From Publishers Weekly
This volume affords readers a new opportunity to evaluate this rare stylist. Purdy ( Garments the Living Wear ) has an ear for the way real people speak, and his disoriented voice is that of post-World War II America. His characters are emotional cripples--from the two narcissistic body builders focused only on their own forms (and the office co-worker who is obsessed with them) to a woman whose drunken confession of hatred of her spouse and herself provokes domestic violence. Similarly, Purdy systematically undermines the props we use to compensate for our lack of wholeness. Friendship is depicted as ultimately manipulative and hollow; organized religion is a crutch for the walking wounded (an honest but control-oriented preacher in one piece tells his flock that they are hopeless). Homoeroticism pervades the stories, including one of the best, which depicts the sad life of a man who thinks he has no character. The showpiece of the collection is the title work, Purdy's striking novella, dealing with a writer's fascination with what he perceives to be a boy's wild freedom, and his discovery that the youth's life is even more circumscribed than his own. Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
In most of these pieces (26 stories and one novella), Purdy fashions empty spaces and allows us to hear the plaintive noises that reverberate through them. Among rich and poor, urban and rural, homosexual and heterosexual, the empty spaces are emotional voids resulting from death, divorce, and abandonment, and the noises are powerful but inarticulate expressions of grief, longing, and rage. In the best stories, like "Color of Darkness," Purdy provides sharp physical details to reveal inner pain. Here a small child who has been abandoned by his mother rejects a new puppy and tries instead to swallow his father's wedding ring. With a few exceptions these stories are well crafted, but so many pieces with similar characters and themes may produce an emotional overload. For public libraries.- Albert E. Wilhelm, Tennessee Technological Univ., CookevilleCopyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

This volume affords readers a new opportunity to evaluate this rare stylist. Purdy ( Garments the Living Wear ) has an ear for the way real people speak, and his disoriented voice is that of post-World War II America. His characters are emotional cripples--from the two narcissistic body builders focused only on their own forms (and the office co-worker who is obsessed with them) to a woman whose drunken confession of hatred of her spouse and herself provokes domestic violence. Similarly, Purdy systematically undermines the props we use to compensate for our lack of wholeness. Friendship is depicted as ultimately manipulative and hollow; organized religion is a crutch for the walking wounded (an honest but control-oriented preacher in one piece tells his flock that they are hopeless). Homoeroticism pervades the stories, including one of the best, which depicts the sad life of a man who thinks he has no character. The showpiece of the collection is the title work, Purdy's striking novella, dealing with a writer's fascination with what he perceives to be a boy's wild freedom, and his discovery that the youth's life is even more circumscribed than his own. (Nov.)

Library Journal