September 12, 2006

Boys to Men

“Trouble,” by Patrick Somerville

Everyone knows that a good man is hard to find.

And everyone knows you don’t need to go looking for trouble, because trouble will always come looking for you.

Both axioms are beguilingly demonstrated, with loopy insight and wry intelligence, in Patrick Somerville’s debut collection, Trouble.

If Nick Hornby and Raymond Carver collaborated on stories about adolescent boys, the result might be something like these darkly comic, sometimes absurdist tales of boys struggling to become men and men wrestling with adulthood.

A late-bloomer tries to speed up the maturation process. A rebellious teen reacts to the effects of a tragedy on his revered older cousin. A man tries to reconcile his careful boyhood hopes with the messy realities of his adult life. (Remind you of anyone?)

The book makes a good argument for a new maxim: A good man may be hard to find, but a man trying hard to be good and getting into trouble is way more interesting.

On paper, anyway.

Available online at amazon.com.