Same Place, Same Things: Stories

by Tim Gautreaux

Overview

In this collection of stories, Tim Gautreaux chronicles the lives of "ordinary" people who face extraordinary circumstances and decisions: a farmer faced with the prospect of raising his infant granddaughter; a young man who falls in love with a voice on the radio; a train engineer who causes a colossal disaster. In stories filled with heart and humor, event and consequence, the customs and culture of Louisiana come to life in the hands of a writer who blends rare talent with an even more unusual humanity.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781466843004
Publisher:	Picador
Publication date:	04/26/2013
Sold by:	Macmillan
Format:	eBook
Pages:	224
File size:	283 KB

About the Author

Tim Gautreaux was born and raised in south Louisiana. His fiction has appeared in Harper's, The Atlantic Monthly, GQ, Story, Best American Short Stories, and elsewhere. He has taught creative writing for many years at Southern Louisiana University.

Tim Gautreaux was born and raised in south Louisiana. His fiction has appeared in Harper's, The Atlantic Monthly, GQ, Story, Best American Short Stories, and elsewhere. He has taught creative writing for many years at Southern Louisiana University. He is the author of Same Place, Same Things.

Table of Contents

Same Place, Same Things
Waiting for the Evening News
Died and Gone to Vegas
The Courtship of Merlin LeBlanc
Navigators of Thought
People on the Empty Road
The Bug Man
Little Frogs in a Ditch
License to Steal
Floyd's Girl
Returnings
Deputy Sid's Gift

Editorial Reviews

A terrific debut collection from a Louisiana writer whose stylish, sympathetic understanding of working-class sensibilities and Cajun culture gives his work a flavor and universality unique among contemporary writers.

Gautreaux's 12 stories move to a musical beat, and they're filled with both verbal surprises and sudden narrative twists—sometimes into unanticipated violence, sometimes, contrarily, toward revelations of more decency and strength in his characters than we had believed them capable of. His people include the itinerant pump repairman (in the title story) who gets unfortunately involved with a phlegmatic widow who'll do anything to escape her stifling life and environment; the middle-aged widower (of "The Courtship of Merlin Le Blanc") who finds he can't escape the constrictions—and satisfactions—of family; a well-meaning exterminator ("The Bug Man") who becomes intimately, catastrophically involved in the lives of his clients; and, most memorably, the nursing-home employee (in the wonderful "Deputy Sid's Gift") whose confused responses to the "black drunk truck thief" who keeps invading his life eventually rescue him from his own meanness. Only one piece (the smug "Navigators of Thought") misfires, though the repetition of similar plot elements and the use in more than one story of the same names suggest that the book could have used more stringent editing. All of the tales are powered by a racy, vigorous prose that makes you want to keep on quoting ("He didn't know her from Adam's house cat"; "You can't work too steady if you're a Louisiana man. You got to lay off and smell the roses a bit, drink a little beer and put some wear on your truck").

Moving and memorable portrayals of people who really are changed—and, often, in spite of themselves, uplifted—by the complexities of their experiences and their relationships. The gifted Gautreaux harkens back to the early work of Flannery O'Connor.

Kirkus Reviews

This man is a wonderful writer. . . . I can honestly say I love to read his stories. He never exaggerates, never manipulates the reader's affections, but nonetheless he always captures the heart.” —James Lee Burke

“Moving and memorable . . . The gifted Gautreaux harkens back to the early work of Flannery O'Connor.” —Kirkus Reviews

“As good as stories get—any stories, in any time or palce . . . Imbued with the cich roux of family, place, race, and religion that is the base of all good Souther fiction.” —The Times-Picayune

“Gautreaux is as good a storyteller as just about anyone writing short fiction in America today.” —The Boston Phoenix

From the Publisher