Flings

Today’s post is on Flings by Justin Taylor. This is a series of short stories. It is 240 pages long and is published by Harper Collins. The cover is yellow with the title in red and the author’s name in black sideways on the cover. The intended reader is someone who likes literary fiction and short stories. There is strong language, sex/sexuality, and no violence in this collection. Adults for the best. There Be Spoilers Ahead.

From the back of the book- In a new suite of powerful and incisive stories, Justin Tayler captures the lives of men and women unmoored from their pasts and uncertain of their futures.
A man writes his girlfriend a Dear John letter, gets in his cars, and just drives. A widowed insomniac is roused from malaise when an alligator appears in her backyard. A group of college friend tries to stay close after graduation, but are drawn away from- and back toward- each other by the choices they make. A boy’s friendship with a pair of identical twins undergoes a strange and tragic evolution over the course of adolescence. A promising academic and her fiancé attempt to finish their dissertations, but struggle with writer’s block, a nasty secret, and their own expert knowledge of Freud.
From an East Village rooftop to a cabin in Tennessee, from the Florida suburbs to Hong Kong, Justin Taylor covers a vast emotional and geographic landscape while ushering us into an abiding intimacy with his characters. Flings is a commanding work of fiction that captures the contemporary search for identity, connection, and a place to call home.

Review- So that blurb is full of lies. This short story collection is dreck. Every story has sex and drugs in it. One story has no plot, no dialog, and no character development. I was impressed by that one. There was only one part of a line that I liked- everything managed and nothing solved, ask your doctor today.  That was the only thing that I like about this book. One part of one line that is the last third of very long and boring line but for the last part.  It is very literary. It has all the earmarks of that writing style. It is boring. It is pointless. It has unnecessary sex just to be racy without being racy or interesting.  It includes drug use because that is hip but this collection is not hip. It is dreck. Why for the love of god do people want to write this stuff or read it? I just do not understand. Nothing was interesting about this. I was given this book to read for a review by HarperCollins or I would never have read this dreck. Oh the dreck I will read to get more free books.  I would never recommend this collection for anyone to read ever.

I give this book a One out of Five stars. I was given this book to read by Harper Collins in exchange for an honest review.