Short People : Stories

Rating:
Summary: An Astonishing Vision of the Lives of Children
Review: I've never read anyone who writes about children the way Joshua Furst does. The stories in this debut collection are acute and honest, and are often harrowing. In places Furst's style reminds me of Dostoyevsky. I particularly admired The Age of Exploration and Merit Badge. There is also a kind of running story outside of a story that pays off with surprising power near the collection's end. All in all, it's an auspicious debut.

Rating:
Summary: An Astonishing Vision of the Lives of Children
Review: I've never read anyone who writes about children the way Joshua Furst does. The stories in this debut collection are acute and honest, and are often harrowing. In places Furst's style reminds me of Dostoyevsky. I particularly admired The Age of Exploration and Merit Badge. There is also a kind of running story outside of a story that pays off with surprising power near the collection's end. All in all, it's an auspicious debut.

Rating:
Summary: Rotten Book
Review: Keep away from this pretentious tripe. Heavy-handed and styleless. The characters are presented in about as lively a fashion as an obituary. No plot development in the stories, only the pulling of rugs out from under innocent feet. The very opposite of brillient or insightful. This material is myopic and cold.

Rating:
Summary: Title is deceiving.
Review: SHORT PEOPLE is not 'stories' per se but exposes of troubled children when vulnerable. They appear to be handwritten 'reports' as therapy. Each was assigned a number.

Joshua Furst, who compiled these 'reports' in story form is listed on the book jacket as having been a teacher in the public schools of New York City, where his plays have been produced.

I was drawn to this book because I am a music person and the title was lifted from a popular song written by Randy Newman. The two lines quoted on its own page preceding Contents are the epitome of despair. "Short people got no reason to live." He is deficient in grammar, that's for sure.

At a social gathering almost three years ago now (which I will never forget) where I was invited to "provoke" locals with my 'strong' opinions, my major faux pas was saying I enjoyed to hear Alan Jackson sing that particular song. Immediately, my host informed me that 1) he hated that song, and 2) it was not recorded by Alan Jackson.

In this town where I was born, you walk down the street and see a majority of short people (not children) -- and I'm not referring to all those in wheelchairs -- who look like kids dressed up to be 'adults.' This is the town of SHORT PEOPLE.

Having lived in lower Middle Tennessee, below Nashville near the Alabama line, where the heights of adults are normal, I felt petite (5'1", 97 lbs.) but here where even the men are short for the most part, I sometimes think of this song.

The 'short people' exploited in this book are children, ages 6 - 12 yrs. It is really quite sordid. These 'stories' were not written by the kids to be printed for the whole world to read.

In Pulaski, many years ago, the Mental Health director had a regular slot on the local morning radio show where he talked about the clients' "cases" without revealing names. Even then, I felt this was unethical. No one would go to a therapist who uses their problems to write a book, to profit from the desperate situations in which they felt trapped.

This book is such a travesty to the rights of these children. There is no dignity in making a profit off the sordid aspects of life today, yesterday, and always. These "short people" weren't mature enough to feel they had no reason to live, thank goodness.

Maybe Furst was at one time "one of them" and this invasive sacrilege into others' lives is his way to feel big -- to rise above the crowd. But -- he's grown now, and should know better.

Rating:
Summary: Step into a new dimension
Review: SHORT PEOPLE, the first book of stories by the very talented Joshua Furst, is more than just a superb collection of short stories - it is a unique format of exploring the minds of children. Furst has written plays and his intensely pungent dialogue he writes for his characters reflects that experience. Furst scoops out ordinary children (whose view of the universe is nascent if unsoiled by truth) and has them interact to suggest the way simple incidents of childhood can brew into adult character deviations. He tells 'reports' of a dysfuntional family the way those dysfuntions are perceived by children and in doing so he makes 'mature deviant behavior' all the more terrifying. There are stories that play for laughs (how well he knows the terror of guilt imposed by onanism, by sexual exploration, by body image perceptions!) and stories that are devastatingly sad. Interspersed between these ten tales are one page 'document statements' about such occult trials as incest, physical abuse, autism, hyperactivity, etc and it is only in one of the final stories that the reason for insertion of these strange small 'fragments' emerges.

In one of the most successful stories, "Failure to Thrive", a nurse describes the 'short people' in her care in a special care nursery: "They were the children of frail, wealthy women in need of extra recovery time, or poor women there without family, or women whose husbands were out at the bar, whose boyfriends were in jail, whose handful of lovers had no idea - and never would - that they'd just given birth; these were the children of children who would never see them, of women who would never want the, of parents already beginning to feel guilty for being less capable than they knew they should be."

Powerful stuff, this. Yet there is also much to just entertain in Furst's writing. His ideas are so pregnant that they beg to be extended into full novels. Despite the 'short story' nature of this first book, it still is a page turner that is very difficult to put down. An excellent debut!

Rating:
Summary: Step into a new dimension
Review: SHORT PEOPLE, the first book of stories by the very talented Joshua Furst, is more than just a superb collection of short stories - it is a unique format of exploring the minds of children. Furst has written plays and his intensely pungent dialogue he writes for his characters reflects that experience. Furst scoops out ordinary children (whose view of the universe is nascent if unsoiled by truth) and has them interact to suggest the way simple incidents of childhood can brew into adult character deviations. He tells 'reports' of a dysfuntional family the way those dysfuntions are perceived by children and in doing so he makes 'mature deviant behavior' all the more terrifying. There are stories that play for laughs (how well he knows the terror of guilt imposed by onanism, by sexual exploration, by body image perceptions!) and stories that are devastatingly sad. Interspersed between these ten tales are one page 'document statements' about such occult trials as incest, physical abuse, autism, hyperactivity, etc and it is only in one of the final stories that the reason for insertion of these strange small 'fragments' emerges.

In one of the most successful stories, "Failure to Thrive", a nurse describes the 'short people' in her care in a special care nursery: "They were the children of frail, wealthy women in need of extra recovery time, or poor women there without family, or women whose husbands were out at the bar, whose boyfriends were in jail, whose handful of lovers had no idea - and never would - that they'd just given birth; these were the children of children who would never see them, of women who would never want the, of parents already beginning to feel guilty for being less capable than they knew they should be."

Powerful stuff, this. Yet there is also much to just entertain in Furst's writing. His ideas are so pregnant that they beg to be extended into full novels. Despite the 'short story' nature of this first book, it still is a page turner that is very difficult to put down. An excellent debut!

Rating:
Summary: A MUST HAVE
Review: This book really blew me away.

Mr. Furst has a hyper-acute sense of the pitfalls of childhood, the moral and ethical whirpools we're thrown into by our parents and "friends." My heart broke over and over as I made my way through this beautifully crafted collection of stories, some moments making me relive my own pains and humiliations, some moments too horrible and touching for me to ever imagine. I found myself lost in these chracters - as lost as they are - and when each story ended I felt I'd been placed inside their lives, so vibrantly, for that brief time. When I reached the end of the book I wanted more, more.

There are ten stories in the book, as well as interstitial writings that pack a wollop on their own. I call your attention to the story "Red Lobster" which will bowl you over with its economy, fluidity, and heartwrenching honesty.

Do yourself a favor and pick up this excellent book.