Dazzling ... It’s a good example of why Means is considered a modern master of the art ... It’s hard to imagine a more apt expression of the human need to tell stories.
Means has never shied away from subjects that are hard to tackle; he's an unfailingly compassionate writer given to constantly challenging himself and his readers. Two Nurses, Smoking is Means at his best — intelligent, often funny, always beautiful ... The degree of difficulty here is staggeringly high; writing prompts are rarely interesting to people who aren't writers themselves, and crafting a story from them seems like the tallest of orders. Yet Means does it beautifully, finding beauty in the pain, and somehow making the reader part of the story ... It's a stunning accomplishment in a collection full of them. This is a remarkable book not just about grief, but about the moments of brightness that punctuate it, making it both easier and, somehow, even more painful.
Love does not end when the object of one’s affections disappears. How do we go on? How can we persevere? Such questions sit at the center of this beautiful and complicated book ... He interrupts ...with a series of authorial asides, effectively making the creator a kind of character, or at least an active presence in the narrative ... It’s a terrific device, effectively anticipating the limits of our suspension of disbelief and pushing the story from gimmick to something more profound ... The direct address builds complicity with a reader — a set of shared assumptions that the author will go on to both develop and overturn ... The effect is to remind us of the contrivance of fiction. Paradoxically, this sense of metatextual play, which otherwise might distance us, is what gives Means’ narratives gravitas.
Death, loss and the ravages of mental illness aren't the ingredients for light entertainment, but they make for a memorable reading experience in the exceptional story collection Two Nurses, Smoking ... The stories are formally inventive, and the lenses through which characters are seen aren't always conventional ... In one story, characters discuss Eadweard Muybridge, who figured out how to photograph objects in motion so that viewers could see the 'amazing intricacy behind things you took for granted.' These exceptional stories do the same.
David Means has long been acknowledged as a present-day past-master of the short story. And in this, his seventh volume, he extends his range ... The stories are not always simple to follow or track in terms of throughlines ... It’s masterful, really, and characteristic of the way Means moves—from the specific to the general and back again, without a hitch in his stride.
There’s nothing quite like a David Means story ... Tangly, elliptical, apparently autobiographical in some sense (but maybe not), his work functions like a series of Russian nesting dolls, one layer leading inexorably to the next ... [A] remarkable set of stories ... These brilliant stories exist in the space between desire and complication.
Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay[/caption]
