Order BAR SCARS here
(also reviewed)
Order BY THE NAILS OF THE WARPRIEST here
Order OLD GHOSTS here
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"This is just a big misunderstanding. Sherry, tell him."
"So I'm not walking in on you fucking my wife, then?"
He looks genuinely confused. A bit horrified, too. "Your wife?"
I can't seem to get my hands on a Nik Korpon book that's over a hundred page long but so far, it doesn't really matter. Not every author is about story and plot twists (not that it's bad, per se). Korpon has the singular capacity of soaking in every detail of a situation and communicates to his reader the complex array of emotions that carries his protagonists. His novella OLD GHOSTS was as straightforward as it gets, but the setting was otherworldly and its impossible to read with without feeling the inescapable guilt tearing through his protagonist Cole's stomach. Reading Nik Korpon can be so intense you get physically fatigued afterwards. BAR SCARS continues my relationship to his fiction of short, intense trip into a lyrical underworld.
My favorite story in the collection was HIS FOOTSTEPS ARE MADE OF SOOT, the story of a plastic surgeon assistant, torn apart by the abusive love of his institutionalized mother.Whenever plastic surgery is involved, the question often is: "why are you not happy with what you look like?", but here Korpon asks "why are you not happy with who you are?" I thought this put interesting perspective on the cultural debate surrounding plastic surgery. If an ill can be repaired by a scissors snips, isn't it better than an ill that's deep within? The final moments of this story are as beautiful and abstract as its title is. While HIS FOOTSTEPS ARE MADE OF SOOT doesn't exactly take position on the issue of plastic surgery, it will leave you with a lingering sense of doubt. It's powerful and carries a wonderful, longing sadness.
A quirk I dig of Nik Korpon's neo-noir is that it doesn't necessarily engage criminals. Sometimes it does, like in THIS WILL ALL END WELL and THAT PALE LIGHT IN THE WEST *, but Korpon's protagonist are mostly normal people, dreamer who are down on their luck and on collision course with their dark fate. ALEX AND THE MUSIC BOX begins as hilarious, and turns into a nightmare of complicated, conflicting emotions about a love that has never got proper closure. It highlighted the cruel, selfish form love can take sometimes. INTERSECTIONS was also quite strong. In this story, Korpon goes back to a theme from OLD GHOSTS, the changes a newfound love brings to your life and the things it makes you give up. It's illustrated with violent irony here, but you can never blame a short story for being too powerful, can you?
She came to us because her smile was uneven and it made her self-conscious. How this girl could despise her appearance is beyond my pay-scale, but that's why I assist a surgeon, not a psychologist. Her name is probably just as beautiful as her lips, something that could turn your knees to water as you shout it across the bus terminal, begging her not to leave.
Do you hear this? This unpleasant roar over your head? It's a bird? It's a plane? A fighter jet? No! It's Captain Nit-Picky flying across the sky. I can't tell you Nik Korpon's long, atmospheric descriptions are a bad thing, because they're not, but sometimes they weight a little heavy on the story. For example at the beginnig of A SPARROW WITH WHITE SCARS, there is a long bar scene where the protagonist is playing pool. It's great to read at first, but it really ends up cloaking the story from its sheer length and sensory input. As a "semi-professional" ** reader, I do believe in pacing in fiction and I thought the long, sensory scene messed with that a little. Not every story has them, but I can tell Korpon has a weak spot for them and he's good at it. They might just be ill-fitted to the short story format, where everything has to flow and wrap-up within a few pages. I'm a nit-picky jerk, I know.
I loved BAR SCARS. I'm a sucker for fiction with a strong identity, and you can't mistake Nik Korpon's writing for anybody else's. He has the most singular, recognizable pen in crime fiction. It's poetic, lyrical and heavy like the air after a thunderstorm. BAR SCARS gives a voice to misfits and marginals, caught between two lives and longing for their moment in the sun. It confronts stark reality with the dreams and aspirations of those who can't afford it. It's never easy to convince anybody to read a short story collection, but it's not about the format, guys. It's about Nik Korpon's unique, unlikely prose and the irrepressible impulse you'll feel of being a Korpon completist once you'll have read his words.
4 STARS
* Really, I just wanted to name these titles. Are they poetic or what?
** Please, sense the irony in my voice here.