Gigantic

By Marc Nesbitt

Book Overview

An extraordinary collection of dynamic stories by an exciting new voice in American fiction, Gigantic features ten powerful stories of emotional stagnation and personal transformation, passion and violence, race and community, that are viscerally immediate in their impact and otherworldly in their scope. In "What Good Is You Anyway?" a struggling mattress salesman witnesses a horrific car accident at his bus stop and embarks on a wild journey that will lead him to put his life in order, beginning with his troubled relationship with his disabled alcoholic father. In "Quality Fuel for Electric Living," a sanitation worker, recovering from a romantic breakup and a painful hangover, suddenly faces a life-threatening situation while collecting an unusual deer carcass. In "Thursday the Sixteenth," a club manager dating the ex-girlfriend of a reggae singer unwittingly becomes entangled in a chain of events that ends in a violent confrontation. At turns comic and heartbreaking, and at all times rich with language and meanings that operate simultaneously on a variety of levels, the stories of Gigantic mark the arrival of an exciting voice in American fiction. "Impressive ... Ten lean and energetic stories ... Grimly funny, bleakly fatalistic, and emotionally true all at once." -- Chris Lehman, The Washington Post "Beautiful ... Nesbitt is smart, dark, and funny, like a young Elmore Leonard with a drinking problem." -- Sam Sifton, The New York Times Book Review "Nesbitt takes risks. ... with imagery, details of his characters' dead-end lives and even with structure.... Wonderful ... A talent to watch." -- David Wiegand, San Francisco Chronicle "Nesbitt sets out to blow his readers away with his debut collection.... He succeeds.... Funny, tense and horrifying." -- Carole Goldberg, The Hartford Courant

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0802139639
• ISBN13: 9780802139634
• Release Date: January 2003
• Publisher: Grove Press
• Length: 192 Pages
• Weight: 0.47 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 5.5" x 8.3"

Customer Reviews

Invisible Man for the New Century

What Sherman Alexie did for the res Indians in "Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heavan," Nesbitt does for his disaffected mullato ekeing out a marginalized existence in the Great White North...Nesbitt with prose that reads like a shttered mirror..one thousand shards of truth scattered on the hard boiled floor of a junkyard, strip club, playground world...Nesbitt is part poet, part badass Chester Himes, part howling Invisble Man...ie..the real deal...he reads like Evader Holyfield fights, a brawling style that sucks you in...While some think that his stories lack plot I would say that the highspeed existence of the modern age is a blur and Nesbitt captures it in rare fragments, diamond like moments...it is fiction for a new century...

Blistering and ultimately cathartic

The stories in _Gigantic_ are both hyperkinetic and hyperbolic, often taking an absurdist premise and teasing out the implications. Nesbitt has a keen ear for dialogue and a killer instinct for using metaphors. The opening story, "The Ones Who May Kill You in the Morning" is a perfect example--it has a visceral final image that crystallizes in a few sentences explicitly everything that was implicit in the story beforehand. It's one of those moments where you put the book down and let everything sink in for a few minutes. I really can't recommend these stories enough--in the end, they are incredibly moving _because_ of the way Nesbitt plays fast and loose with the countours of reality, not despite it. In the last 10 years there has been an oatmealy sea of sameness in literary fiction--but unconventional, authentic writers like Nesbitt give hope for the future. A _lot_ of hope.

This book rocks!

Nesbitt writes sentences so original and beautiful you'll swear he's reinventing the language. That, and the compassion he has for his hardluck characters, make this book a stunner.