Download The Other Side eBook

I originally received the first short story, Lucy di Sartoria, from the author. He then offered to gift me whole collection of short stories before I had even read the first story. I told him I had a backlog of books to review, but if he cared to send it, I would put it in my `to be reviewed folder' and get to it sometime soon.
One afternoon I was bored but I didn't feel in the mood to start another novel just yet, so I opened up my `to be reviewed' folder on my kindle and saw Lucy di Sartoria calling to me. I began to read, and within a few minutes, my interest was caught. This story is about a woman who was searching for happiness by having extra-marital affairs; anyone who has been in an unhappy marriage can identify with the main character, even if one may not like her all that much. All of Finan's stories, for the most part, deal with issues the average person might experience in their life- depression, regret, disillusionment, nostalgia and the quest for the meaning of life. I particularly enjoyed reading Motley Black, a story of an intelligent, but disheartened young man who takes a bus ride across country. To Jay, every moment he experiences on that bus, and indeed in life, puts him in contact with others when he seems to want nothing to do with anyone, yet when he is paired up with his polar opposite, camaraderie occurs. This story reminded me of A Clean, Well-Lighted Place- a short story by Ernest Hemingway, in which the balance of light and dark is geared towards the dark when it should be clean and full of light. Indeed, Jay and his new bus companion, Foley, can be characterized as light and dark, respectively.
The only story I did not quite like was the last story, The Other Side. I was thoroughly enjoying reading about a woman who, like me, had become mysteriously stricken by illness, when it suddenly launched into a paranormal-type story. I felt jarred, because I was expecting a story like the others, about real life.
In all, I really did enjoy reading these stories, and would recommend the book to others. I studied English literature extensively in college, and this book was a refreshing change to what is normally offered up on the kindle boards In exchange for a review. Bravo!

Upon reflection, the seven stories in this collection appear to be more different than alike. The lengths vary. The focal characters are both male and female. They're rich, poor, and in between. They cover the full emotional range, from happy to sad. Yet the collection holds together because they all seem real, both the people and their tales. No reader will read each story and say, "I've been there," but everyone will be able to say they got a glimpse of "The Other Side."

**Originally written for "Books and Pals" book blog. May have received a free review copy. **

These short stories are both emotional and intellectual vignettes of life. They are very interesting character studies. This is an author to watch, I feel a very powerful novel brewing in E. Thomas Finan.

Maybe I'm just not a short story person. I feel like I wasted my time - none of the stories were interesting to me. I'm scratching my head at the other great reviews. Just personal opinion I guess.

E. Thomas Finan, born in Massachusetts and now teaching in Miami, writes in a manner like a sidelines observer of just how miscalculated are the lives of the people he watches. He has skill in abundance and in this, his first collection of short stories to be published, he tests various tempi and moods and for the most part finds success with each form of style in which he writes.

The folks who populate these stories don't seem to be a happy lot; most appear to be caught somewhere along the clothesline of life attempting to find the meaning of either why they hang there or preoccupied with expectations and personal losses that prevent them form slipping into a different space. In LUCY DI SARTORIA an aging painter is disillusioned by the new young painters and longs of the adulation that met his earlier career - a time when he married a gorgeous model who became his trophy wife but now feels the need for some more in life as she has affairs that open her eyes to that something different that makes her relationship to her artist alter. BILLY STEVENS AT 28 is a sportswriter jilted by his girl and upon attending a high school reunion he encounters his old flame that he could never hold then nor can he now, so mired in habit and routine is his outlook. In the slightly off kilter DUNES LIKE WHITE ELEPHANTS an unnamed couple walk the detritus of the beach wondering yet not acting about proximity. In AN ARIA OF WINDROWS [sic - translated as 'A row, as of leaves or snow, heaped up by the wind'] Finan plays with the words on an answering machine 'Hey, sorry I missed you. Catch you later' as they become an obsession with a man with needs he himself doesn't comprehend - a possible love or a wisp of some blown by the wind.

Finan takes us on bus rides across the country and introduces us to the ordinary humans who alter our state of melancholia, invites us into an old New England church on the brink of transformation - or not -, and even provides a pathway to the nether world through the eyes of a beleaguered housewife. He succeeds in these changing atmospheres and spaces and thoughts, though at times his choices of writing tricks draw attention to themselves (repeated words, spacing of messages form the voice mail, etc). But in the end he most assuredly gives notice of a talented new writer who likely will produce a long novella or novel that will capture our prolonged attention. These are very fine short stories, and after all, it is more difficult to condense in this form than it is to expand in a full novel! Grady Harp, February 11