Publisher's Synopsis
A vivid and hugely original collection of short stories from the new Raymond Carver, introducing a cast of unique and memorable characters in a truly remarkable voice. Steve Lattimore's characters inhabit the great expanses of the American mid-west, the used car lots and trailer parks, diners and tatty gambling dens , living the American dream in reverse. But in a complex, almost surreal fashion he takes the convention of the loser and turns it on it's head, to tease out the most fundamental human problems in a truly imaginative, original way. In thetitle story, the nameless hero, a dropout living on his mother's farm in Oregon, uses the memory of his 1 full year's employment as a shield to protect himself from his current failure. Then 5 year old child prodigy Jamie comes along, with his fascination for electricity and complex banking terms, and gives him the courage to take responsibility for himself. In ' Family Sports ' blackjack dealer Claire realizes that she has no power to save her parents ailing marriage, to cure her mother's shoplifting habitand her sister's disastrous descent into domestic drudgery, but that maybe it is enough to save herself. Updating the superb tradition of Raymond Carver and Flannery O'Connor, Circumnavigation introduces a cast of unique and memorable characters and a truly remarkable new voice.
