Took me back to scenes from my own childhood in a predominantly Polish neighborhood that was full of taverns and changing fast with the times (born in Chicago, grew up in Cicero). I enjoyed the honesty of scenes such as the one where "alkies" fighting is good for kids because change invariably flies from their pockets, or how a son, an 8th grader at the time, is alarmed by his father's "general obliviousness to gang etiquette in the neighborhood." Such vivid detail creates a strong sense of time and place, one that isn't exactly nostalgic, but is also not full of rage at the past (but there is some of both). Wonderful relationship depictions, too--friends, family, young lovers. Good male coming of age stuff here. I plan on reading more from Dybek. ( )

Nice to read stories set in Chicago; well developed characters and a nice intermingling of stories across the entire collection of short pieces! Thoroughly enjoyed it! ( )

I couldn't get into this book. I tried twice and then took a trip to the bookstore to buy a different book to read. It shall sit on my shelf and possibly get read one rainy afternoon when I am dead bored and there is nothing else to do. ( )

I wonder if the dominance of bildungsroman narratives in the shnovels (linked books of short stories) I've surveyed indicates a modern realization about the nature of growing up. It isn't linear or clean, a smooth line of story unspooling over years, and the collage approach of books like Local Girls and this one seems a better fit for our current understanding of memory and childhood.

At any rate, a bildungs-shnovel is more or less what this is; along the way, a portrait of place and yet another story where the heart is half-hidden in the untold. I liked that Perry's story includes his brother's, the way real people's growing does intertwine and contrast with the growth of those around them. I liked the elements of the unreal or quasi-mythic in the neighborhood, in the stories of the men who drink at Zip's. I like the way the young people are explicitly interested in understanding their lives as stories and writing their own identities. ( )

Stuart Dybek wrote a short story I loved so I was really looking forward to reading this book, but I couldn't get into it and now the library wants it back. I want to try again eventually, though.