Scouting for the Reaper edition by Jacob M Appel Literature Fiction eBooks
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Fiction. Each of the characters in SCOUTING FOR THE REAPER faces an unanticipated challenge transporting a truckload of penguins across the country, arranging a proper Jewish burial for the remains of Gregor Samsa, and selling tombstones dressed as a Girl Scout. These stories explore the domestic and professional adventures of people in over their heads, while leavening their struggles with humor.
Scouting for the Reaper edition by Jacob M Appel Literature Fiction eBooks
SCOUTING FOR THE REAPER is a masterful collection of eight connected stories. In the first three—“Choose Your Own Genetics”, “Creve Coeur”, and “Scouting for the Reaper”, Appel uses teenage narrators to identify his subjects, which are social marginality, infatuation, marital strife, and a death in the family. Thereafter, Appel develops five stories with variants on most, but not all, of these subjects. The touching and insightful “Ad Valorem”, for example, explores marginality, infatuation, and a death in the family but from the perspective of a 58 year-old woman. Meanwhile, the subjects in “Rods and Cones” are marital stress and death, this time from the perspective from a hysterical empty-nester who is seeking medical treatment for her blind rabbit. Anyway, you get the picture. This is a rich and disciplined story collection that suggests many common dilemmas facing the young can take farcical or tragic form in the lives of the middle-aged and elderly.The final two stories in this collection are both funny and surreal. In “Hazardous Cargoes”, a lonely trucker with a load of 42 penguins and assorted rare animals copes with a difficult teenage runaway. And in “The Vermin Episode”, Appel wonders what happened to the dung-beetle body of Gregor Samsa, which no cemetery will inter. Even so, my favorite story in this collection is “The Extinction of Fairy Tales”. There, Appel writes with great insight and poignancy about death and the odd dependencies (which are a kind of infatuation) that can develop between people who are virtual strangers.
Appel is an elegant and humorous writer. In each of his stories, the emotional lives of his protagonists evolve persuasively. He is also original but subtle and can find something new without being edgy or transgressive. This collection is fine work and is recommended.
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Scouting for the Reaper edition by Jacob M Appel Literature Fiction eBooks Reviews
Jacob Appel is the master of weaving spellbinding stories about ordinary people facing everyday obstacles. If you love short stories, then this book is a must have for your library.
Jacob Appel has such an inventive mind that nothing should shock you in this collection of stories. I highly recommend them.
It seems fitting to me that the cover design for this collection is a mass of objects related only by their inclusion in the stories of this book. This seems fitting because the stories themselves contain an interesting array of objects and situations--blind bunnies, dying ex-wives, penguins in transit, even the cadaver of Gregor Samsa--but I rarely found the stories themselves compelling or satisfying by the end. Perhaps what bothered me the most was that I rarely ever relished in sharp imagery. Appel is thoroughly accurate in his descriptions of places and people, but without a lot of distinction to make them wholly unique in their own storyverses. One story has an episode where the driver of a jackknifed truck has to herd together its penguin cargo, but this situation never seems to crystallize its own reality, instead taking a rather summative approach to manufacture a rather thin epiphany by the end. The first three stories also pursue almost clone-like characterizations. There is a lot of talk, but not a lot to let me dig my heels into these stories.
“Nothing sells tombstones like a Girl Scout in uniform.” ( Locations 1111-1112)
Phew. I dodged a bullet with this one. Polymath Jacob M. Appel’s collection of short stories, Scouting for the Reaper came very, very highly recommended by one of my most trusted goodreads friends. Then, when I read the author’s bio, my anticipation just flew off the scale. I couldn’t wait. I jumped his book to the head of a very long line.
Imagine my surprise, then; my quandary and disappointment, when I found myself not much liking the first couple of stories. They seemed rather uninteresting, to me, and laced with futility—without a single character with whom I could connect.
How was I going to write—i.e. tactically phrase—a negative (2, maybe 2.5 stars) review? I’d rather break my own heart than a friend’s.
No need. In the third, the title story, along comes Louise Natalie Limberg, eleven year old narrator/faux girl scout, cum tombstone merchandiser—and I’ve found my character to be comfortable and happy with. And it just kept getting better from there.
My favorite characters of all were Edie and Sammy, in The Extinction of Fairytales (my favorite story of the collection); and the unnamed narrator, Viktoria, and Short John Silver in my second favorite tale Hazardous Cargos.
Recommendation If you like cleverly outlandish, these are the tales for you.
“No matter how hard you try to mind your own business, eventually, no matter what precautions you take, you’re bound to find yourself surrounded by a bunch of flailing penguins.” ( Locations 3660-3662)
Black Lawrence Press. Edition.
SCOUTING FOR THE REAPER is a masterful collection of eight connected stories. In the first three—“Choose Your Own Genetics”, “Creve Coeur”, and “Scouting for the Reaper”, Appel uses teenage narrators to identify his subjects, which are social marginality, infatuation, marital strife, and a death in the family. Thereafter, Appel develops five stories with variants on most, but not all, of these subjects. The touching and insightful “Ad Valorem”, for example, explores marginality, infatuation, and a death in the family but from the perspective of a 58 year-old woman. Meanwhile, the subjects in “Rods and Cones” are marital stress and death, this time from the perspective from a hysterical empty-nester who is seeking medical treatment for her blind rabbit. Anyway, you get the picture. This is a rich and disciplined story collection that suggests many common dilemmas facing the young can take farcical or tragic form in the lives of the middle-aged and elderly.
The final two stories in this collection are both funny and surreal. In “Hazardous Cargoes”, a lonely trucker with a load of 42 penguins and assorted rare animals copes with a difficult teenage runaway. And in “The Vermin Episode”, Appel wonders what happened to the dung-beetle body of Gregor Samsa, which no cemetery will inter. Even so, my favorite story in this collection is “The Extinction of Fairy Tales”. There, Appel writes with great insight and poignancy about death and the odd dependencies (which are a kind of infatuation) that can develop between people who are virtual strangers.
Appel is an elegant and humorous writer. In each of his stories, the emotional lives of his protagonists evolve persuasively. He is also original but subtle and can find something new without being edgy or transgressive. This collection is fine work and is recommended.
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