Apr
20th
Tue
20th
Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned
Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned, by Wells Tower
The first page of this collection made me laugh out loud (“… and there was serious pain in his underpants”) so I shouldn’t be too critical.
But what the hell.
This is a perfectly respectable group of stories. Tower knows how to turn a phrase and he’s not afraid to reach for a good sentence.
Problem is that I’ve been there, done that, read this. Tower is the progeny of Barry Hannah and Tom McGuane, at least when he’s writing about men behaving badly. I got some chuckles and I admired the verbal acrobatics but I couldn’t help thinking, “Really? You think I don’t know where you got that? Really?”
Talented kid, though, and willing to take chances. Got to admire that.
