Kevin Berg

A young married couple try for baby, after struggling to conceive. When their daughter, Olivia, is born they settle in the US. All seems to be going as expected, with the usual challenges faced when trying to establish a secure life for a fledgling family. Soon strange events begin to manifest around the home, and an unsettling presence enters the dreamworld of the daughter in particular. The couple desperately search for a reason behind the unusual happenings. The father tends to minimise the events, as he is pulled towards establishing a stable job in order to support the family. Alternately, the mother suspects a spiritual answer, the culture she grew up in being very close to the spirits of myth and folklore. As the parents clash, the mysterious figure continues to haunt Olivia, and its presence seems to encroach further into the physical realm, in increasingly sinister ways.

Berg takes his time to introduce the characters, and this is of great benefit later on. The representation of the banalities and frustrations of office life is vividly executed. Berg excels at creating repellant and gross characters, and the discomfort of being forced into the same air-conditioned space with them is made very immediate and repugnant. The writing has some great descriptive flair, especially in the more nightmarish and gory passages. The novel moves in a slow burn, but when the horror comes, the impact is greater for it.

A solid addition to the haunted suburbia sub-genre, which injects some fresh shocks into the normal. Satisfying take on the anxieties and fears inherent in new parenthood, with a genuinely disturbing denouement.… (meer)

Raw and uncompromising, author Kevin Berg crafts a charged collection of short stories. Impressive in their variety, they are unified by a skilful understanding of form. The stories are substantive, many addressing difficult territory. Most of the collection evokes a sinking, pit-of-the-stomach level of attention, which is hard to shake throughout. There are moments of release, venturing into profundity, especially when taken in contrast to the unsettling nature of the material surrounding them.

Stories incorporate themes of decay, malevolent intrusion, domestic abuse, the legacy of trauma, the price of negative acts, emotional cruelty, the magnetism of oblivion. Characters face the scariest parts of themselves and others, often drawn to graphic self-destruction, or other times exploring a path of vengeance, discovering what must be mustered in order to overcome brokenness.

There is humour too, and a lot of it. Dark, of course, of the sardonic kind. The sort born of bitter experience when the world is a bit too much in its cruelties and grimness, and a wry smile is the sanest response to the horrors on show. Here we have stories touching on the nauseating, the sublimely repulsive, and the absurd. Berg embraces grossness very successfully.

I don’t read that many collections of contemporary short stories, and when I do I’m for the most part left underwhelmed. Not here. This is a severely impressive book. The writing is taut, descriptive in an admirably efficient manner, and has the necessary authority to tackle the more extreme landscapes Berg visits. I enjoyed this immensely, and its one of the best contemporary collections I’ve read in recent years.… (meer)

“Indifference” is, for the most part, a gripping read. Berg's narrative is spot-on in its laceration of our me-first culture. He spares no one – men, women, young, middle-aged, upper-middle class to dirt poor, they all get their turn.

The novel is basically a bunch of loosely connected stories. The veteran can probably be considered the main character, but there are numerous other characters that get plenty of scenes. The story jumps from viewpoint to viewpoint and moves through time as Berg delves into each person's fears, selfish desires, quirks, and fetishes. Most of the characters are self-absorbed scumbags, only stepping out from their grimy bubble when they're absolutely forced to. Any epiphanies they have come far too late to be of any use.

The prose is usually detailed without being dense. Berg is a careful observer, showing us things we see or consider every day but may not really think about. Even at its most outlandish and allegorical, there's a hard realism to the novel; this isn't something that's floated down to us from an Ivory Tower, but a piece of muck tossed from an open sewer.

I actually found myself chuckling as Berg roasted some of society's sacred cows. It was refreshing to see an author tackle subject matter that most people skirt around because it's “politically incorrect,” “mean-spirited,” or whatever.

There are some drawbacks, however. The plot is predictable; by the halfway point, you'll most likely know how each scene is going to end. I understand the point Berg is trying to make, but he could have thrown in some variation and still hammered home the idea.

I also thought the middle portion of the novel was lackluster. Berg throws a lot of craziness, violence, and filth onto the page, but it seems like he's just going wild for the sake of going wild. I preferred the relatively controlled (if that word even works for a novel of this type) scenes in the beginning and end of the story; these scenes really shine, with solid pacing and still plenty of acerbic social commentary.

Finally, I thought the dialogue was weak in some areas, and it was sometimes difficult to follow the thread of the narrative. I occasionally found myself wondering who did what to who or what had exactly happened to a particular character.

After reading this, I'm intrigued to see what Berg will do next. “Indifference” is already a thorough critique of modern society; what else is left to lambast? Berg says he's not going away, though, so I guess we'll just have to wait for the next bomb to drop.
… (meer)

As many have noted, this was an ambitious project. Herding together thirteen authors, with their diverse styles, themes, and idiosyncrasies, and then trying to stitch together an understandable narrative? I expected this “novel of stories” to either be a home run or collapse from its own weight – but, as it turns out, it's neither excellent nor dreadful. Some of the stories are scorchers, some are ho-hum, others have flashes of brilliance but then take wrong turns.

