DECEMBER 2020 - AudioFile
Mirron Willis, having narrated several Walter Mosley audiobooks, has an experienced grasp of the author's cadence and language. This familiarity, as well as Willis's prudent pronunciation, makes for a confident and compelling reading of Mosley stories. Like Mosley's novels, these tales are digressive and imaginative, dealing with, among other things, a fly's friendship, the sexual prowess of superheroes, and the transmigration of the human soul. But if there is any thread that connects this collection, it is Mosley's explorations of aging and death. We are all just "a hair's breadth from finality," one character reminds us. But don't let the subject matter put you off. Thanks to Willis's upbeat delivery—check out his voicing of Billy the Texan—and Mosley's dabs of surrealistic relief (a plastic surgeon's blind date leads to a metaphysical breakthrough; a company delivers messages from the dead), this quirky audiobook always entertains. R.W.S. © AudioFile 2020, Portland, Maine
From the Publisher
Praise for Walter Mosley:
“When reviewing a book by Walter Mosley, it’s hard not to simply quote all the great lines. There are so many of them. You want to share the pleasures of Mosley’s jazz-inflected dialogue and the moody, descriptive passages reminiscent of Raymond Chandler at his best.”― Washington Post, on Down the River Unto the Sea
“A daring, beautifully wrought story that incorporates elements of allegory, meditative reflection and the lilt of lyric tragedy. ”― Los Angeles Times, on The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey
“With Mosley, there’s always the surprise factor―a cutting image or a bracing line of dialogue.”― New York Times Book Review, on And Sometimes I Wonder About You
“Mosley’s invigorating, staccato prose and understanding of racial, moral and social subtleties are in full force.”― Seattle Times, on Known to Evil
“Mosley is the Gogol of the African-American working class―the chronicler par excellence of the tragic and the absurd.”― Vibe
“[Mosley] has a special talent for touching upon these sticky questions of evil and responsibility without getting stuck in them.”― New Yorker
Library Journal
04/01/2020
This volume gathers 17 stories by Mosley, some never before published, others having appeared in venues like The New Yorker, all providing portraits of remarkable black characters embedded in life's complications. Note that Mosley is not just a Mystery Writers of America Grand Master but an O. Henry Award winner whose literary tour de force, John Woman, was long-listed for the 2019 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction.
DECEMBER 2020 - AudioFile
Mirron Willis, having narrated several Walter Mosley audiobooks, has an experienced grasp of the author's cadence and language. This familiarity, as well as Willis's prudent pronunciation, makes for a confident and compelling reading of Mosley stories. Like Mosley's novels, these tales are digressive and imaginative, dealing with, among other things, a fly's friendship, the sexual prowess of superheroes, and the transmigration of the human soul. But if there is any thread that connects this collection, it is Mosley's explorations of aging and death. We are all just "a hair's breadth from finality," one character reminds us. But don't let the subject matter put you off. Thanks to Willis's upbeat delivery—check out his voicing of Billy the Texan—and Mosley's dabs of surrealistic relief (a plastic surgeon's blind date leads to a metaphysical breakthrough; a company delivers messages from the dead), this quirky audiobook always entertains. R.W.S. © AudioFile 2020, Portland, Maine
