Tales from the Post-Contemporary TundraInThe Critical List, John Wenke explores the fraying family ties and impending disasters of modern life. A widowed young woman, her leg broken during an abusive incident, attends a childs birthday party at a seedy play rink. A retired cop cant stop fixing a brain-damaged war vets problems. These stories tangle with the anxieties erupting on what Wenke calls the post-contemporary tundra.
People teeter on the edge in these pages: a former jailbird under house arrest, a would-be teenage parricide, a former philosophy professor now homeless and living in the subway underground. With dark humor and sharp observation, Wenkes stories capture the precariousness of life and the human struggle to find meaning in a world on the brink. For readers of literary fiction, short stories, and dark comedies.
“The stories in John Wenke'sThe Critical Listtake a look at Americans taking a look at their own mortality. The title comes from the things some of his characters talk about—'a freefall of small and large miseries’—as they try (without success) to stop the advance of time. In one of Wenke's stories, a boy keeps his father alive by befriending his ghost; in yet another, a drunken attempt at a criminal scheme ends up in a hilarious Christmas celebration. ‘Trouble keeps happening’ to Wenke's characters, but they keep fighting back, resilient and undaunted. These stories make up an American atlas, a road map from Connecticut to California. Get your copy now. John Wenke's tough-minded, big-hearted America awaits your discovery.” —John Surowiecki, author ofPie Man, winner of the 2017 Nilson Prize for a First Novel
"What’s so attractive about John Wenke’s stories is their stare-you-down directness — Wenke’s unflinching, deft (and welcome) conviction about the transportive and redeemil£*
![The Critical List [Paperback]](/itemImage/2/8/3/2/2_4346435.jpg "The Critical List [Paperback]")