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Fourteen Stories, None of Them Are Yours
ISBN: 9781573668477
Platform/Publisher: Project MUSE / The University of Alabama Press
Digital rights: Users: Unlimited; Printing: Chapters; Download: Chapters
Subjects: Recreational vehicles; Psychic trauma;

Here's what we know about the narrator of the 14 stories that make up Goebel's debut: he's a Catholic boy from Ohio who moved to East Texas. He has a dog named Jewely, loves a woman named Catherine, and has lost a brother named Carl. The stories are raw footage of life in clever, contemporary idiom in which thoughts and feelings spill out onto the page uncurated. Goebel is clearly a very talented writer, and his experiment in this collection is noble. We know his narrator misses his beloved brother, "with a laugh like Christmas was today," but we catch such disparate glimpses of the rest of his life-snatches of memories of his love affair with Catherine (in the story "Boot of the Boot"), strange stories involving an eagle's feather ("The Adventures of Eagle Feather"), or a fierce man with half a hand ("Apache")-that nothing else much adds up. Even if the sum of this character's parts is compelling, there is in the end only a snappy voice-over, not a whole being to know or love. (Sept.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.