If We Were Electric There’s not a bad egg in the dozen stories that make up Patrick Ryan’s dazzling debut collection, winner of the prestigious Flannery O’Connor Award for short fiction, judged this past year by Roxane Gay. A native New Orleanian who currently lives in San Francisco, Ryan, in publishing his first book at 50, combines the insight of a seasoned writer with the crackling energy of a literary wunderkind. Every one of these Louisiana-set tales is densely populated and richly detailed; they almost burst at the seams, as if each story had the potential to grow into a novel. The result is work that practically rustles off the page, with even minor characters offering major memorability. The book’s first story, “Before Las Blancas,” is a near-cinematic marvel, featuring a thirteen year old gay boy who runs away from home with a 28-year-old colleague of his mother’s, all the while pining for one classmate who has accidentally killed another. These dangerous, heartwrenching stories will grab you like kudzu and suck you in like a swamp.
I Know You Know Who I Am In his debut story collection, Peter Kispert—still in his 20s—exhibits a cool, sharp style and a finely attuned ear for spare-but-telling dialogue. The book is reminiscent of early ‘80s David Leavitt, but it arrives at a time when stories about middle-class gay men muddling their way through early adulthood are far less novel in mainstream literature. The ensuing decades have mercifully made such characters’ coming out experiences far less powerful storytelling fodder. But Kispert—who smartly avoids such oft-told tales—seizes on one of their underlying elements: Virtually everyone who eventually comes out as gay (and hopefully grows comfortable being so), has spent a portion of his life in reflexive duplicity, defensively projecting an untrue story about himself. In his collection’s best pieces, Kispert gives us characters who have become particularly adept at lying and compulsively continue to do so long after it serves them well. There’s the self-proclaimed champion diver who’s actually afraid of the water; the guy who pretends to be Christian in order to keep an observant beau interested; and the fellow who falsely claims to be a hunter, then queasily kills a deer to save face. Might there be a flash of your own reflection in these stories’ glimmer and sting?
