These are well written and well told stories by a relatively unknown author. While all the stories are set in the south, they are something just shy of gothic. The principal theme seems to be human frailty and doubt, particularly in relationships. The standout story is the last one, 65 Million Years, featuring a Catholic priest in a crisis of faith who struggles through confessions until a young man begins asking deeply existential questions. In answering, the priest begins to find his own faith.

3 1/2 stars!!!! ( )

These are good stories - I enjoyed all of them. Some of them I really liked! I read these on my Kindle - this is a book I would have liked to have in print form so I could share. ( )

I couldn’t help it. As I read the short stories in Richard Bausch’s collection Something is out there., I kept seeing the paintings of various artists—Edward Hopper; Edvard Munch; Francisco José de Goya; even, at times, Hieronymus Bosch. If I may be permitted to suggest a kind of “reverse ekphrasis” -- a term, so far as I know, normally reserved for poetry -- then this is what I felt while reading Baush’s work. The faces (and the characters these physiognomies represented) of despair, loneliness and isolation — and all of them struggling to break out of their personal solitary confinement. Or worse still, out of their private oubliettes.

The following sentence at the conclusion of “Overcast” would seem to sum it all up: “She thought of those nights she lay wide awake in the dark trying to dream up her life out in the world, wondering and worrying about where she might go, who she might come to be with, what she might find to do or be, and whether or not she might be happy there, so far away, in the magical distance, the future that was taking so long to arrive.”

These are not action stories. In many instances, the plot is no thicker than a pie crust. Instead, most of the “action” takes place inside the characters’ heads.

But that’s fine. If the fictional landscapes these characters traverse are no wider than the space between their ears, they live, die and fight in that space — and both the horror and the sadness of their acts and thoughts are ours to consider. It is as if, in the depiction of his characters and their personal travails, Bausch is holding up a mirror and allowing us to look at ourselves.

And no, they — and we — are not pretty to behold.


RRB
4/28/13
Brooklyn, NY

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Bausch's stories are grim but reflect a deep sense of understanding what it is that makes up relationships and contributes to their demise. Each one sets up a seemingly simple situation, and then we are drawn onto a path that hurls us headlong into the waiting wall. ( )