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The Expendables

by Antonya Nelson

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511500,659 (3.25)1
Winner of the Flannery O'Connor Award, Antonya Nelson's debut collection of stories displays the off-beat perceptions, the humor, and the sensibility that have won the author not only critical acclaim but a host of devoted readers. Most of the stories in The Expendables are about marriage -- marriage in process, about to be, about not to be anymore, possibly transgressed, and decidedly not transgressed. In the title story, a teenage boy participates in the spectacle of his sister's second marriage. In "Dog Problems," a husband muses about his wife's attachment to her dog, a bond that predates their marriage and will -- he fears -- outlast it. There is the woman in "Affair Life," happily encircled by her husband and child, who still must choose between her marriage and what is not quite yet an infidelity. Ranging in setting from Atlanta to Chicago and Kansas City, from the arid Southwest to the course of a river running through Colorado canyon walls, the stories in The Expendables show our relationship with destiny, whether resisted, invented, obeyed, or forced.… (more)
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The stories seem like they come from a quite bitter and jaded place. I really didn't care that Alan slammed his fast food tray with an empty styrofoam cup of chili into the trash can, nor that teen mom Maggie's baby cried in certain ways. Some authors try to court the "incisive and perceptive" crown so intently that their plots get bogged down by exasperatingly uninteresting details. (Not surprisingly, the plaudit on the back cover was written by the master of pointless, bitter details, Raymond Carver.) As the first line of the blurb points out, most of these stories are about crumbling or otherwise awkward marriages.
  YESterNOw | Feb 28, 2016 |
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Winner of the Flannery O'Connor Award, Antonya Nelson's debut collection of stories displays the off-beat perceptions, the humor, and the sensibility that have won the author not only critical acclaim but a host of devoted readers. Most of the stories in The Expendables are about marriage -- marriage in process, about to be, about not to be anymore, possibly transgressed, and decidedly not transgressed. In the title story, a teenage boy participates in the spectacle of his sister's second marriage. In "Dog Problems," a husband muses about his wife's attachment to her dog, a bond that predates their marriage and will -- he fears -- outlast it. There is the woman in "Affair Life," happily encircled by her husband and child, who still must choose between her marriage and what is not quite yet an infidelity. Ranging in setting from Atlanta to Chicago and Kansas City, from the arid Southwest to the course of a river running through Colorado canyon walls, the stories in The Expendables show our relationship with destiny, whether resisted, invented, obeyed, or forced.

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