Review: Jeffery Ford’s The Drowned Life

I got a copy of the book in the mail about a week or so go- and I must say I opened it and started reading right away with a childish glee.  This is a great book, Ford’s short stories are a work of wonder in themselves- the voice is assured, deeply realistic in each narrative.  It sounds much like Vonnegut did- a friend sitting down over a few beers to reminisce with you for a bit (but without the condescension and sarcasm that dripped from every word).

I said this before- this collection reminds me a lot of Ray Bradbury’s The October Country in a very good way.  I have not read short stories of this caliber in so long, and until I started reading Ford’s stories in various online venues, I thought it had become a lost art.  In this collection you get the same feeling from The October Country- that same nostalgic view of American childhood through most of the better stories.

And Ford is the master of the pivot point- a point in a narrative where the whole story turns on it’s axis.  This is not say a surprise, but it works in the same element as surprises work.  For example- The Scribble Mind.  You start off with what seems like a horror story, then pivots into a paranoid thriller that would make Dan Brown weep with envy.  All infused with this amazing imagination, whose concepts just spark wonder in themselves.

The best of the stories, though, is The Night Whiskey.  I would love to see an entire novel set in the same landscape as this story.  In some aspects, it reminds me of Shirley Jackson’s The Lottery, the way it approaches small American rural paranoia.  But this is at glance, just a thematic similarity, and claiming any other resemblance than that would be a crime.  I would surmise the plot itself, but that would spoil such an excellent story.  The pivot point is what really makes this good.  You think you are getting one kind of story, and then things darken.  Things change completely.

This collection is highly recommended.