Bright Segments

November 1, 2024
A retrospective banquet of 154 stories, including 11 never published before, from a novelist who's always been something of a miniaturist. The aptly titled "Abeyance," the longest by far of the new stories, cuts back and forth between Hannah Martyn, a nurse in the neonatal intensive care unit, and her colleague Moira Jarosz, who's vanished from the NICU ward and her home. As usual in Sallis' work, the plot is secondary to the evocation of an impossibly teeming world in which Hannah's search for Moira competes with the equally urgent rhythms of infants struggling for breath; couples trying their best to conceive; passing interactions with friends, neighbors, and family members; haunting dreams and memories; and the general sense of a world in which, as Moira reflects, "change is the constant....You're forever opening doors then standing there hoping it won't come in." Several of the other new stories provide especially notable epiphanies. The narrator of "Blood Draw" ruefully acknowledges that having good veins hasn't prepared him for what comes next. The sorely distracted husband of "Silver" frets about what steps to take with his wife, who has early-onset dementia. The teacher turned monster-killer in "All My Grendels in a Row" reflects on his vocation to serve and protect. "Billy Deliver's Last Twelve Novels" devotes one teasing paragraph to each of those novels. A ritualistic conversation about "what we leave behind" in "How the World Got To Be" leads the narrator to wonder whether words will save or damn us. And the narrator's contract with Rerun Inc. to provide a do-over of his unfortunate last three days in "How I Came To Be," an homage to a classic Ray Bradbury story, leads to far more public calamities. Like a hive bereft of its queen, Sallis' world buzzes endlessly with worker bees and drones.

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November 1, 2024
Acclaimed and beloved Sallis is perhaps most renowned for his popular Lew Griffin crime novels, but readers know that his literary talents know no limits. This massive collection of 154 stories is sure to delight and surprise his legion of fans. The stories explore and expand upon various genres. Many are speculative fiction, sf, or simply reality-adjacent, while others offer a surrealist or absurdist spin. They all feature Sallis' hyperliterary prose powered by snappy, pulsing dialogue; an exuberant, philosophical wit; clever turns of phrase; and spirited, unexpected discursions. The result can feel like a manic fever-dream of an uber-loquacious addict speed-balling Roget's Thesaurus--disorienting, weird, and altogether original. Readers will discern an arc or evolution in Sallis' style. Whereas a musical virtuoso might prioritize a complex solo, a master understands it is all about feel. Sallis' prodigious talent and boundless imagination refuse to be pigeon-holed as he balances inventive plots and underline-worthy gems, such as, "the sculpting of single grains of sand, using the tools of my father, then scattering my invisible beauty in handfuls wherever I walked."

COPYRIGHT(2024) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.