Reviews for Last Year's Jesus: A Novella and Nine Stories

The average rating for Last Year's Jesus: A Novella and Nine Stories based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2016-11-25 00:00:00 Brian Crouse Ellen Slezak's collection of short stories are all set in and around Detroit and feature characters who, like the city, are both down on their luck and hopeful things might just work out anyway. Beyond that, each story is entirely different from the one before. Some of the stories are heart-breaking, and remind me of Bonnie Jo Campbell's American Salvage, like in Lucky where mentally ill Trudger just wants to keep his job sweeping floors at the mall so he can maintain his precarious life outside of the hospital. Others have a wry sense of humor, like in Tomato Watch, where Lucy's long stretch of bad decisions have her unemployed, pregnant and spending the summer caring for her grandfather, who has planted tomatoes in the middle of her mother's well-groomed front lawn. Slezak writes about children with a pitch perfect touch, aware of both their dependence on people who are not always as reliable as their children need them to be and ever eager to hope for things to work out in the end.

Review # 2 was written on 2011-08-12 00:00:00 Bert Anselin While I don't enjoy short stories as much as novels, if the first couple of stories hold my attention I will read the rest. The best thing about short stories is that they make pick-up and put-down quite easy. There are plenty of familiar Detroit names in Slezak's collection, many of them centering around the the Polish community of Hamtramck and blue collar life. None of the stories is earth-shattering, but pleasant reads with characters as well drawn as can be in 20 pages. Definitely worthwhile.