reading notes

by Adam Johnson

ISBN: 0142001953

This is a collection of nine stories set a world that isn’t exactly ours: things are a slightly fast-forwarded or otherwise skewed in most of these stories.

With one exception, the stories are all a bit long — almost too long for short stories — but Johnson needs the space to flesh out his quirky worlds. These are stories that have a slow build; sort of like being pulled by a strong, but not necessarily fast-moving current. Reading this book, I often found myself thinking that I really should re-read these stories, to take a closer look at what Johnson is doing in them.

My favorites were “The Death-Dealing Cassini Satellite,” in which a teenager whose mother has died drives a bus for a cancer survivors group; the “Teen Sniper” who works for the LAPD and knows how to talk to robots but not to girls; and “The History of Cancer” with its curious boys. Though now that I’ve said that, I’m thinking of the other stories, the one with the Mom and Pop bullet-proof vest rental store, and the one where an ex-cop fears for his son and culls animals at the local zoo for a living. The stories are all strong, with the most over-the-top one, “The Canadanaut,” still working.

The stories work because Johnson captures the real things, the true things, in his characters’ lives: lonliness, isolation, yearning, cluelessness, humor. Offbeat and recommended.