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Title: Some Heroes, Some Heroines, Some Others: A Story Collection by Joe Taylor ISBN: 0-930501-21-7 Publisher: Swallows Tale Pr Pub. Date: 01 October, 2002 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $14.95

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Average Customer Rating: 4 (1 review)

Rating: 4
Summary: Uneven, but still worth the read
Comment: This collection of short fiction explores a world populated by off-beat characters masquerading as ordinary people. They suffer, they strive, and they mostly end up with only an inkling of what it means to be themselves. Although most of these sixteen stories have been previously published by respected literary magazines, the quality here is uneven. Fortunately, the stronger stories outnumber the less successful.

The collection begins inauspiciously, with two of the weaker stories, "A Gentle Glow" and "A Puff of Roses " that do much to introduce the author's style without any real power behind them. Fortunately for the reader, Taylor follows these two with "Alpha and Omega," the heartbreakingly understated story of a boy who is molested by a priest and then, as a grown man, inadvertently calls this same priest to administer last rites to his dying mother. "Stars is Stars," the story of a waitress who desperately wants a change in her life as she approaches middle-age, is another gem. The more self-conscious but equally good "Heroes and Heroines, For the Atomic Age" details, often with wry humor, the marriage of a "normal couple" and their failings, offering a literary take on the theory of relativity. The final story, "Three Lines and a Moral," tells of a Vietnam vet whose timing has always been fortuitous. When he is persuaded to act as his town's chief of police, he faces off against a more volatile vet who makes his own bad luck.

Taylor's writing, while not highly experimental here, requires attention and an acceptance of the testing of convention. These stories unfold in unexpected ways, with allusions acting as thematic frameworks and lists as characterization. A worthwhile read for those who devour literary journals and who seek less mainstream fiction.