Although Harald, the narrator, feels he has outgrown the whole rape-and-pillage game, and although his wife urges him to stay home, he hops on the longboat and then watches as his compatriots go “on a real binge,” hanging monks from trees. I don't know when that was written compared to the stories here, but I'd imagine after as it felt more connected, more of a actual story, and if he can grasp this vital skill then I have no doubt he can become a modern great as the press are currently pushing him as, but from this set alone, I don't see it. Their self-defeating natures and their attempts to do the right thing when faced with moral dilemmas endear them to the reader.

nueve cuentos cargados de humor negro sobre personajes de todo tipo —incluso un vikingo— cuyo denominador común es su dificultad para integrarse en su entorno. He nodded up the hill at the figure heading our way, ‘My, that sumbitch has got some brass,’ he said. Yet the cumulative effect is excruciating for Stephen, as well as for the reader watching Matthew ruin the weekend. He wouldn’t look me in the face, stricken as he was by the awful fear that comes with getting hold of something you can’t afford to lose.This is the narrator, Matthew, discussing his brother’s music compositions: “What I heard of his music was gloomy, the sound track you might crave in an idling car with a hose running from the tailpipe, but nothing you could hum” and his dog��s inability to urinate without help and Matthew’s advice to have the dog put down: “This caused an ugly argument, but really, it seemed to me that someone regularly seen by the roadside hand-juicing a half-dead dog was not the man you’d run to for lessons on how to be less out-of-your-mind” (35). I tried to peel him off, but he was large, and his hard arms stayed on me tight as if they’d grown there.

duhovit, lucidan i samouvjeren, po stilu blizak carveru, wells tower pruža ti šetnju kroz životne situacije taman toliko zamršene i nepredvidive kakva stvarnost već jest, bez nepotrebnog literarnog make-upa. Tower is talented as fuck, but the biggest, most obvious shortcoming in this collection is that, for all their nimble blocking and deft characterization, the overall effect was wanting. At times such as these, you get a good, humble feeling, like the gods made this place, this moment, first and concocted you as an afterthought just to be there to enjoy it. He's fond of putting a bunch of short-tempered people in an environment, and then, admirably, deciding to narrate from the perspective of the most deluded asshole in the bunch. He leaned into it and worked the steel in gingerly, delicately crunching through one rib at a time until he’d made an incision about a foot long.The characters are rich guys with lousy relationships, young teenage girls who want sex with middle-aged men, carnival workers and others living meaningless lives of their own creation.

Unfortunately, it’s a very good shortcut to explaining the overall theme of the short stories enclosed with the book’s covers. His eyes watered, and he so often had a piece of food in the corner of his mouth that you wondered if he kept it in a bedside saucer overnight and donned it in the morning. PS: I've just realised that the title to this might seem like the ultimate comment on what goodreads has done to itself.I'm not going to read the ones in between unless someone can convince me one of them is significantly better, or at least different.