Rico's Reviews > My Hard Bargain

The first collection of short stories from Walter Kirn, before he went on to pen hit novels like "Thumbsucker." His style here is hard to describe -- some stories are quite realistic, climaxing with Joycean epiphanies. Others are oddly surreal, especially a few that deal directly with religion (Kirn was raised Mormon). The best still linger vividly in my brain, over a decade after I first read them.