Coronado audiobook

"People are selfish, Doctor- odiously, monstrously, but in so small and paltry a monstrousness that we barely notice it."Every story felt like a glimpse into another one of the darkest parts of a human mind. Lehane proves once again that he is one of the best writers of dark thrillers and mysteries. Running Out of Dog - 5*ICU - 4*Gone Down to Corpus - 3.5*Mushrooms - 2.5*Until Gwen - 5*Coronado the play - 5*

One of the best short stories I've ever read is in this collection: "Until Gwen."

A couple mediocre stories in the middle, but the openers and the closer, goddamn. When he's on, he's on with great characters, dialogue, and setting.

some great short stories, dark, tragedy, going deep into the soul. not all are the same quality but at least two so good that stay with you long. all have criminal element but is so twisted with human emotions that it seems to me that the bad becomes so human even when if you looking into it directly is real bad.

Great! Simply great!This book was great, simply great! Dennis Lehane is the new Harry Crews, writing Americana low life trailer trash books just the way they should be written, unpredictable and with no respect for political, legal, or moral authority. His characters are erratic and unreliable, suffering from just about every personality disorder you can name; depression, mania, stress, grief, alcohol, drugs.These stories are unpredictable, uncontrollable and, in a way, challenging. I absolutely loved the first story ‘Running out of Dog,’ where Blue is employed by the mayor to sit up in a tree and shoot all the stray dogs in town, dogs that move through town “in a pack like wolves, their bodies stripped to muscle and gristle, tense and angry, and growling in the dark.” But what’s going to happen when Blue, who’s “the kind of guy you never knew if he was quiet because he didn’t have anything to say or, because what he had to say was so horrible, he knew enough not to send it out into the atmosphere,” runs out of dogs to shoot? What then?Lehane’s writing truly is top drawer. His women sink into men’s flesh the way heat does. “It wasn’t just that [Jewel Lutt] was pretty, had a beautiful body, moved in a loose, languid way that made you picture her naked no matter what she was wearing. No, there was more to it. Jewel, never the brightest girl in town and not even the most charming, had something in her eyes that none of the women Elgin ever met had.”Then again, there’s Blue’s mother; “Sometimes they’d pass his trailer together and hear the animal sounds coming from inside, the grunts and moans, the slapping of flesh. Half the time you couldn’t tell if Blue’s old lady was in there f***ing or fighting.”The stories run on, each one better than the last until we reach ‘Until Gwen,’ in which LeHane surpasses himself. Bobby’s father is a “mean old man” who’ll steal from you or kill you, it’s all the same to him. He is cold, calculating, superficially charming and remorseless. A terrific story.And then, with ⅔ of the book read we suddenly find ourselves reading the very same story again, except in script format, as if for a play, and you find yourself thinking, “What! I don’t want to read a play!” But LeHane has captured you and you keep on reading, unbelievably enjoying this format with added storylines and sub-plots to it.When reading these tales you feel something in your head “go all shifty and loose and hot as a cigarette coal.” Not to be missed

