- Paperback: 62 pages
- Publisher: Picador (16 Jun 2006)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0330445790
- ISBN-13: 978-0330445795
- Product Dimensions: 13.6 x 9.6 x 1 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 1,605,776 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Description
Product Description
Introducing 12 intoxicating short stories from 12 of Picador's most exciting writers
Book Description
In June, 2006, Picador launch Picador Shots, a new series of pocket-sized books priced at £1. The Shots aim to promote the short story as well as the work of some Picador's greatest authors. They will be contemporarily packaged but ultimately disposable books that are the ideal literary alternative to a magazine. Craig Davidson's stories from Rust and Bone will one of the first of the Shots. In steel-tipped prose, Craig Davidson conjures up a world populated by hard-scrabble pugilists, fighting dogs, sex addicts and others held caption by their own bad luck and bad decisions. In 'A Mean Utility', a young couple with struggling careers and serious issues with conceiving play out their own troubles through the dogs their raise to fight to the death. In 'Life in the Flesh' a ex-boxer escapes to Thailand to try and come to terms with killing his final opponent during a fight. He buries himself in training up-and-coming boxers but the arrival of 'The Kid' - 'late twenties, baggy board-shorts and garish Hawaiian shirt, eyes dark behind oversize wraparounds' challenges him in more ways than he could ever have imagined. Davidson's stories are small monuments to the telling detail which, despite the darkness within them, also contain moment of redemption and surprising humanity. Visceral and urgent, in turns hilarious and horrifying, these stories are a gripping account of life on the margins. Praise for Rust and Bone: ‘Stark oppositions often pack the punch in these gritty tales about American tough guys on the ropes… This salty collection more than whets the appetite for Davidson's novel, The Pit, due next year’ Guardian ‘Throughout, the author harnesses his incredible insight to illuminate his characters’ fight, rendering their struggle in spare, startling detail and revealing whole lives in a fistful of pages. But what sets Davidson apart from his peers is the sheer energy and clarity of his prose, all eight of the stories blasting forth with fresh, precise imagery’ The List
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
4.0 out of 5 stars
Two gems worth reading,
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This review is from: PICADOR SHOTS - 'A Mean Utility' (Paperback)
The male-centric focus of Craig Davidson's writing, coupled with his penchant for graphically depicting scenes of violence and bodily mutilation, are factors that will either garner readers to - or repel them from - these short stories. The first, "A Mean Utility", tells the tale of a young couple who attempt to solve their marital problems by raising prize-winning (illegal) Rottweilers who fight to the death in the brutal dog-fighting ring; the second story, "Life in the Flesh" deals pointedly with issues of guilt and responsibility and even male egoism through its central protagonist, an ex-boxer, who flees to Thailand in order to escape his demons after killing an opponent during a boxing match.
The unabashed clichés of exaggerated masculinity (the fascination with violence, the inability of Davidson's male characters to express simple feelings, as well as the overtly "proud" natures of his protagonists who are seemingly unjust, unloving, intemperate, and at times, adolescent) are on the one hand quietly frustrating, and on the other, invigorating. Ironically, these very traits of machismo work to emphasise the pathos, humanity and underlying subtlety of both stories, rather than perturbing them.
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