Something Rich and Strange: Selected Stories

When you come across a Ron Rash story it’s usually the best short story you’ve read in a while, and it often lingers. But his true mastery of the form comes into clear view in a collection, especially this collection. Read one after the other, Rash’s stories are rich, evocative, carefully constructed, and often otherworldly good.

And Rash knows how to pace a story. None is longer than it needs to be – you’re left wanting more but knowing it’s not needed.

Several of the stories here are set in the historical context of war and its aftermath. WWII (Return), Afghanistan (Twenty-Six Days), but most often the Civil War. Rash explores how war affects fighting men and those that love them. The trauma of the Civil War (Shiloh, show more Lincolnites, Where the Map Ends) in particular, where towns and even families were divided by their loyalties.

The stories with contemporary settings show a rural south ravaged by desperation, poverty, methamphetamine and the disruption of a society being dragged the modern day.

“Three A.M. and the Stars Were Out”, about two widowers saving a calf, is about a good a story as it gets. “Their Ancient, Glittering Eyes” is the best fish story I’ve read. “The Corpse Bird” explores the tension between the “Rational. Educated. Enlightened” world and “people who believed the world could reveal all manner of things if you paid attention.” In “The Woman at the Pond” Rash gives the best description of dusk: “that hour when day and night made their slow exchange.” show less

Ron Rash is my favorite author. Most of these 34 heartbreaking stories come from his prior collections. They are all very fine - Rash tells each tale in a few riveting pages, and all the endings work well. Most are melancholy tales set in North Carolina, in the present working class misery or in the Civil War working class misery. Rash's characters, strong men and women, weak men and women, always come off the page and move into your blood and bones. My favorites: Last Rite, where a mountain woman's son is found murdered in no man's land, and she absolutely needs to know where he breathed his last, for his entry in the family Bible, and Shiloh, one of the two stories newly published in book form, where a Union soldier finds a worse show more enemy at home than on the battlefront. Do not miss these. show less

Rash is a good writer, but this is just too much to digest at one time. There's a sameness to a lot of the stories that doesn't help them when taken in such a large dose. Also, he isn't a very humorous writer, although the story about the used car salesman on the cross is pretty good. Mostly, these are believable stories about real people (most North Carolinians) from pre-Civil War (that's the War Between the States, son!) times to the present. There's nothing artificial or showy here, and that's to the good. But read a couple, then wait a couple of months before you continue.

I listened to the audiobook read by Christian Baskous. I have to say that his performance here isn't nearly as good as his reading of Charles Bukowski.

Rash is remarkable! He can create a character you care for, deeply, in just a few pages. His stories are southern, ranging in time from the Civil War to contemporary events. There are soldiers and meth addicts. Slaves of then and now. His endings are almost always harsh twists; you cry, no!

I enjoyed the book on many levels:
- the southern sensibilities and dialect.
- the author's ability to vividly bring the 19th century to life in several of the Civil war era stories.
- the highly focused, polished writing. There is starkly beautiful, poetic quality to his prose.

I feel compelled to read all of his other works of fiction.

[[Ron Rash]] reminds me a little of [[Denis Johnson]] and [[William Gay]]. These stories, many firmly in the Southern Gothic tradition like Gay’s, follow the characters on the fringe, the throw-aways, like Johnson’s. There were so many good stories in the collection, it would take too long to list or describe them. This guy deserves your time.

5 bones!!!!!
Highly Recommended!!!!!

I will come back to this, but I had to put it aside. It’s relentlessly sad. There is redemption but I need a little break. The short story format works for this.