ISBN: 1535134747 9781535134743

Category: Fiction / Literary

Page count: 178

Around the Bar and Other Lofty Ambitions is a collection of stories centering on fractured or broken relationships. The people in these stories can all be found in various stages of distress. From the bright and hopeful, unaware of an impending disaster, to those who wander through their lives, already devastated and reeling from past trauma, these people, collectively, represent the full spectrum of the process of suffering and recovering from pain. Here, you'll find the story of a boy attempting to reach manhood by hitting a home run for the first time, unaware that there are many, much darker ways to grow up. Elsewhere, a colicky baby causes a weary couple, their marriage driven to splinters, to flirt with the idea of abandonment and freedom. On the steps of an old cathedral, a pair of homeless men argue the role of God in the wake of a tragic bus accident, one desperate to believe there's a point to it all and one resigned that they are alone. And in a quiet airport at night, a man is forced to face his own looming mortality after a frightening, near-death experience on a plane. Though these stories serve as a dark microscope for the bitter, the disillusioned, and the desperate, a distant, minimalist style is used to undercut the heaviness that accompanies the collection and offers a clinical and introspective view. This collection pays homage to the late Raymond Carver who created a window to a new world of the modern American short story, but left so much more to be explored in his death. In life, people, feelings, and bonds fall apart, but the stories in Around the Bar and Other Lofty Ambitions seeks to find the beauty in erosion.