On "A String of Things Leading to a Piece of Fried Fish" by Mark Brown (33 minutes) ****

A friend of mine chose an MFA program in part because Mark Brown was teaching there. I didn't know Mark Brown's work. By chance, a year or so later, I was looking for some audio fiction to take with me on a road trip and came across this. Hearing Brown read, my friend's liking made a lot of sense. This story has semblance to the work of Mark Richard and to other writers of the southern lyrical stamp. And it is good.

Essentially, it's a story about a man who has bottomed out. He's lost his job, his wife, and now he's splayed out on a road on a bike that no longer works awaiting the arrival of a log truck to run him over. The log truck accident will be an improvement. Or will it? Even the low down may not be the lowest down. And in recognizing this, there is hope. Listen to the story here at Lit-cast, or download it here from the same place. (Warning: This particular story of Brown's has a plethora of four-letter words.)

On "The Ghosts We Love" by Brock Clarke (9318 words) *****

A common subject in Brock Clarke's stories is men who have failed to live up to life's potential. Often, this revolves around marriages gone bad, in part because of these failures. In this story, from Clarke's second collection, Carrying the Torch, we see the theme carried across a family. Here, the setting of a lake house is used to full effect, presenting us with eras of the family and its gradual deterioration. Read the story here at Virginia Quarterly Reivew. Or listen to Clarke read it here at Lit-Cast.