The Secret Goldfish by David Means

The Secret Goldfish

by David Means

It is a less and less well-kept secret that David Means is one of our best fiction writers. In the past few years he has won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, been a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, and received critical acclaim on both sides of the Atlantic. Readers familiar with Means's electrifying work will recognize the vision at play in The Secret Goldfish -- a trio of erotically charged kids go on a crime spree in Michigan; a goldfish bears witness to the demise of a Connecticut marriage; an extremely unlucky man is stalked by lightning -- but this new work is funnier, more generous, and bigger in its reach.

Each story stands on its own, and yet linked together they produce a quintessentially American experience -- not the stars-and-stripes-on-the-bumper-sticker kind, but the stoned-and-bored-and-looking-for-trouble kind. Means's writing is shot through with emotion and beauty. A subversive humor -- and an almost religious fervor -- drives these stories, and Means's miraculously precise observations bring them to life.

Eileen Battersby of the Irish Times wrote, The roll-call of honor, from Eudora Welty to John Cheever, John Updike, William Maxwell, to Richard Ford, Tobias Wolff, and Annie Proulx is long and rich. Just when it seems that things could get no better, along comes David Means. This is a brilliant lineage, and yet David Means writes like no one but himself.

--New York Times Book Review on Assorted Fire Events

Reviewed by jamiereadthis on

4 of 5 stars

Share
Now this is how to put together some short stories. Disastrously good, not a misstep in the book.

“It’s those eyes-- your father’s on the dock in Canada-- that you see in hers, when you meet on the pine swamp trail. The brown of a polished hickory gun butt, rubbed shiny with warm beeswax.”
(Counterparts)

“If you have to be named for a geographic region, this one is as fine as any, boring and nondescript in what most agree is the most mundane and utilitarian of states, a state that openheartedly loves blandness. (On hearing this, Ohioans gather themselves into a defensive hunch.) Thompson embraced Ohio. He embraced John Glenn as the state hero. What more starkly boring symbol than a man circling the earth in a capsule equipped with outmoded gear, leather strapping, already ancient at launch time, spinning in the silence of space only to plunge back and sponge upon that act for the rest of his life? Thompson and I both agree that it would be better to remain up there, to be slung by gravity’s twirl out into the void until radio contact faded out. Or better to return to earth, heat shield failing, in a blooming orchid of raw flame and burning metal, striking the Atlantic landing zone in a geyser of steam.”
(Elyria Man)

Last modified on

Reading updates

  • Started reading
  • 15 September, 2010: Finished reading
  • 15 September, 2010: Reviewed
  • Started reading
  • Finished reading
  • 15 September, 2010: Reviewed