Copy Cats: Stories (Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction)

Copy Cats: Stories (Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction)
by David Crouse

Copy Cats: Stories (Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction)
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Book Summary Information

Author: David Crouse
Edition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 2005-10-10
ISBN: 0820327468
Number of pages: 238
Publisher: University of Georgia Press

Book Reviews of Copy Cats: Stories (Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction)

Book Review: Copy Cats Review
Summary: 5 Stars

David Crouse's Copy Cats is a book of fictional short stories revolving around characters that are on the fringes of society searching for their sense of self and struggling with truth and lies. Crouse's characters are unable to cope with reality, so they fabricate stories (or lies) to make their lives meaningful and justify their own actions. The structures of the stories are all a kind of twisted irony. The truth and reality the characters live in are presented very simply. By the end the reader is either extremely confused or distraught at the happenings of the story, or a mix of both. And yet, through all the darkness, confusion and irony, the reader is drawn to the beauty of the writing and the almost intimate, personal window given to the reader through his style of writing, allowing the reader to catch a glimpse of the struggle these characters endure.

Summary of Copy Cats: Stories (Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction)

Featuring seven stories and a novella, David Crouse's powerful debut collection depicts people staring down the complicated mysteries of their own identities. "Who are you?" a homeless man asks his would-be benefactor in the title story. On the surface it's a simple question, but one that would stump many of the characters who inhabit these carefully rendered tales. In the edgy novella "Click" Jonathan's ongoing photo-documentary of a prostitute exposes how little intensity remains between him and his fiancee Margaret. While Jonathan is plagued with doubts about his motivations and abilities as an artist, Margaret is worn out by her obligations not just to her needy husband-to-be but to all the men in her life. In "The Ugliest Boy," Justin develops an odd friendship with Steven, his girlfriend's brother. Steven was disfigured by fire in a childhood accident. Justin bears wounds more deeply hidden. The two forge a strange bond based on their anger and pain. Crouse's stories often involve people trapped on the margins of society, confronted by diminishing possibilities and various forms of mental illness. The junior executive in "Code" worries about his job - and his sanity - amid a sudden and wide-sweeping corporate layoff. A manic-depressive father and his teenage daughter dress as vampires and embark on a strange Halloween journey through their suburban neighborhood in the darkly humorous "Morte Infinita." In "Swimming in the Dark", a family gives up on itself. Shredded slowly over the years since the accidental drowning of the eldest son, the remaining family members seek their own separate peace, however imperfect. The men and women in "Copy Cats" are unwilling and often unable to differentiate reality from fantasy. Cursed with what one of them calls "a pollution of ideas," these are people at war with their own imaginations.

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