Baby, You’re Gonna Be Mine audiobook

This collection of short-stories holds deep themes in its modest length. Each one is a bit dark with surprising emotions which I loved. Definitely worth checking out. TITLES Scroll Through the WeaponsHousewarmingWildfire Johnny (my favorite!)A VisitA Signal to the FaithfulSanders for a Night (another favorite!)No Joke, This Is Going to be PainfulBaby, You're Gonna Be MineThe Horror We MadeThe Lost BabyAudiobook narrated by Kirby Heyborne and Johanna Parker.

I'm slowly evolving the theory that brilliant Kevin Wilson fills his story collections with those notions that are too ironically bittersweet for his novels. Nah, Wilson probably wasn't inspired by this Sweeney Todd commemorative model.So the characters here are Wilson's usual heroes: sad sacks, burnouts, and minimum-wage minions, mostly seeking redemption, sometimes finding it, always surprising, and to me, always worth it.Personal favorite: "Wildfire Johnny" in which casual racist Trey inherits a magical straight razor. The razor's inscription promises (view spoiler)[to turn back time by 24 hours if only the owner will use it to slit his own throat. The quest rapidly becomes "how many times a day will Trey need to use it to become a decent person?" Trust Wilson to make it a knowing comedy of manners. (hide spoiler)]["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>

Kevin Wilson wasn’t on my radar until my good friend told me to stop reading whatever I was reading and read “Wildfire Johnny”. I did, and now I’m telling you the same. Stop whatever you are reading and read this book. Wilson’s collection of short stories are brilliant, brilliant, brilliant. Each of these short pieces contains the emotional depth of entire novels. These pieces are savage, devastating and hilarious. Wilson builds stories with detail so well observed they feel more lifelike than my daily life. Like life, there are equal parts awfulness and beauty hiding in the mundane. Seriously. Stop reading whatever you are reading. Stop reading this review. Read Baby, You’re Gonna Be Mine.

I am calling right now that this is going to be my favorite short story collection of 2018. Wildfire Johnny, in particular, was amazing. These have a slight nostalgic feel, and a lot of them probe family relationships. They reminded me a little of Wells Tower.

Haunting, disturbing, brutally honest, and even humorous. There is a twisted beauty here. Bachman meets Boyle. Life hands you situations and you just deal with them. You wade through the filthy kitchen, the freezing pond, the blood, dark highways, death, returning home, slumber party movies, and babies. You wade, lackadaisical, into another day, another story, another life. After reading “Nothing To See Here” I kind of expected humor, darkly, but humor just the same. This may have been opaque. Still, it was good writing and each story held its own apart from the prior or the following.

A collection of stories that expose various human vulnerabilities.A simple but effective prose.without a doubt one of my favorite collections.

I have so far loved everything I have read of Kevin Wilson's, but I have especially loved his short fiction. Tunneling to the Center of the Earth was full of somewhat odd situations (sometimes even a little bit magical) that are dealt with by ordinary people. Families are always at the center. This collection is no exception. Baby, You're Gonna be Mine is compulsively readable, often truly funny, but also full of longing, family conflict, loss, love and uncertainty. They are usually not neatly wrapped up, which I think is part of their strength. In one story, a child desperately wants to dress as his dead brother for Halloween despite his mother's forbidding it, just so the other kids at school know what he looked like. In another a couple is forced to watch their four wild nieces and nephews who live in utter squalor, while the kids' parents deal with hospitalization and jail time from an injury one inflicted on the other. Several of them are completely implausible, but believable in their emotion.I think my favorite story was Wildfire Johnny, where a young man finds a razor that will allow him to travel back in time 24 hours, fixing all mistakes he has made or tragedies that have happened, if he uses it to slit his own throat. It is so original. I loved these stories and will happily place them into the hands of any patron who likes heartfelt stories that are a bit offbeat. They made me swoon a little bit.Thank you to Harper Collins and Kevin Wilson for the opportunity to read it early.

Wonderful book. Very weird but completely unique. In fact, it's one of the most idiosyncratic books of stories I can think of, which is good! The more idiosyncratic the better. Wilson shows tons of heart in these stories, combined with a knowing real world grittiness, and more than a touch of the bizarre. The last story, "The Lost Son," shows all three brilliantly. I have a feeling that Wilson is not for everyone, but then again, a lot of people seem to buy his books! This one would be a good place to start.

This is the best collection of short stories I've read since Jordan Harper's Love and Other Wounds, and you all now how I felt about that one! Each one was unique - if there was a through plot, it would be "quirky" or "smart people foolish choices" but both of those things undersell how outstanding each story in this book is."Signal to the Faithful" is one of the best short stories I've ever read. About an altar boy who passes out in church, and then is taken on a bizarre road trip to be a funeral altar boy with his priest. How Wilson manages to take the ominousness of a priest taking a young boy on an overnight road trip with his priest, while never saying the unsaid, and how the story actually plays out is just masterful craftsmanship.In addition, "Wildfire Johnny" is simultaneously a great look at the confusing way white people can deal with race, and a take on the present day dating scene, and a take on being "internet cancelled" plus so much more than thatNo more! It will bring spoilers! But if you're a fan of short stories you owe it to yourself to read this

One of the best story collections I've read in the past few years. Blisteringly funny at times, compact, unafraid to get relentlessly dark. Just one of those books that make me think, "Damn, I wish could write like this," while also thinking, "Damn, I'll never be able to write like this," while also just appreciating what a great writer Wilson is. Also, the story "Scroll Through the Weapons" totally made two people I know cry, and I'm one of them. Recommended.

Man. This dude is a great author--weird, simple, funny, stylish, complex, tender, mystifying...but, at least for these stories (I wasn't too fond of his previous novel), never errant, never wasteful. In two of these stories, the descriptions of grief and personal relationships were so powerful I wept. Great great stories.

I started reading Kevin Wilson when I received his first collection Tunneling to the Center of the Earth: Stories as a gift. Loved it. Loved The Family Fang as well. I picked this one up a little while back, and I think it was just what I needed after the last book I read. Favorites include Wildfire Johnny (it's the most slipstream); A Signal to the Faithful (I guess I have a kinship with 1980s Catholic boys); and I'd say also The Horror We made for its blend of friendship dynamics and the act of creating something--a timeless situation no matter the technology involved. I need to go back and re-read Tunneling as well as other books I've missed along the way.

After I finished reading and loving Kevin Wilson's latest book Nothing To See Here, I started looking through his previous work and immediately marked this to read next after seeing the first line in its description: "‘Wildfire Johnny’ is the story of a man who discovers a magic razor that allows him to travel back in time."The way Wilson writes just pulls me right in and I'm not sure why. His characters are fairly archetypical, but he brings them to life with a certain nuance and believability that I just enjoy spending time with them. I liked all of these stories and I think each of them had something interesting to say, but a lot of them felt a little slight or unfinished by the end. None of them hit me as a great, complete story. But I'm not sure that they were supposed to, they are all thin slices of a theme, and sometimes that's okay.