Outliers: Stories of Searching
Book Details
Author(s)Raphael Solarsh
PublisherBull Goose Looney Publishing
ISBN / ASINB00EJSHAFC
ISBN-13978B00EJSHAF2
MarketplaceCanada 🇨🇦
Description
If a 25 year old Holden Caulfied kept a diary of his thoughts, conversations and imaginings, it might look something like this.
Outliers is collection of short works that explores the themes of travel, personal conflict and emerging identity. Focusing on young characters at the crossroads of adulthood and childhood, Outliers is at its core, about growing up in rapidly changing world, where the transition from adolescence to adulthood is too often rushed, at the cost of meaningful self-awareness and the learning of individual responsibility.
Outliers begins with the Diary of a Traveller, 15 short pieces that attempt to capture the key moments at different stages of the journey. Starting with the dissatisfaction and restlessness that drive a person to leave their home, moving through the polemic agonies and ecstasies of self discovery and finally to place of acceptance. An acceptance however that does not involve forsaking the idealism and search for meaning that sparked the journey. Rather, it is a calming of the need to dissociate and rebel blindly against the expectations of parents, friends and the society in which one lives as they no longer represent the only default answer to questions of an individual's identity and purpose. The Diary of a Traveller includes first person entries, stories and philosophical ramblings.
It continues with 3 short stories that follow a vagrant forced from the physical space of the rapidly changing city, a young employee living in fear that a white lie that has come to dominate his life will be revealed, and a mortgage broker who can grant any wish, for a price.
Outliers concludes with two novellas exploring the theme of conflict. It follows Maurice, an infantryman, who is part of a small platoon that specialises in clearing small towns of their last remaining human defences. Maurice is an expert, unemotional killer but when a small child tries following him into battle, a wave of uncomfortably human emotions begin to make Maurice feel the full effects of his actions and force him to find greater justifications for them, than simply that he must. But Maurice is not the only one beginning to crack and the arrival of this strange ethereal child shakes the tenuous balance of sanity, desperately clung onto by all the men of Maurice's platoon. The second follows Peter, who is determined to destroy The Bell Tower, the symbol of civic order in the city that he lives. On the night he plans to act however, he is brought face to face with several people more deeply intertwined with Bell Tower and its true purpose, shaking the certainty of what had seemed to Peter a simple choice.
Outlies is the debut published work by Raphael Solarsh, who is currently placing the finishing touches on his first novel, "The Bastard Progeny of Prometheus". For more info on the author, the works contained in Outliers and the first chapter on the novel, please visit raphaelsolarsh.com. Through the site you can sign up to receive updates and more free content, connect through social media and provide some much appreciated feedback.
Outliers is collection of short works that explores the themes of travel, personal conflict and emerging identity. Focusing on young characters at the crossroads of adulthood and childhood, Outliers is at its core, about growing up in rapidly changing world, where the transition from adolescence to adulthood is too often rushed, at the cost of meaningful self-awareness and the learning of individual responsibility.
Outliers begins with the Diary of a Traveller, 15 short pieces that attempt to capture the key moments at different stages of the journey. Starting with the dissatisfaction and restlessness that drive a person to leave their home, moving through the polemic agonies and ecstasies of self discovery and finally to place of acceptance. An acceptance however that does not involve forsaking the idealism and search for meaning that sparked the journey. Rather, it is a calming of the need to dissociate and rebel blindly against the expectations of parents, friends and the society in which one lives as they no longer represent the only default answer to questions of an individual's identity and purpose. The Diary of a Traveller includes first person entries, stories and philosophical ramblings.
It continues with 3 short stories that follow a vagrant forced from the physical space of the rapidly changing city, a young employee living in fear that a white lie that has come to dominate his life will be revealed, and a mortgage broker who can grant any wish, for a price.
Outliers concludes with two novellas exploring the theme of conflict. It follows Maurice, an infantryman, who is part of a small platoon that specialises in clearing small towns of their last remaining human defences. Maurice is an expert, unemotional killer but when a small child tries following him into battle, a wave of uncomfortably human emotions begin to make Maurice feel the full effects of his actions and force him to find greater justifications for them, than simply that he must. But Maurice is not the only one beginning to crack and the arrival of this strange ethereal child shakes the tenuous balance of sanity, desperately clung onto by all the men of Maurice's platoon. The second follows Peter, who is determined to destroy The Bell Tower, the symbol of civic order in the city that he lives. On the night he plans to act however, he is brought face to face with several people more deeply intertwined with Bell Tower and its true purpose, shaking the certainty of what had seemed to Peter a simple choice.
Outlies is the debut published work by Raphael Solarsh, who is currently placing the finishing touches on his first novel, "The Bastard Progeny of Prometheus". For more info on the author, the works contained in Outliers and the first chapter on the novel, please visit raphaelsolarsh.com. Through the site you can sign up to receive updates and more free content, connect through social media and provide some much appreciated feedback.
