Charity

Mark Richard (The Ice at the Bottom of the World, Fishboy) populates his latest collection of short stories, Charity, with a desperate cast of characters--including an old, alcohol-soaked limo driver and hospitalized orphans. And as their lack of luck would have it, charity comes to them in only sand-sized pieces: a nurse lets sick boys watch a tiny television one night in "The Birds for Christmas"; in "Gentleman's Agreement" a father takes out a son's stitches instead of cutting off his hand. From these grim lives, Richard doesn't draw grand conclusions; rather, with each story in the collection he lays out the banal, surreal, and even disgusting aspects of his characters' lives. What makes it all bearable is Richard's economy of language and utter originality.

Take "Where Blue Is Blue." Here, a gang of deadbeat men spend their days hanging around the beach in their shark-fishing town. When a contortionist from a visiting circus turns up dead and dismembered in the bay, they are the ones willing to trawl for hands, ears, etc., in exchange for a bit of liquor cash. (Mangled and deformed body parts appear in other stories, too: cleft palates, a club foot, and a boy with a tail.) As Richard sketches these men's days, he hands out just enough and just the right details. At the same time, he manages to articulate the elusive way in which these misfits have a meaningful understanding of the sea--and what it promises those close to it. Such balance is more than Charity's saving grace: it's the reason why Richard's book is a tantalizing read.