Book Club Night = My salvation.

Hello,
I hope you all are enjoying the format change. Last entry ended up being massive! Yeah shorter entries my ass. Well I can't help it that I'm wordy. Well moving on...

Tonight was Book Club Night. For those coming in late: On the last Tuesday of the month I attend The Hard Boiled Book Club @ Sam Weller's Book. More Info is available here. It's run and moderated by former coworker/friend/burgeoning writer Zach Sampinos and focuses on alternative fiction. I started going because it sounded fun and it would force me to read fiction that I normally wouldn't even pick up. It's a fun/insightful group and I urge anyone in the SLC that's interested to come on down. Feel free to sit in even if you haven't read the book.

The pick this month was The Night in Question by Tobias Woolf. I am already a big fan of Woolf's work. His fictional novel Old School was one of my favorite books a few years ago. Yet I still haven't read any of his short story collections. It was a great surprise to see that Woolf is as good at short fiction as he is at a novel/memoir.

As fellow club member Chris pointed out Woolf uses a great elevated diction that is not stylistic at all. His word choice can be beautiful and horribly specific. This is true in my favorite stories of this collection. Specifically "Bullet to the Brain" is a tour-de-force of short story writing. It starts off with a man annoyed while standing in line at the bank, and takes a crazy left turn. Woolf's ability to start a story with something mundane and then raise the stakes took my breath away. I felt the same way about the titular story "The Night in Question" which also takes it's characters down an unexpected direction. A brother and sister, both brutally abused as children, try to make sense of what can be a cruel world. The brother tries to relate a story that points to a faith in god, whereas his sister turns it another way. Woolf does an excellent job establishing the complicated relationship that exists for those who are physically abused. Their love for each other is a bond fused by that shared horrible childhood. As an adult how do you make sense of such cruelty? Woolf is wonderfully ambiguous. He refuses to offer an easy answer.

This brings me to what I think is the thru-line of this collection: Since death is inevitable, life should be about finding happiness. Whether it be the pleasure that can be brought by a 100 dollar bill in "Smorgasbord" or a lonely teacher who can't stop falling in love in "Life and Death of the Body". Woolf's characters are either living fully or their soul's are dying depending on their choices. In "The Chain" the main characters begin a cycle of violence that can only bring death. As in "Casualty" war brings two men together only to be ripped apart by a meaningless death. Again and again Woolf shows the importance of his character's choices. In the end I look toward the optimism of the story "Powder". A father and son both enjoy the fact that they are good at something. Happiness can be the acceleration of moving a barricade and expertly driving through a snowstorm.

Other Reviews: Entertainment Weekly, scottwilliamfoley, Red Room

Have a great night! Book Slave.