Wells Tower

If this is the beginning of a career, it's hella fine and bodes so well for the rest of his earthly time that I am thrilled and grateful he decided to write.

The nine stories in the collection are the products of much careful observation, writing, and re-writing, and that shows in their craftsmanship. There are very few infelicities of style on display here. But what doesn't show, what's invisible to the naked eye, is the muse-touch that brought Wells Tower to our shelves. He's not a writer show more made, he's a writer born. How dare I assess a stranger's character? I dare because there are only a few times in life when the hairs on one's neck stand up and the palms of one's hands moisten when someone not right there *feels* like they are.

Tower is a star. He writes beautifully. He imagines fully the characters he presents to us. These are craftsmanly things, things I can teach someone to do. What I can't teach someone to do is to see so deeply into the reality of another's life. That makes Tower very unusual.

In every story in this collection, there is something unexpected. The last story, set in Viking times, is a complete departure from the present-day fringes-of-society settings of all the others...but only at first glance. The characters in Tower's fiction are all men looking for meaning in all the socially sanctioned places and not finding it. I can't think of a more evergreen plot off hand. But these men all have one thing in common that isn't superficial. They are all wounded from within by anger.

An angry Viking...yeah, so? The Viking in question, however, is wounded by the anger he feels at change, at the world daring to shift him into a new place. Like the other Tower men, modern men, he feels cut off from his source of meaning and connection. I don't think this is anachronistic, because I think that's been a human experience since scientific-Adam fathered the first huge batch of modern human males.

Why read about angry men, I hear the ladies murmur, we see 'em all the time...yes, I know, but ask yourself this: Why is anger so male an emotion? Why are men so ticked all the time? Turn to fiction for your answers. Betrayal of the trust a man reposes in others is a biiig one ("The Brown Coast", "Wild America", "On the Show"), or the inability of humans to cope with change ("Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned", "Door in Your Eye", "Executors of Important Energies")...in short, the same things that make women angry, right?

Not exactly. Tower's men, like the flesh-and-blood ones I know and love, are befuddled by the very fact of feelings. They aren't mad because you hurt their feelings, they're mad because you found them in the first place and THEN hurt them.

And they have no way to tell you this. So Tower had to do it for you. So he did. Go say your thank-yous at the cash register, buy his book, read it and apply your confusion to the real men in your life. show less

Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned certainly lives up to its title. Wells Tower’s collection of stories is nearly all about people whose lives have been blighted by fallings-out with family or loved ones.

Most of the stories are about a particular incident, and usually end with no resolution, and not even a suggestion of a hopeful outcome. You sometimes sense an ellipsis lurking behind his endings; there is more to this, but he’s not sharing it. Characters have little back-story, show more which is fair enough in a short story, but it leads them to be a little one-dimensional. One story I did like was In the Show about a single night in a funfair. It’s full of incident with quite a few characters getting attention, and more background filled in than Tower usually gives us. It’s stronger as a result, but still has a little bit of that ellipsis lurking at the end.

The eponymous story is the last in the collection and unusual in that it is a piece of historical fiction rather than set in the contemporary USA. It’s a story about some Viking raiders setting out on a voyage to pillage Lindisfarne. It’s an interesting idea for a story, and I was getting quite engaged until Tower fatally marred it with risible anachronisms like “gung-ho motherf***er” and “hassle”. There’s no excuse for horrible writing like that, and both Tower and his editors should hang their collective heads in shame.

Since I really only enjoyed one story in this collection, I can’t say I recommend it particularly. Maybe others might get ore out of Tower’s writing than I did. I think his stories lack the humour and style that might lift them above the pack in the manner of, say, Tony Birch. Instead, he has just written a collection of very downbeat, sometimes silly stories that would only appeal to somebody who needs a darn good depressing. show less

Excellent writing, but kind of a downer. Many of the stories lack a cohesive ending, which isn't necessarily bad, it just added to the general feeling of hopelessness.

I was reading this while sitting outside practice rooms while my daughter was at a weekend-long flute workshop. I kept feeling ashamed of myself, like I'd done something really wrong that I knew was really wrong, but I couldn't think of anything I'd actually done. Then I realized that the shame of the characters was leaching show more into my own emotions. My spouse says I should stop reading books like this if I'm going to feel this way afterward. I'm not about to take his advice, but I will work harder to recognize it's happening before the shame really sets in.

The final story about the inner life of a Viking warrior is my favorite of the collection. I enjoyed how the Vikings in the story had such complex interactions and reactions to things. They would do these extremely brutal things that they're supposed to revel in or at least consider just part of a day's work, but instead a few are just burned out on pillaging and just want to settle down and live in peace. I tend not to think of Vikings as real people, but of course they were; this story (although fiction) helped me see the nuanced reactions they may well have had to all of the violence. show less

This was a pretty exquisite book of short stories. Very short stories: Stories that would ferry you to far-off narrative islands, leave you to rummage around in the thickets of their characters' lives, and then suddenly drop the earth off from under your feet and catapult you onto the next adventure. I would be extremely invested in one character / setting / story / narrative ascent, waiting on the edge of my seat for the culmination of tension, for the characters' relationships to somehow show more come to a head, and then I would turn the page, and it would all end.

Wells Tower has a lovely way with words and with dialogue; realistic, tinged with wit, imbuing his characters with a rooted sense of their worlds. Each character reveled in their own unique set of inadequacies. (Especially memorable: The brothers in the forest, the girl in the river, and, of course, the Vikings.) show less