Success: Stories
Success: Stories
Read reviews in Washington City Paper and Publishers Weekly. See more reviews (and add your own!) on Goodreads.
Praise for Success: Stories
“In 14 brilliant short stories, Taylor unpeels the lives and loves of ordinary people to reveal nuggets of extraordinary truths…Deceptively spare and absolutely unforgettable.”
—Caroline Leavitt, New York Times bestselling author
“Gritty dialogue, lean prose, layered plotting, and an eye for the perfect detail make these stories a satisfying and engaging read.”
—Susan Muaddi Darraj, author of Behind You is the Sea
“Tight, convincing dialogue, and an eye for apt metaphors… [A]s strong as anything in the Raymond Carver playbook, without ripping off the minimalist master.”
—Mark Athitakis, Washington City Paper
“Fourteen superbly-crafted tales…that explore the most vital crises of existence, when human emotions—desire and isolation, suspicion and jealousy—boil over, leaving in their wake exquisite failure and a conflict that blooms in complexity every time the reader revisits it.”
“[T]hese 14 lively tales…uncover gentle irony in the commonly held notion of a successful life.”
—Publishers Weekly
“David Taylor has the amazing ability to put you there. In these stories he puts you in a rural Muslim village rife with deadly superstition, in a New Asian bureaucracy where even minor functionaries must maneuver in a minefield of rivalry and suspicion, in a Maryland racetrack clubhouse where a filial tragedy is written in a racing form. With precise, pellucid language and almost invisible craft, he lets you see and hear and understand what matters. Success: Stories rolls right by Success on the way to Major Achievement.”
—David Bradley, author of The Chaneysville Incident, PEN/Faulkner Award winner
“Like all the best stories, the tales in Success challenge our assumptions and make us look again at what we thought we knew.”
—Kate Blackwell, author of You Won’t Remember This
“Success: Stories is an imaginative collection, diverse and satisfying, filled with the unspoken realization that life is full of stories…The writing throughout is excellent, with convincing details…and dialogue that is crisp, real and direct.”
“A powerful, diverse collection. What makes it memorable are the vivid prose and subtle insights into characters struggling to make sense of or break free from the customs that shape our lives.”
—Brendan Short, author of Dream City
“A book of fine stories.”
—Richard Bausch, author of Thanksgiving Night, PEN/Faulkner Award winner
“The stories span the globe…but they are linked with the common truth that ordinary life is full of uncommon conversations, happenings, and revelations.”
—Baltimore City Paper
Read more reviews on Goodreads and please add your own.