This is Not a Love Song, Stories by Brendan Mathews

Last year I enjoyed reading Brendan Mathew's first novel The World of Tomorrow. Reading his first collection of stories This is Not a Love Song brought me a new appreciation of Mathews. If World was a fun romp into the past with an action ending, the short stories are an examination of the human experience on a deeper level. I was moved, I related, and I was entertained.

There are stories about we believe we know--about love and family and life--but discover aren't true. Stories about coming to terms with life, or not coming to terms. 

The first story, Heroes of the Revolution, was also one of my favorites. An American female college student is responsible for providing visiting foreign journalists with typical American experiences. She takes them to pick apples, but walking through the orchard stirs memories, revealing the student's sheltered life while the journalists grapple with the lasting damage of the atrocities they personally lived through.

This is Not a Love Song questions the nature of art and friendship as one woman pursues a music career while her friend captures her life on film.

I loved Airborne, the story of how having a child transformed a couple's life and relationship, the crazy obsession over a child's safety, which in the story goes to an extreme, but which I well remember with the birth of my only child.

How Long Does the First Part Last? is about unrequited love.

Dunn & Sons is "the story my father never tells;" three generations of men share stories that connect them and those that split them, and the stories that "might save us" if "ever told the right way."

Look at Everything is an amazing story about a photography student who by accident causes a fire and responds by taking photographs instead of reporting it.

The Drive takes an ironic peek behind the ubiquitous story of a dad taking the babysitter home.

Henry and his Brother speaks to the bonds of fraternal love and a mutual need that transcends family ties.

In Salvage, a man working in the shady business of removing architectural pieces from ruined buildings finds the item that he thinks will finally change his luck and life.

The last story, My Last Attempt to Explain to You What Happened with the Lion Tamer, reads like a parody and comedy but feels like a tragedy involving the love triangle between a clown, a tightrope walker, and a lion tamer.

I can't wait to see what Mathews does next.

I received a free ebook from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

This Is Not a Love Song
by Brendan Mathews
Little, Brown and Company
Pub Date 05 Feb 2019
ISBN 9780316382144
PRICE $26.00 (USD)

The World of Tomorrow by Brendan Mathews

The World of Tomorrow recreates America in 1939, the year of the World's Fair in New York City. It was a time of progress, dreams, and optimism, hot jazz and The Lindy Hop.

It was also a time of world political unrest, racism, and anti-Semitism. Father Coughlin had a radio broadcast from The Shrine of the Little Flower in Metro Detroit, spewing anti-Semitism.  Cab Calloway was playing in The Cotton Club to a white audience while black maids lined up on the street to be picked up for day jobs, hoping their employer didn't jilt them of their pay. Anti-lynching law petitions were circulating with little hope of impact.

There is talk about Roosevelt's "latest plans for the ruination of the country," taking from the rich to give to the undeserving poor "who still lined up for free soup and stale bread." The Fascism of Italy and Germany could be "exemplary," with business and government working together. Meanwhile in Europe, Hitler was taking over and Italy was embracing Fascism.

The mission of the World's Fair was to "showcase the abundance and industrial might of America's great corporations." Imagine a world with frozen food! A highway system and a car in every garage! And there was the promise of "Asbestos: The Miracle Mineral." But, the real draw at the fair was the Amusement Zone, and especially the Aquacade with women swimming in flesh-colored swimsuits so they appeared nude.

In Ireland, Francis Dempsey was serving a prison term for trafficking in banned books but is allowed to attend his father's funeral. Also at the funeral is his youngest brother Michael, released from the seminary he turned to after his true love married to solve her family's financial problems.

The boys are 'rescued', supplied with a car and a map to a remote cabin where IRA members make bombs. Francis accidentally sets off the explosives and is left with a shell-shocked Michael and the IRA's stash of money.

Frances comes up with a First-Class Pan: he assumes a false identity and with Michael they take a ship to America. On board he meets a wealthy New York City family whose daughter falls for his persona, the Scottish Lord Agnus MacFarquhar. Meantime, Michael's memory, speech, and hearing has failed, but the ghost of William Butler Yeats has become his new best friend.

The American gangster Gavigan, whose money Francis has stolen, rouses his retired henchman Cronin to tail Martin Dempsey, brother to Francis and Michael. Martin has been in America ten years, and has a wife and children. He is a musician in love with 'jungle' music. Gavigan believes that Francis deliberately killed his Irish contacts and stole his money. He wants revenge. Cronin is to bring Francis to him.

The Dempsey boys don't know that Cronin was mentored by the Dempsey patriarch, doing that which needed to be done for the IRA. Like cold blooded murder. He hated that Dempsey exploited his baser nature, which he has tried to overcome in his new life with Alice and her son, enjoying the simple life as a farmer. Gavigan threatens Alice's life if Cronin fails.

The set-up is long and perhaps overwritten, but it is full of color and vivid characters, and the writing clever with humorous insights. The story later heats up and drives to a heart-pounding and satisfying ending. I loved the Dempsey brothers.

The belief in an America as a place of fresh starts and miracles to come has become quite the nostalgic dream, or disdained hoax, to many Americans today. The novel takes us to a time when we still believed in a better tomorrow.

I received a free ebook from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

The World of Tomorrow
by Brendan Mathews
Little, Brown & Co.
Publication Sept. 5, 2017
Hardcover $28.00
ISBN: 9780316382199

I have two 1939 World's Fair handkerchiefs in my collection.