Sightings

Hollars' debut short fiction collection begins in the summer of 1975 and, across 10 stories, steadfastly remains right there. He presents variations on the theme of a boy growing up in the Midwest and maintains a basic that's-the-summer-I-became-a-man tone, featuring encounters with racism, sex, and a talented Sasquatch. The fathers obsess over civil war reenactments and wagon trains; mothers worry and scold and build time machines. There are dead siblings and young girls that go missing. The stories warp the cliched coming of age tale by tacking on unsuspected plot elements, but still cling to the spirit of the cliche. A Sasquatch plays basketball in the title story; in "The Clowns" a family of clowns moves in; but these tales could happen with some other random thing substituted. Individually, the stories are good. Together they feel repetitive. The sadness underlying these stories points to something deeper behind the gigantic ideas, but it feels purposefully untouched. He saves the best story for last: "Missing Mary" is about the disappearance of a high school girl and it manages to tell the well-worn story freshly by adopting a journalistic, third person perspective stripped of emotion. It is shocking and evocative. More of that impulse would have served Hollars well. (Mar.)