Over the next five days, I'm posting my top five short stories for 2010. First up...
Service by Gary Lovisi at A Twist of Noir
A moving, shocking, and just plain fucked-up tale about the bizarre cult surrounding one very fat stripper, Clarise. The narrator, Arthur, quickly slides from fascination to obsession to total obedience in strangely believable fashion. Characters that leap off the page, slicing-and-dicing dialogue, machine gun prose--this one's got it all.
And Lovisi explores so much here--how much will we give up to get what we want? what are we willing to do for the people we love? how willing are we to deny reality?--all wrapped up in one gutsy, down-and-dirty package.
Last summer, Lovisi released Service and A Rat Must Chew at ATON. These two chilling, brilliant works inspired me to buy his new collection, Ultraboiled.
Great choice, Chris. Like I said in my comment over on ATON the first time I read it. Dark, sticky and sweat inducing. G. Lovesi -- Man's got the goods in spades.
ReplyDeleteMr. Lovisi always delivers. That can be counted on.
ReplyDeleteGreat chice. I'd missed that one.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the heads up. Going to read it today.
ReplyDeletenew to me. i'm offski.
ReplyDeletetough stuff gary's work is legendary
ReplyDeleteI join the herd in stampeding to this piece for the first time. Thank you.
ReplyDeleteGlad you liked it, fellas.
ReplyDeleteNew to me. Hard to keep up with the amount of writing going up online and still write and read and work. I will check it out.
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