A unique story that explores the idea of whether the objects around you could influence your behavior.
This debut novel from acclaimed poet and short fiction writer, Craig Buchner, Fish Cough is punctuated by gallows humor and finely attuned observations of the human experience. American in setting and style, Buchner presents an alluring, uniquely disquieting journey into the dynamics of the modern psyche. Fish Cough is a new breed of novel that blurs genre and tugs at the heart, all while questioning the foundational ideas of the world we live in.
There are places you always call home
… their smells rotting or warm or sweet, their bruises just deep enough to forgive until you touch them. There are places you leave that will forever contain you or cling to you or cry out for you. Craig Buchner’s Brutal Beasts (which received a Starred Review from Kirkus Reviews) is a trip to these homes. It opens the door and finds us at the edge of a falls weighing the jump, of a bedroom where a father’s crumpled body lie failing, of the ability—and the desire—to love through what seems so repulsive.
Across eighteen stories Brutal Beasts realizes a visceral, addictively painful sense of familiarity with the violence and regret and compassion that bind the word home to its places and its people. Buchner’s stories achieve an honesty that is hard to confront not just because of their brutality, but because we find ourselves at home in them.
In addition to being named one of Kirkus Reviews Best Indie Books of 2002, Brutal Beasts was also a finalist in the National Indie Excellence Awards.