Kevin Berg is the only writer I'm familiar with in the collection, and his entry is the rawest of the entire collection. Many of the themes he explored in “Indifference,” his debut novel, appear in “Pieces Forgotten” – maybe too many? Berg again uses the “damaged war vet” character, but this time the character has suffered from the War on Terror, not Vietnam. Nonetheless, still a good story, with an ending that isn't the hopeless one you expect.

The collection meanders along for a while, with the reader learning more and more about our deceased title character. Frank Peppercorn is not the Caspar Milquetoast his widow, Betty, conceives him to be – he has seemingly limitless facets, and is capable of both great cruelty as well as a rough sort of compassion.

Things pick up with “Franny the Tranny,” Robert Cowan's excellent story. Cowan could've shouted Frank's “tranny” rebellion at us from a bullhorn, but instead he has Frank calmly and matter-of-factly state his reasons, which makes it much more compelling. There's violence and death, but the story is still strangely quiet, with Frank's unruffled actions sitting in the center.

The next few entries are also excellent. Shervin Jamali's tale of “kingpin” Frank shows our protagonist (if you can call him that) at his murky best. Is he hero, anti-hero, or villain – or do none of these terms apply to him? Likely the last one.

Martin Stanley shows us the “roughly compassionate” Frank. Stanley has a steady hand, and his characters are well-drawn. Despite the battering the wife takes and Frank's not-so-saintly intervention, there's a quietness to the tale, like Cowan's “Franny the Tranny.” I guess it's the writing craft showing – Stanley is here to tell a solid story, not preach at us or throw cheap shocks our way.

Craig Furchtenicht's story is the most action-packed and wildest of the bunch. Crazed Amish mafia thugs with pitchforks? I think that's how it goes? Well, you can never have enough of those, can ya? This presents us with “secret agent,” or at least “collaborator” Frank. Furchtenicht also tosses in some social commentary on teenage pregnancies, commentary you won't hear on the nightly news. A small detail, but one that stuck with me.

Allen Miles follows up with a demented train-set collector. I've always wanted to write a story about a demented stamp collector, and this is the next closest thing. The man presents his delusions so earnestly that you start to believe model trains and the small worlds you can build around them are worth tossing your life away. How Frank shatters the man – literally and figuratively – is predictable, but that doesn't weaken the story.

Before I move on to the ending, I'll talk about Ryan Bracha, the man who's supposed to hold all this together. Does he succeed? Overall, no – and that's mainly because of the “novel's” structure. Betty Peppercorn, Frank's widow, sits passively while Frank's gallery of enemies and friends tells her their stories. After they're done, Betty's perspective returns, at which point she needs to do something, anything, to make up for being virtually absent from the story.

Bracha tries to get her moving and acting, but it's not enough. Mainly she repeats that she's glad to get another piece of Frank. Occasionally she gets angry. A few times she acts strong and forthright, but again, it's not enough the counteract her captivity. And that's what she is – a captive, as other people (and other writers) tell interesting stories that, except on very few occasions, don't involve her at all. Captive characters aren't engrossing.

Some of the writers try to involve Betty (“Don't look at me like that, Mrs. Peppercorn,” or something similar), but before long the pull of the narrative takes over, and she drifts away. By the end of the novel, I didn't know much about Betty, and I didn't care to know more. These writers have made her late husband so interesting that it's reduced her to a non-entity.

Finally, the last story, Mark Wilson's “Crafty Pig.” Seriously? After all this, and we have such an absurd plot device foisted on us? I'm not going to reveal what it is, but it's a cheap twist where no twist was needed. If I sound bitter, I am – this “novel” deserved a strong ending, not the head-scratching one we get.

Now, on to the formatting. Yes, we need to talk about this.

I've never seen a work of literature formatted like this. Usually writers indent at the beginning of a paragraph, yet in “Thirteen Lives” indentations are few and far between. The text is just stacked on top of itself. It's not a wall of text; the writers do press “enter,” they just don't press “tab.” It makes the reading difficult, especially when I'm reading dialogue.

Some writers use multiple line breaks to separate paragraphs (Berg does this in “Indifference,” but he also indents), which is fine – what isn't fine is to do nothing, and just stack and stack and stack the text. According to my notes, Martin Stanley's and Mark Wilson's entries are the only ones with correct formatting. I'd like to double-check this, but I can't, at least not easily – which brings me to my next point.

This book begs to be professionally formatted. (In the off chance it has been professionally formatted, the authors need to ask for a refund.) If I want to review a particular author's story, I can't just go to the table of contents or the Kindle's “Go To” function and click on a link, and be instantly whisked to where I need to be – I have to swipe through the file for who knows how long until I find the story I want.

In a standard novel, with one author, you could maybe get away without professional formatting. With this many authors, it's a necessity.

The text size did change at random times throughout the novel, which, again, could've been rectified by a formatter. Also, while many of the stories are flawlessly presented, several have far too many spelling and grammar errors.

That's a lot of discussion about the formatting. How much has it affected my rating? Say half a star. With a better ending, and a cleaner file, this is a four-star work. As it stands, three stars is as high as I can go.… (meer)