Brendan Mathews

Why don't editors do their jobs anymore?

I would have given this 4 stars if not for its unwieldy and unnecessary length and excess material. The author seems unfamiliar with point of view as an organizing principle of narrative. There is lengthy first-person internal monologues from minor characters, and even an entire CHAPTER delving into the mind of the WIFE of a minor character. It's insane.

It's unfortunate, because the novel is really quite good. The story of three Irish brothers and their experience in New York one week in 1939 is entertaining, suspenseful, funny, heartbreaking, engaging, and fun.… (more)

Last year I enjoyed reading Brendan Mathew's first novel The World of Tomorrow. Reading his first collection of stories This is Not a Love Song brought me a new appreciation of Mathews. If World was a fun romp into the past with an action ending, the short stories are an examination of the human experience on a deeper level. I was moved, I related, and I was entertained.

There are stories about we believe we know--about love and family and life--but discover aren't true. Stories about coming to terms with life, or not coming to terms.

The first story, Heroes of the Revolution, was also one of my favorites. An American female college student is responsible for providing visiting foreign journalists with typical American experiences. She takes them to pick apples, but walking through the orchard stirs memories, revealing the student's sheltered life while the journalists grapple with the lasting damage of the atrocities they personally lived through.

This is Not a Love Song questions the nature of art and friendship as one woman pursues a music career while her friend captures her life on film.

I loved Airborne, the story of how having a child transformed a couple's life and relationship, the crazy obsession over a child's safety, which in the story goes to an extreme, but which I well remember with the birth of my only child.

How Long Does the First Part Last? is about unrequited love.

Dunn & Sons is "the story my father never tells;" three generations of men share stories that connect them and those that split them, and the stories that "might save us" if "ever told the right way."

Look at Everything is an amazing story about a photography student who by accident causes a fire and responds by taking photographs instead of reporting it.

The Drive takes an ironic peek behind the ubiquitous story of a dad taking the babysitter home.

Henry and his Brother speaks to the bonds of fraternal love and a mutual need that transcends family ties.

In Salvage, a man working in the shady business of removing architectural pieces from ruined buildings finds the item that he thinks will finally change his luck and life.

The last story, My Last Attempt to Explain to You What Happened with the Lion Tamer, reads like a parody and comedy but feels like a tragedy involving the love triangle clown, a tightrope walker, and a lion tamer.

I can't wait to see what Mathews does next.

I received a free ebook from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.… (more)

Brendan Mathews shows a great facility for capturing the power and powerlessness of communication in his collection of short stories, This is Not A Love Song. Each entry in the collection has a distinct style and mood, with varying points-of-view and characterization. All, however, serve to demonstrate how people’s basic need to connect with each other is thwarted when true understanding is elusive or temporary. The stories we tell each other are self-filtered and the essentials can be lost in translation. The ten tales are all well-written and engaging with unique characters-starting with a survivor of the Bosnian War visiting the U.S. and ending with or a circus clown faced with unrequited love. Mathews is an interesting storyteller, and This is Not A Love Song is hopefully only the first of many collections of stories he will share with his readers.

Thanks to Hachette Book Group (Little Brown and Company) and Edelweiss for an ARC of this book in exchange for an objective review.… (more)

For all of its promise of transporting the reader to what might have been a pivotal moment in time, the book is surprisingly superficial. It's readable and well-conditioned but the characters are overly simple and the nods to time and place are intriguing on the surface but repeatedly fail to show any depth. Simply dropping names of people and places into the text alongside a bit of local lingo doesn't really tell the reader much about a place. The opportunities to make deeper, more meaningful connections are wasted on melodramatic dialogue and plot devices. It's a book of considerable heft that ultimately misses the ring for which it grasps needily.… (more)