cover image Blessings Galore

Blessings Galore

Nate Liederbach. Wordcraft of Oregon, $15 trade paper (168p) ISBN 978-1-877655-91-3

Favoring internal purging over craft, these 11 incomplete and befuddled stories lack empathy or symbolic understanding. An unnamed figure is bathed, oiled, and tortured before a violently erotic fight in the muddled “We Prepared Him” and a chutney-loving old man recounts meeting an intersex Holy Mother archetype in “Aspen and Oranges.” Christian principles are compared to roadkill in “Fruited Plains,” father and daughter fail to connect during a vacation in heaven in “Abraham’s Loft,” and rat baiters await the passing of a postapocalyptic patriarch in the title story. The fantasy and surreal fiction lack cohesion and empathy. The imagery is provocative but meaningless, and plotless set pieces are instilled with unrestrained weirdness, delivered in hysterical language. Liederbach’s evocative descriptions become absurd for their own sake, his internal fevers too far removed and too undisciplined to evoke emotional involvement or pleasure in readers. [em](June) [/em]