Here We Are in Paradise: Stories

Rating:
Summary: A good storyteller
Review: The first story in this collection had me concerned-- various southern "stock" characters, an odd stream of consciousness narrative, flashbacks between modern absurdities and wrongs a generation ago. The story was readable, but I thought that I was reading yet another "southern boy writes about how odd his milieu is" collection. As the collection progressed, though, I came to see that Mr. Earley has a real talent for the story. He hits themes which are pretty well travelled in short stories these days--"accepting less in life, but wanting more", "the things we say, the things we can't say", but his prose style is fresh, and his sense of a good story is impeccable. Sometimes I feel that his plots try to "touch the bases" of a "proper" short story, when in fact he should just let his narrative genius flow. This is a very worthwhile book to read, quite an entertainment. Mr. Earley can write comic scenes, but this is no simplistic set of comic stories. This is a set of good yarns by a modern storyteller.

Rating:
Summary: Some of the best short stories I've read
Review: These delicate short stories tell harrowing tales of love and loss with something rare in modern literature - absolute respect for the characters and the reader.

I'm really looking forward to Tony Earley's novel that contains some of the characters from the last three stories in this collection.

Bill

Rating:
Summary: A genuine voice of the South
Review: Tony Earley is a genuine voice of the South.

This collection of stories, told form the perspective of truly ordinary North Carolinians set over a period of 50 years or so, elegantly captures the nuances, the mores, the traditions, the idiosyncrasies and-most importantly-the feel of life in the South. The stories are told from radically different points of view-a Charlotte bar owner, a middle aged woman with breast cancer, an 8 year old boy-yet each is as genuine and true to its roots as the next.

Earley has an engaging and warm hearted writing voice and a very nice ear for dialog-both verbalized and internal. Also, for the most part (the story Entitled Aliceville is an exception) he takes his time and fully develops his characters and themes. One has the sense after completing each story that one has in fact read a novella though the length of the stories are consistent with the short story guidelines-it's just that the stories are so 'rich' that they have the feel of being more substantial than a short story.

Those who follow Earley-not a great number given where his books sit in the sales ranks-may be interested to note that the last two stories develop the characters that would form Earely's excellent novel Jim the Boy, which I also heartily recommend.

I can't fathom why this man hasn't had more success. He was tagged early as one of those "rising young author's to watch" sorts by all those publications that track that sort of thing and I find his work to be exceptional, but he has for some reason totally obscure to me never reached or clicked with the mass market, an unfortunate outcome both for Earley as well as all those who are missing out on a great author.

This will be a truly enjoyable reading experience for those lucky enough to stumble upon it.