Months and Seasons

Predictable. Pleasant. Puffy.

A bowl of Rice Krispies has nothing on this bland little collection of stories about things that almost happen and people that almost change. Lots of phrases that pop explosively in your literary mouth as you chew on them but leave only a little milky residue on your book-tongue; eg: "She reached forward, and a spark of static electricity went from her forefinger to his. It startled him, and he realized the ember of energy could not be accidental. It was a sign. After all, electricity was a special power, his field." (from "Months and Seasons," p121)

A movie industry party brings together a lying clerical worker and a naive, boring electrician and sparks fly. So what? After the brief blat of that paragraph, show more the best one in this title story of the collection, there is little left to be said about this collection except, if you like that example, you'll like the book. If you take my advice, you'll spend those fifteen dollars on other books with more staying power and better craftsmanship.

Novelist David Scott Milton ("Kabbalah", a delightful suspense novel) blurbed Meeks' first collection by comparing him to Raymond Carver. Blasphemy! Outrage and rioting should shake the literary world to its roots! This writer, now on his second collection of stories ("The Middle-Aged Man and the Sea", apparently an award winner, was first) and with a published play-script under his belt ("Who Lives?"), barring something enormous changing in his life, ain't getting any better. show less

“Months and Seasons” is a particularly refreshing book of short stories. I don’t think I’ve ever read a book of short stories whose characters and situations seem so varied, even though most were males in the United States. Even the narration style was varied, alternating between first- and third-person, even a story in second-person narration, which is fairly unusual.

From the very first story, I felt close to the protagonists. It was as if a friend or close acquaintance was recounting a night, day, week, or year from his or her life. The characters all seemed quirky and easy to relate to. Meeks is very talented in being able to flesh out his characters in very few pages. Actually, perhaps a better analogy than a friend or show more acquaintance telling you the story, they seemed like stories one might overhear on a train or in an airport. They were stories that did not always give you a large degree of background on the characters, but still made them seem like real people.

Overall, I think this is a lovely story collection and it is one that I can definitely recommend. show less

I find short stories to be like snapshots, quick peeks into worlds and situations I would otherwise never have experienced. The best of them have an easy rhythm that lends itself to an almost effortless reading experience and allows me to lose myself in the stories for the whole time it takes me to read their fifteen or twenty pages. But all too often these days, short story collections are similar to the CDs being produced by the major record labels: great title track, one or two other catchy tunes, plus a whole lot of filler material needed to bring the whole thing to the required twelve tracks. I am pleased to report that if Months and Seasons, the new collection from Christopher Meeks, was a music album, many of its twelve pieces show more would be destined for the charts – no filler here.

As suggested by the book’s title, the stories offer short looks into the lives of characters that are experiencing the various seasons of a lifetime. There are stories about children, about young singles and couples, about couples closer to middle age, and about men even closer to the ends of their lives. But whatever their age, all of these characters are coping as best they can with the problems and situations that life is throwing at them at that moment. Some of their conflicts are of the life-changing variety and others are of the everyday type similar to what most readers will have experienced for themselves at some point in their own lives. The particular beauty of this story collection is how Meeks is able to make his reader care as much about the little girl trying to get over her fear of water as for the aged writer who is about to lose a lifetime’s accumulation of memories to an out-of-control brush fire.

I find it difficult to choose a favorite Months and Seasons story from those that strike me as being exceptionally memorable. If pressed to choose just one, I would likely end up with “The Wind Just Right,” the story of a little girl who is lulled into losing her fear of water, and actually learns to swim, in the hands of a young teacher who herself learns that she is exactly the teacher this little girl needs, someone the little girl will probably remember for the rest of her life. The way that both girls gain self-confidence and the ability to trust their instincts makes this a beautiful story.

In “The Sun Is a Billiard Ball,” one of the longer stories in the book, a couple fearing they have been exposed to AIDS and a man exhibiting symptoms of a deadly cancer find their lives intersecting in a way that could have not been foreseen by any of them even a split second before it happened. The courage, love and humor of this story make it one destined to be remembered. But, because I don’t want to mislead anyone, I should note that Meeks handles humor and absurd situations as well as he handles serious topics. In fact, he opens the book with the humorous “Dracula Sinks into the Night,” about what starts out as the costume party from hell for one man but turns into an unexpected blessing for him and his wife.

