Down to a Sunless Sea: 02/11/08

Down to a Sunless Sea by Mathias B. Freese is a collection of fifteen short stories that represent thirty years of writing. They all deal with the darker sides of life and the human experience.

All of these stories are very short, going immediately for the raw emotions. My favorites are "Herbie", the story of a boy who rises above the abuse of his father to take the shoe shine job he wants, and "Billy's Mirrored Wall", a brief memoir of a boy growing up in poverty.

Each story has its own voice. The narrator of "I'll Make It, I think" reminds me of Jason Taylor (Black Swan Green). "The Chatham Bear" made a nice follow-up on the heals of reading Midnight Sun by Elwood Reid. These stories, painful an difficult as they are sometimes to read hit on universal truths and themes that have been inspiring writers through the centuries.

The entire list of stories included in this slim volume are:

• Down to a Sunless Sea
• I'll Make It, I Think
• The Chatham Bear
• Herbie
• Alabaster
• Juan Peron's Hands
• Little Errands
• Arnold Schwarzenegger's Father Was a Nazi
• Echo
• Young Man
• Nicholas
• Billy's Mirrored Wall
• Unanswerable
• For a While, Here, in This Moment
• Mortise and Tenon

Comments (0)