"What had begun as a nighttime ride into the unknown had turned cold and stale during the hard yellow lurch into morning" (34).“The man’s eyes are the clear and the bright of skyscraper panes” (58).“…a guy in a johnny leading his IV-stand across the carpet as if it’s a slow relative…” (63).“Though he still feels like apologizing. It’s natural, he supposes, to not want to be the cause of any sort of ado, any kind of mass consternation. It’s a judgment, no matter how nebulous, of your entire life” (64).“Daniel can hear the sucking of the straw, down at the bottom, trapped among the ice cubes” (65)."You put the brains of both Lewis brothers together and you stil come up with something dumber than a barrel of roofing tar, but those boys are also tear-ass fast and my-daddy's-a-mean-drunk crazy off the snap count, kinda boys can turn a starting left tackle into the town gimp, come back to the huddle not even breathing hard" (79).*The following are quotes from a play, so I won’t bother with dialogue quotation marks.“Well that was utterly fucking fruitless” (164).“…no one ever fought a war over truth or good intentions…” (176).“People rationalize, they turn their delusions into something romantic that they can disguise as ethics or principles or ideals. People are selfish, Doctor—odiously, monstrously, but in so small land paltry a monstrousness that we barely notice it” (178).“If we could have everything we wanted in an instant without fear of consequence? No worry of jail or societal reproof of any kind? No having to look our victims in the eyes because the victims have conveniently vanished? If we could have that? Stalin’s crimes would pale in comparison to what we’d do in the name of love. In the name of the heart wanting what the heart wants” (178).“Never been tested. Hell, everyone’s nice until some kind of hard choice is put in front of them” (193).“He told me once, swear to god, ‘Ever want to kill someone, Gina? Do it was water or a train. Fucks the evidence all to hell’” (197).“I always liked this place off-season, the tarps flapping in the wind, faint smell of elephant shit” (198).“The circus. I hate trapeze artists. Women all look like men and man all look like cock smokers. And don’t even get me started on fucking clowns” (198-199).“I seen your friendly before. You think you’re good because you grew up not wanting. Not wanting ain’t good. It’s just not poor. You ain’t rich, but poor? That’s evidentiary, son. That’s experience. You ain’t never had experience, so you only imagine you have a soul” (202).

As with most story collections, I found things to like and things to dislike here. I'm a big fan of Lehane and have been impressed time and time again by his ability to take well-worn genre fiction (i.e. crime drama conceits) and turn it into something meaningful about the human condition. There aren't any cliches in his writing and it is typically full of vibrant prose and deep revelations into the human spirit. "Mystic River" and "Shutter Island" affected me deeply when I read them many years ago."Until Gwen" was definitely my favorite of the collection. It's a pulse-pounding battle of wits between an evil conman and his son over a missing diamond. The ending alone is worth the read, but few short stories have as much tension packed into such a small space. This one alone is worth reading the whole collection.If there is a disappointing thing about "Until Gwen", it's that I wanted more background into the relationship between father and son and more about what got them going down the roads they went down. That's the cool thing about "Coronado", a two part play Lehane wrote for his brother. It takes the two antagonizing characters from "Until Gwen" and fleshes them out, adding a deep back story and a heartbreaking yet hopeful resolution...even though most of the action from "Until Gwen" appears intact in "Coronado". It's like seeing the same story from a different angle. I loved the comparison.Other than that, "Running out of Dog" and "Gone Down to Corpus" are great depictions of small-town America and the class/societal distinctions that divide us. These were great compliments to "Until Gwen"/"Coronado", but it's clear who the star of the collection is.There were a couple JV type stories too: "Mushrooms" and "I.C.U.". It's not that they were bad. I just thought they weren't as fleshed out as the other stories here, like Lehane was trying to finish the story before it was ready to be done. And there's a lot of ambiguity in "I.C.U." that I found annoying instead of stimulating. I wish Lehane had been a little more clear at least in that case.All in all, a good collection from one of America's most underrated writers.

Woah. Each of the short stories were precise in their humanity - brief glimpses which established character, setting and conflict, and ultimately were powerful enough to deliver real stakes. The short story format offered itself for comparison, and the varying and uneven level of reader connection to protagonist leaves this one short of the 5-star mark. But then the final story - a play in two acts which fills out one of the previous tales - digs deeper and reveals the author's true craft. It left me cringing and otherwise physically affected. Like a Hitchcock thriller but with deeper shudders, this one comes highly recommended.

Dennis Lehane writes the hell out of Boston. In his Kenzie-Genarro series, six books beginning with "A Drink Before the War," he writes the characters, feelings, and overall aura of that city, and continues to do so in "The Given Day," probably his best novel yet. The sequel to that book, "Live By Night" takes the reader down to Tampa. And this collection of short stories has us in Texas, South Carolina, among other places in the great U.S. No surprise, they're mostly pretty grim tales, folks ruled by greed, down on their luck slightly nutty types--and Lehane nails them all, his vivid characterizations hallmarks of his novels, brought equally to life in this brief collection."Running Out of Dog" follows a man back from Vietnam keeping a watch on his buddy, who's taken an unofficial job from the mayor, shooting down stray dogs by the highway."ICU" has a man hiding out in different hospitals for weeks, avoiding mysterious agents who watch him from a distance and keep their motives to themselves."Gone Down to Corpus" is among the best; this one involves some just-graduated ex-football stars trashing the house of the kid who lost their big game for them. The baller in charge meets the little sister of the despised ex-footballer, and she shocks him at how much more violent and vindictive she can be, more so than the three of them combined."Mushrooms" is about a couple of young folks on the run with another who is unaware they mean to kill him at trip's end."Coronado: A Play in Two Acts" is a play version of the fifth story, "Until Gwen," both about a young man being picked up from jail by his greedy, maniacal father, who is after the location of a jewel the son hid years before.