There is even a “bonus track” at the end of the collection, a preview of the book that Mr. Meeks is working on now, The Brightest Moon of the Century, a novel that will, in short story form, cover thirty years in the life of its central character, Edward. “The Hand,” which closes Months and Seasons, is actually the first chapter of that new book, a chapter in which young Edward and his father are both forced to do a bit of growing up. I can’t decide whether to call “The Hand” a trailer or a teaser but its inclusion in this collection was a brilliant idea because it has left me so intrigued to learn the rest of Edward’s story that I will jump at the chance to read The Brightest Moon of the Century when it is available. Trailer, teaser and very fine short story all rolled into one, it worked well.

Rated at: 5.0 show less

Christopher Meeks stories are full of people who push through the obstacles of life and overcome their deepest fears in order to find joy in living. Months and Seasons, Meeks second collection of short stories is a delightful book which introduces the reader to characters who are ordinary, but in their ordinariness remind us of the common threads which bind people together.

In the story Catalina, we meet a man who is traveling to Catalina via a catamaran. He is grieving the loss of his son. He meets a woman on the boat who optimistically tells him that Catalina is ‘like a persimmon - unexpected fruit on a naked tree.‘ The man’s discovery that there is still beauty in the world, despite his devastating loss, allows him to go forward show more into his life. This simple story is an example of the hope which Meeks infuses into all of his stories as his characters confront their fears of aging, mortality and the sometimes insurmountable challenges of relationships.

In some stories, the characters must battle their own inner demons to make sense of the world and their place within it. In A Shoe Falls, Max must evaluate his marriage to Alice - a woman who clutters the house with her shoes. He wakes from a dream about owing a cab driver $150,000 and thinks:

' …if the ride was getting so expensive and monotonous, why hadn’t he asked the cab driver to let him off? Why hadn’t he done more than sit there, bouncing in the back seat pondering his sanity? He was a passive man, goddamn it. -From Months and Seasons, A Shoe Falls, page 72-'

Max’s inner journey in this story looks at how one man (who could be any of us) examines his “dreams” in the face of his reality. Will he be able to overcome regret for what he has does not have in order to accept what is?

My favorite story of the collection is Breaking Water - which opens with a supermodel awakening from open heart surgery. Merrill appears to have lost everything of importance in her life - her career as a model, her marriage, and her vision of who she is. She must begin again and turns toward art school as a possible answer. Merrill’s story is one of falling down and getting back up again; of finding hope in the midst of despair. It touched me.

And this is perhaps the strength of the collection - in showing us the lives of these ordinary characters, Meeks exposes what is human in all of us. Who has never felt life was not living up to expectation? Or looked at the years unraveling and wondered if we had the time to do everything we wanted? Or experienced a loss so big that hope seemed irretrievable? Or found our fears so encompassing we felt paralyzed to overcome them? Meeks explores these ideas with humor and sensitivity, and creates a collection hard to put down.

For those readers who love short stories, Months and Seasons is a must read. Highly recommended. show less

This moving collection of short stories covers a full range of life experiences. Short stories excel at conveying one particular emotion each and Christopher Meeks delivers a variety of them here. Each short story feels rounded on its own as a complete vignette and all together, they make this collection shine with humanity and intelligence.

Many of the stories deal with couples, in all sorts of situations. There is a story about a couple going to a hypnotists’ show - the wife wants to let go and have fun, but her husband holds her back from immersing herself in the experience. Another couple with a reluctant husband attends a Halloween party together; he learns to have some fun. My favorite story, however, was that of an old man, a show more writer, whose house burns down. I thought it perfectly summed up how we all cope with disaster; our lives fall apart but we must put up a show for the rest of the world and pretend that we will be just fine.

As I was reading, I’d be excited for the next story when I felt the one I was currently reading begin to wrap up. I never wanted to put the book down between stories because I just wanted to read more of them. I’ve got his first collection sitting in my Amazon cart for when I make an over $25 purchase because I really, really want more of his writing. I was thrilled to see the bonus track from his next book and I can guarantee I’ll be buying that one as soon as it’s released.

I would definitely recommend this one, whether you’re like me and want to read all the stories through at once, or whether you’d like to read just one story between errands on a busy day. This collection is beautifully composed and certainly worth your time.

