Bedlam: Short Stories

By John Domini

No Synopsis Available.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0931362032
• ISBN13: 9780931362033
• Release Date: January 1981
• Publisher: Fiction Intl
• Weight: 0.45 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.5" x 0.3" x 5.5"

Customer Reviews

weird and fascinating

Slip into an easy chair and slide into another universe. This set of short stories wends its way through recognizable, contemporary America and fantasy.

VARIED, DEEP, PLAINTIVE AND INSIGHTFUL.

John Domini, even as far back as 1976 when BEDLAM was first issued, could write about anyplace, anytime, anybody: a soldier, a stockbrocker, a banker, a devil. AND make the writing read effortless--straight from the brain, to fingers, to paper. I picked up this story collection out of curiosity after reading HIGHWAY TRADE (Red Hen Press, 1997) and getting hooked on Domini. I got hooked on BEDLAM too, on Young Domini's sophistication, wit and imagination, but especially on his ability to tailor voice and language to each story.In the first story, "Over 4000 Square Miles," Domini writes about a former prisoner of the Vietnam War on a trip to the Florida Everglades where a TV docu-drama of this wartime experiences is being filmed. "Hartley always thought he'd be a success at adultry." But he doesn't succeed. Following a fling with a woman with "almond French-Canadian eyes," he winds his way through the Everglades "in a black and silver fit of searching for where he would die." But he doesn't do that either.

Really imaginative, funny, wide-ranging short fiction

Wow! Mr. Domini has taken us to some fascinating places indeed. Among these are Hell, after Judgement Day -- and that's in what turns out to be a love story -- and the mind of a celebrated Vietnam vet wrestling with his first difficult taste of adultery. The writing itself is really something, almost poetry at times, and the plotlines shock me with their surprises and their humor. Great, lively stuff.