While Jamel Brinkley’s skillset as a writer is unquestioned, after reading his debut collection of short stories A Lucky Man, I’m left hoping that talent would have been put to better use by making the stories a little more interesting, carried themselves with a little less gravitas and by god, not be so long. That is the big issue with this whole collection: the stories are way too long; going on 15 or 20 pages more than they really should. This might be colored by my recent habit of reading the great works of short fiction. These are far from terrible stories, and two or maybe three are quite good, but I’d like to think their ideas could be conveyed and its impact more substantial if they had left before their presence became unwelcome. Like I do with all short story collection, I will pick out a few that I really liked. The first one, “No More Than Bubble” follows two friends as they engage in a long form sloppy seduction of two women they met at a party, with intermittent flashbacks to the narrator’s lecherous father. The two ideas come together beautifully, but again, it is about 10 pages too long. “A Family” is another gem, where a man released from prison struck up a shaky romance with his late best friend’s wife, finding comfort in imperfect relationships. Another odd issue was how homogenous the narrators all were. It might not be fair for a short story collection, but each of the narrators could be the same callow, irresponsible young man. A lot of the time, they are overshadowed by a stronger character, like Fat Rhonda in “Wolf and Rhonda” or the spiritual ladies man Micah in “Infinite Happiness”. If it was meant to be that way, I can’t say it helped much with these stories. But I still enjoyed reading them. Despite being little more serious than fun, they still pack a heavy punch.
Rating: 4/5
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