3.5 couple of good stories/some good lines ( )

I read it and thought Hmm, Barry Hannah Jr. Then I read he’d studied with him. But I already own a ton of Barry Hannah. ( )

Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned certainly lives up to its title. Wells Tower’s collection of stories is nearly all about people whose lives have been blighted by fallings-out with family or loved ones.

Most of the stories are about a particular incident, and usually end with no resolution, and not even a suggestion of a hopeful outcome. You sometimes sense an ellipsis lurking behind his endings; there is more to this, but he’s not sharing it. Characters have little back-story, which is fair enough in a short story, but it leads them to be a little one-dimensional. One story I did like was In the Show about a single night in a funfair. It’s full of incident with quite a few characters getting attention, and more background filled in than Tower usually gives us. It’s stronger as a result, but still has a little bit of that ellipsis lurking at the end.

The eponymous story is the last in the collection and unusual in that it is a piece of historical fiction rather than set in the contemporary USA. It’s a story about some Viking raiders setting out on a voyage to pillage Lindisfarne. It’s an interesting idea for a story, and I was getting quite engaged until Tower fatally marred it with risible anachronisms like “gung-ho motherf***er” and “hassle”. There’s no excuse for horrible writing like that, and both Tower and his editors should hang their collective heads in shame.

Since I really only enjoyed one story in this collection, I can’t say I recommend it particularly. Maybe others might get ore out of Tower’s writing than I did. I think his stories lack the humour and style that might lift them above the pack in the manner of, say, Tony Birch. Instead, he has just written a collection of very downbeat, sometimes silly stories that would only appeal to somebody who needs a darn good depressing. ( )

Note to self: David Sedaris says " in terms of 'great' as in 'this person seems to have reinvented the English language', I'd say [Towers' book]. What an exciting story collection it is, unlike anything I've come across. "
April 15 NYTBR

This was a pretty exquisite book of short stories. Very short stories: Stories that would ferry you to far-off narrative islands, leave you to rummage around in the thickets of their characters' lives, and then suddenly drop the earth off from under your feet and catapult you onto the next adventure. I would be extremely invested in one character / setting / story / narrative ascent, waiting on the edge of my seat for the culmination of tension, for the characters' relationships to somehow come to a head, and then I would turn the page, and it would all end.

Wells Tower has a lovely way with words and with dialogue; realistic, tinged with wit, imbuing his characters with a rooted sense of their worlds. Each character reveled in their own unique set of inadequacies. (Especially memorable: The brothers in the forest, the girl in the river, and, of course, the Vikings.) ( )