Dead Boys: Stories - Softcover

Lange, Richard

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0316018805 ISBN 13: 9780316018807

Publisher: Back Bay Books, 2008

Synopsis

These hard-hitting, deeply felt stories trace men-- straight arrows and outlaws, have-it-alls and outcasts-- as they take stock of their lives and missteps and struggle to rise above their troubled pasts. A salesman considers his tenuous relationship with his sister after she has been brutally attacked. A house painter looks forward to moving his family out of their seedy neighborhood as he plans his last bank robbery. A drifter finds a chance at love when he delivers news of a barfly's death to the man's estranged daughter.

These are hard-boiled tales of life on the edge in a city where the sun hurts your eyes and dreams die more often than they come true. Full of heart and heartbreak, Dead Boys is the debut of an astonishingly talented new writer.

"The best debut collection we have read all year....you could shelve Lange between Denis Johnson, Richard Ford, and Richard Yates, and no fights would break out....Lange writes with tremendous heart, his characters' inner turmoil as rich and varied as any of the above masters. Dead Boys, we think, will live for a very long time." --E! Online, Tod Goldberg

"Superlative short fiction, and an arresting debut."
--Kirkus Reviews

About this title

About the Author:

Richard Lange's stories have appeared in StoryQuarterly, The Sun, The Iowa Review and Best American Mystery Stories 2004. He lives in Los Angeles.

From Publishers Weekly:

Set in a Southern California of smoky skies and Neil Young tunes, Lange's fine debut collection takes the so-called normal guy—husband, father, working stiff—and throws a heap of trouble at him. Bank of America is the completely believable tale of a regular John Q, a house painter who also happens to rob banks with a small-time team of hustlers while still being a good father and husband to his unsuspecting family. Long Lost follows a tentative young husband and reluctant proofreader as he copes with the sudden appearance of a boisterous, angry, ex-con half-brother, courtesy of his neglectful father's second wife. In Culver City, named after a southeast neighborhood of L.A. where we're all between jobs or between marriages, between runs of good luck, the narrator's desperately unhappy waitress girlfriend Shelly hopes the compromising pictures of a famous actor that she steals at a party can fetch a price to change her luck and solidify their relationship. A considered, colloquial understatement marks nearly all of the first-person protagonists over the course of these 12 stories, in a manner that's marvelously effective. Lange's characters are well-intentioned screwups, deeply flawed and utterly convincing. (Aug.)
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About this edition

• Publisher: Back Bay Books
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 0316018805
• ISBN 13: 9780316018807
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 272