Following the success of Beautiful Ruins, Jess Walter's We Live in Water collects 13 stories that previously appeared in literary magazines, Playboy and Byliner.com.
We Live in Water is filled with life's losers: meth addicts, liars, rotten parents, con men--and a con woman--and one particularly heartbreaking story, "Anything Helps." A father "goes to cardboard," making a sign asking for cash and standing on a street corner, hoping to get enough money to buy his son one of the Harry Potter books. He succeeds, buys the book and takes it to his son's foster home, where he is met by a stern foster mother who informs him that such "Satanic" books are not acceptable. In the end, the boy returns the book because he has come to understand his foster parents' objection to its content; he is lost to his father in every way.
In another story, "Thief," a father hatches an elaborate plan to catch one of his three kids in the act of stealing from the Vacation Fund. The ending has an unexpected twist that will make you smile.
"Wheelbarrow Kings" features two druggies who pick up a TV from a dealer who wants to get rid of it. They steal a wheelbarrow and push it, with the TV riding precariously, six blocks to the pawn shop. The owner tells them that they are "like five years late."
Depressing? Not in Walter's hands. He can mine the least scintilla of humor and wit from his characters' broken lives--people whose dreams will surely not come true but who somehow keep trying. --Valerie Ryan, Cannon Beach Book Company, Ore.