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This is Christopher Meeks second book of short stories and I'm sorry that I haven't read his first, which was an award winning collection. I read these 11 stories through the first time for pleasure and it was that. I like them a lot. The characters here, whether humourous, tragic, or mildly absurd are likeable, believable, and not always predictable. Like ordinary people, but with quirks that make them memorable. I haven't had a collection of short stories stay with me as vividly for quite some time. Even better, when I looked back through them I realized that there's not a weak one in the bunch. The author clearly edited himself, choosing and arranging this group of stories carefully. I've always preferred longer short stories so I show more wasn't surprised that "The Sun is a Billard Ball" at 32 pages in length would appeal to me. Or the 25 page "Breaking Water". But even "Catalina" at only 3 pages is a solid and emotionally powerful account of a man's unexpressed grief . I read it several times because what the author doesn't say is as telling as what he does. This is the sign of a good writer. In the first of these three stories, the uncertainties and fears of impending illness and diagnosis are palpable, the tension is familiar and real. In the third a Greek American man, advised by an acquaintance to spend the day on Catalina Island, is angry and judgmental until " he is surprised to see that the dry hills leaping from the water were like the Chora Sfakion in Crete. His friend must have known."
There's a wide range in age and emotional experience of his characters. Whether it's a seven year old who's afraid of water in the more lyrical "The Wind Just Right " or a seventy-eight year old playwright losing his home and life's work to wildfires in" The Old Topanga Incident", Meeks is capable of seeing and writing from very different perspectives. He shows great versitility too by writing in the voice that most suits each story. His use of the first person singular for the main character of "The Holes In My Door" lets us into the depression and obsessive fears of this recently seperated man who's slipping into paranoid behaviour. Any other perspective would not have had the same power. The use of the second person in the "Topango" story work well too. "You open the door" to shouting firemen,"you run down two flights of stairs", "you grab the play, the only copy", "you wonder whether you can make it through this". The urgency and loss is keenly felt by the reader, it's perfect.
I especially enjoyed the title story "Months and Seasons". The main character is determined that the love of his life will have the name of one of the months or seasons of the year. He won't even date someone who doesn't fit the bill. This tale about putting limits on our own fate is touching and funny. When a woman at a party introduces herself as "August" I laughed out loud. Meeks creates believable female characters too as in the final story "Breaking Water", where a model must reshape her entire life after heart surgery. Her inability to get pregnant causes her husband to abandon her, but not until after she has recovered from surgery. He doesn't want to look bad after all. We are rooting for her at every new turn in her life. This is a great collection of stories that I look forward to reading again. Highly recommended.

There's icing on the cake here too with "The Hand", an excerpt from "The Brightest Moon of the Century" at the end of the book. This novel in the form of related short stories will cover 30 years in the life of a young Minnesotan named Edward. The first of these stories made me want to know more about what happens to Edward. Given this writer's gifted sense of storytelling, I expect this new book will be a winner too. show less

Short stories are a good way to get a sense of a writer, seeing how he or she handles a number of different plotlines, looking at the way stories develop, the way characters are presented and the patterns that emerge over the course of the book. months and seasons is very different from the recent collections I reviewed by Jhumpa Lahiri and Sana Krasikov. His characters are quirky and unpredictable and the stories are refreshingly modern. From Halloween parties in LA to a summer camp in northern Minnesota, his characters never seemed to do the expected thing.

In perhaps my favorite of the stories, "Breaking Water," a former fashion model finds her life making several dramatic shifts. She is recovering from open heart surgery when her show more husband announces he wants a divorce, their marriage weakened by infertility and infidelity. In the aftermath, she goes to art school, hoping to find some new path for herself. She expects a new lover to be horrified by her scar, but he finds it "the coolest scarification" he's ever seen; she has to remind him that it isn't body art. Her actions and his reponses are unexpected but authentic - people often don't do what you expect them to.

Along similar lines, the characters in "The Sun is a Billiard Ball" don't react to their health crisis in typical ways. Albert has seen the telltale signs, but even though his father died from prostate cancer, Albert has refused to see the doctor, pretending the symptoms will go away. Waking up from a one night stand with Jazz, Wade gets a nasty shock. Still, weeks later, he seeks Jazz out and not only stands by her but wants to continue their relationship.

In "A Shoe Falls", a man wakes up and decides he wants out of his marriage. He's tired of his wife and her shoe fetish and their bickering. He finds his efforts thwarted when his wife is suddenly agreeable...and that just makes him grumpier.

The book is fairly short and some of the stories are only a page or two in length, but the book is still an enjoyable read. Christopher Meeks is a writing teacher and playwright, and has previously published another book of short stories, The Middle-Aged Man and the Sea. show less