Dennis Lehane is one of those authors that people either realize is brilliant or assume is brain candy. I am of the former. I bought this on audio during a road trip when I was desperate for something to listen to (and ran out of my library audiobooks) even though I wasn't sure about the short stories on audio. I'm still unsure of it as a format...especially reading/listening to one right after another. They kind of meld together for me, and because they are of similar theme--mahem, perhaps?--they do flow from one to another. I initially was going to give this book three stars because of that, but then I listened to the interview at the end with the author, and something he said about "Until Gwen" (the final story) made me go back and re-listen, and I appreciated it more the second time around. Other reviews indicate that the print version actually includes the play "Coronado," which he wrote using "Until Gwen" as the template. It's too bad they decided not to include that in the audio version because I find plays to be brilliantly read for the car. I'll have to find a copy to finish it up.

I would have given this 3.5 stars if possible but I decided to round up. Dennis Lehane has been one of my favorites for years and I thouroughly enjoyed Mystic River, Shutter Island, etc...Truthfully, the only reason I rated this as high as I did was because of 'Until Gwen' and how it was wonderfully revisited as Coronado. The other short stories in this book were a little hard to read and shared most of the same themes and phrases.

I'm a big short story fan, and this collection from Dennis Lehane was completely fulfilling. There was enough premise in these pages to fuel a half dozen full-length novels, and each story played with my emotions in a way that I found both unsettling and satisfying. Lehane is a truly great and gifted storyteller. I only wish he'd write more short collections like this.

Dennis Lehane is simply in a class of his own ... beautiful & emotive whilst being straight to the point & no holds barred ... gritty realism, superb characters & clever storylines ... a master class in writing ..

Lehane: master of plot, POV, dialogue. Note to self: read more Lehane, Leonard, Higgins.

Wow. Didn't think that Lehane had this in him, but I've only read the Kenzie & Gennaro series so far (that I heartily recommend for a well thought but gripping read).These short stories are punches to the gut. In Kenzie & Gennaro you can see how Lehane is able to convey a whole character out of a few words, details and intonations, but in Coronado this gets to another level. Very different for so many reasons, but made me think of Palahniuk's Monsters . Coronado's stories are more nuanced, and the sucker punch strenght doesn't come from a sense of grotesque and surprise as in Palahniuk, more from being too real, snapshots of life. Every story leaves an ashen flavour in your mouth.And it takes courage to describe people's lives, not to be afraid of offending, or not really getting someone else's experience.The last story is rewritten as a play. I personally don't like plays to start with, but I found that unreveling some of the story's hermetic tightness detracted from it.

There are five short stories and one short (two-act) play in this collection, with one of the short stories serving as the basis for the play. I'm not generally that big a fan of short stories, as there's not enough time to build the complexity (of both characters and plot lines) that an author can build in a novel. That said, these are pretty complex. The play, in particular, is complex, as Lehane combines a number of plot lines across a number of decades. I enjoyed a couple of these more than the others, but the read was, in all, very satisfying.

I have read several of Lehane's works and have always been impressed. He pulls no punches. This collection of short stories is among his best. He doesn't try to do too much. The length is just right. The culmination of this work is a play that is also the title of the collection. Based on the previous story 'Until Gwen' it is a carefully crafted and fascinating tale. The ending is perfectly open. Though we know what will happen to the characters based on our knowledge of the previous story, there is an added angle that leaves us wondering if we really have closure.