The Dogs of Detroit
Stories
Published on 4. September 2018
Book
Hardback
200 pages
978-0-8229-4542-0 (ISBN)
Description
The 14 stories of The Dogs of Detroit each focus on grief and its many strange permutations. This grief alternately devolves into violence, silence, solitude, and utter isolation. In some cases, grief drives the stories as a strong, reactionary force, and yet in other stories, that grief evolves quietly over long stretches of time. Many of the stories also use grief as a prism to explore the beguiling bonds within families. The stories span a variety of geographies, both urban and rural, often considering collisions between the two.
Reviews / Votes
Felver has created a dark mirror for readers to gaze into. * New York Journal of Books * Felver's writing is sharp and insightful. His stories evoke the style and themes of writers ranging from Richard Russo to Rick Bass to Andre Dubus III and, in the particularly brutal surrealist title story, "The Dogs of Detroit," Cormac McCarthy. A substantial debut by a promising and confident new writer. * Kirkus Reviews * Felver lays his words down in these stories in such a precise way that it's difficult, if not impossible, to pull yourself away from a story once you've started. -- Cameron Barnett * Pittsburgh Post Gazette * The Dogs of Detroit is animated by a tough-minded vision of strife and frustration, beneath which runs a streak of compassion for its bereft, often violent characters. With consummate skill and assurance, Brad Felver writes of overlooked people suffering physical and emotional deprivation, who struggle, now and again with success, in thwarted lives. Ambivalence colors the deepest relationships, with love and hate resembling an ever shifting hologram. * Lynne Sharon Schwartz * Felver can be inventive with tone, diction and perspective - and heartbreakingly solemn when he wants to be. -- Mike Peed * The New York Times Book Review * [Felver] delivers what good fiction can: amplified truth - in this case, vividly imagined and rendered worst-case scenarios that reflect our current world in a very dark mirror. * Washington Independent Review of Books * Brad Felver is a master of voice and creating unforgettable characters, and the stories in The Dogs of Detroit are knockouts. This collection witnesses violence in its many permutations - the violence of loss, the violence of love, and even tangible, physical brutality when the violence of grief is overwhelming. Sometimes it is easier to throw a punch than to be undone by sorrow. But if these are characters in pain, they are also tremendously human, and even laugh-out-loud funny at times. No one writes like Brad Felver, and The Dogs of Detroit is a remarkable collection. * Anne Valente * Brad Felver's The Dogs of Detroit is a terrific debut, the sad, unforgiving world of a writer who knows how to use his dark devices to tell intense, high-stakes stories. * Story366 *More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
Pittsburgh PA
United States
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Dimensions
Height: 216 mm
Width: 140 mm
ISBN-13
978-0-8229-4542-0 (9780822945420)
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Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
Person
Brad Felver is a fiction writer, essayist, and teacher of writing. His fiction has appeared widely in magazines such as One Story, Colorado Review, and Midwestern Gothic. His essays have appeared in New England Review, Hunger Mountain, BULL: Men's Fiction, and Fiction Writer's Review among other places. His awards include a Pushcart Prize Special Mention , the Zone 3 Fiction Prize, and most recently the 2018 Drue Heinz Literature Prize. The Dogs of Detroit is his first story collection. He lives with his wife and kids in northern Ohio.