator to tell the story.--Fort Wayne Reader

This collection masterfully shares stories about coming of age in the Midwest and demonstrates the author's skill with well-crafted prose, true-to-life characters, and reflects on the time in one's life that is worth nostalgia, even with all its anguish and social dysfunction.--Los Angeles Review of Books

Sightings is a collection that digs deep into adolescence; its pain, its fear and its joy. The stories are captivating, often funny, always thought provoking as they draw the reader in to capture and recapture their own experience of early adulthood.--Pleiades

About the Author:

B. J. Hollars is author of Thirteen Loops: Race, Violence and the Last Lynching in America and Opening the Doors: The Desegregation of the University of Alabama and the Fight for Civil Rights in Tuscaloosa. He is editor of You Must Be This Tall to Ride: Contemporary Writers Take You Inside the Story, Monsters: A Collection of Literary Sightings, and Blurring the Boundaries: Explorations to the Fringes of Nonfiction. He is Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire.

About this edition

• Publisher: Indiana University Press
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 0253008387
• ISBN 13: 9780253008381
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 180