cover image Lesser Apocalypses%E2%80%A8

Lesser Apocalypses%E2%80%A8

Bayard Godsave. Queen's Ferry (www.queensferrypress.com), $12.95 trade paper (142p) ISBN 978-0-9839071-6-9

The world is coming to an end in one way or another in each story in Godsave's debut collection. Featuring a host of distraught characters%E2%80%94a man emotionally undone by his job inside a nuclear missile silo, a couple whose indulgences in their young son's macabre interests become a battleground for their dissolving marriage, a domestic terrorist described through divergent accounts from his own sister and a reporter, a pregnant adolescent girl living in post-apocalyptic Paris , a depressed expatriate serving drinks to paranoid ex-cosmonauts during the French riots%E2%80%94each story deconstructs catastrophe, mining it for devastating emotional and thematic revelations. But Godsave does himself a disservice by repeatedly drawing from the same dystopian well. While the stories are strong on their own, the collection's persistent hammering of eschatological themes blends them together and obscures any sense of the author's actual range. And though Godsave attempts to create unity throughout the collection by including a series of brief, enigmatically linked vignettes between each story, the tales lack the narrative unity necessary to make their connections enjoyable. Though Godsave is clearly talented, this anthology is sadly less than the sum of its parts. (June)