Volt: Stories

The book is painful to read. There is no anticipation. The characters are flat at best. There is no "soul" to this book. A good book is one you can't put down. But this? Reading this is like a punishment. It is written more like a screenplay, I suppose, than an actual novel. I'm seeing visuals but not character reactions as much, I'm not getting to know any character; none are memorable and none feel real. I wince every time I open the page, but it isn't me. Plenty of other books captivate me. But this doesn't. I regret buying this book. I had expected it to be amazing since I heard about it from the podcast. Boy was I wrong. This is written incorrectly and feels "fake" i.e. the author doesn't seem genuine in his stories, the heart and voice to tell them isn't there. I'm not sure where these other reviews were coming from, but this novel is hardly a novel. It feels empty and bleak.

The short stories are all related, so don't let the short story thing put you off. All set in the same town, with many of the same characters. The descriptive language and words used are quite unique and paint a wonderful and interesting picture, almost like a Coen brothers film. As with a lot of books these days, the endings, or non-endings, are ultimately unsatisfying, but the stories themselves are really very good. I would highly recommend this for the richness of the prose and the colourful pictures painted. I'm not a pro-reviewer, forgive my simplicity.

Alan Heathcock's debut is a collection of eight short stories set in and around a small fictional town called Krafton. From the first story, The Staying Freight, to the last, Volt, Heathcock is a master at developing multi-layered characters within a handful of pages. One of the stories, Furlough, is barely eleven pages, and yet the character of Jorgen is marvelously complex and conflicted. The result is a haunting story that builds with each step the characters take into the dark night, into the dark fields, and it is one that will stay with me for a long time. Other characters in the longer works are equally complex, such as Sheriff Helen Farraley who appears in Peacekeeper, The Daughter, and Volt. And Krafton, central to all of these stories, a town that could be any small town in the United States, is not merely a backdrop. The town is as much a character as the people who live within it.The stories also raise big questions, questions about faith, about morality. Each story acknowledges that darkness is an inevitable part of life--sometimes hidden just beneath the surface, sometimes out there for the world to see, but the darkness is there, as much a part of humanity as is hope or salvation. Heathcock's style is one of quiet intensity, each word carefully chosen, each sentence precise. It takes skill, a bit of poetry, and a solid, strong voice to deliver a powerful short story. Heathcock delivers eight of them. I can't wait to see what he does next.

Gritty collection of stories about lost souls and the tragedies they suffer in a small town. Volt is not for the feint of heart. Heathcock is an excellent wordsmith and the book is filled with vivid detail--both good and bad, because some of the imagery will make you uncomfortable.

Have you ever picked up a book because every where youturn people have it tucked under their arm or are reading it in the park or on the bus? That every review you read (and reviewed by people you absolutely respect without question.) was a glowing love letter to the brilliance of this author's work? And because of all this exposure and praise, you run to the bookstore and pick up said book and dive into it head long only to be, well...underwhelmed?Of course you have.The Da Vinci Code, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, any of the Harry Potter or Twilight books, all of these novels had a HUGE public build up and when I read them (Except the Twilight books--sorry, folks, I just can't get into vampires that aren't half rotted animals ala 30 Days of Night.) I couldn't help but feel a little let down. Okay, in the case of ALL of the novels listed above because I could only get through the first 100 pages before throwing in the towel.But maybe that's just the way my brain works when it comes to hype? Maybe I'm conditioned to reject any book, movie, or piece of music that is too universally praised?It's a handicap, I know, and one that more than a few people other than me suffer from and over the years it's stopped me from enjoying some truly great pieces of art.Now, was this my reaction to Volt by Alan Heathcock?To be honest, at first, it was.Review after review (including a glowing piece in the New York Times by Donald Ray Pollack) was filled with boundless accolades.All of my buddies raved about the collection.And did all of this cause me to rush to the bookstore and shell out my cash for Volt and immediately start in on it? You bet!Then I read this in the opening story, "The Staying Freight":"Winslow didn't see his boy running across the field. He didn't see Rodney climb onto the back of the tractor, hands filled with meatloaf and sweet corn wrapped in foil. Didn't see Rodney's boot slide off the hitch."Winslow dabbed his eyes with a filthy handkerchief. The tiller discs hopped. He whirled to see what he'd plowed, and back there lay a boy like something fallen from the sky."These two brief paragraphs stopped me cold. They made me walk into my office and place Volt on the shelf and try to put it out of my head. It also made me think that both Volt and Heathcock were nothing more than unadulterated hype.Hype with a capital H.Was this fair of me to pre-judge a book after only a half a page?It was and after two weeks, I returned to it and muscled through "The Staying Freight" and the rest of Volt with those two paragraphs wriggling around in my brain like two fatted worms.Let me finally get around to why I found the aforementioned paragraphs so disturbing? As you may or may not know, I have a five year old daughter and I've had nightmares very similar to those two stripped down paragraphs. (Not exactly like it, but, you know, I don't live on a farm) I think most parents share those same terrors when they have small children. They're so reckless, so unafraid and we as parents fear that no matter how careful we are, something unimaginable will happen.But this is the true power of Heathcock as a writer and Volt as a collection.Heathcock knows our weaknesses. He knows our common fears and is able to put it on paper and use them as a mirror. "The Staying Freight" isn't the only story which had a similar effect on me. "Peacekeeper" is an excellent fish out of water story of a small town female sheriff who murders a child killer and then fears her crime will be uncovered as her town floods. The blood chilling "Furlough" is the story of a soldier coming back to his hometown and attempting to and failing to reconnect with his old friends and can be easily compared to mid-career McCarthy. My favorite of the collection is "The Daughter", the story of a daughter who will do anything to help her mother recover from the grief of losing her own mother after she is killed in a hit and run accident.Each interconnected story is equally devastating and I had to take small breaks in-between them to catch my breath. Heathcock's prose possesses a plain spoken lyricism much in the same vein as Kyle Minor and Pollack. His descriptions of small town existence are vivid and painstakingly detailed, but not so much that the reader becomes lost in exposition.Would it be fair for me to say that Volt heralds the arrival of a new major American voice? Yes, I would say so. Heathcock's gifts are undeniable.But will I be revisiting "The Staying Freight" anytime soon....? Much like the film Boys Don't Cry or Styron's brilliant Sophie's Choice, there's no denying their merits, but the memory of each work is still so vivid, so disturbing that I'll never need to.(Please note, this review originally appear at Spinetingler Magazine)

I love realistic, personable fiction, this is short stories that are each written with grace, and truth, and conscience. Alan Heathcock should be on the shelves of every library and should be fighting off the movie people. Most of the stories are much better than movies could ever be.

Volt is beautifully written and powerful. It is an honest and unflinching look at grief written with great compassion. It deals a lot with existential issues, it asks big questions and explores fragile and damaged humanity in a unique and brave way. You will not be disappointed by Alan Heathcock's work.