Nine Shiny Objects audiobook

“You ever get the feeling,” she said…”that somebody else already did all this shit? That we’re, like, just watching it happen?” -------------------------------------- Short, thin, with narrow shoulders. The head just a little too big for that slight body, skull-like, all forehead and cheekbones, narrow as a trowel at the mouth. First, let’s get something clear straight away. While there is a sci-fi-ish element extant in Nine Shiny Objects, this is not really a sci-fi novel. We never really get more sci-fi than a newspaper account of Kenneth Arnold’s seminal saucer sighting. The only actual extra-normal element is a bit of fantasy in the final chapter, and a bit of dream work. The novel is a linked-stories narrative of historical fiction. Just so’s ya know. It begins in 1947. Oliver Danville had just washed out of a not very promising acting career. But, in a local drinking establishment, he got to see the curtains close on a charmer named Necky, someone Oliver feared mightily, someone to whom Oliver owed two hundred bucks, someone who was expected to take partial payment in the form of broken bones. Knowing a sign when he sees one, and now relieved of that particular debt, Oliver heads out, determines to straighten up, live an upstanding life, maybe marry a librarian. He slips into a booth at the local automat, and, over his tuna, coffee, and apple pie, reads about a pilot over the Cascades who reported seeing nine shiny objects that reminded him of tea saucers. With twenty eight bucks to his name, Oliver begins hitchhiking west, feeling a calling, (…he felt the buzzing coming on, like a drug.) and the game is afoot.The nine shiny objects of the title refer not only to the UFO MacGuffin, but to the interlinked stories of Oliver and eight other characters. The tales cover the period from 1947 to 1987, a look at the United States over that forty-year span.Central to all the stories is the notion of ideals, of dreaming. (Everybody’s looking for something.) Maybe American dreams, maybe just human dreams. Everyone wants something that feels, or is, wrapped up in a maybe someday. Castleberry presents us with a range of hopes. But there is a dark undercurrent as well, whether we call it a stain on the American soul, or the presence of evil in the world, light versus dark, hope versus despair, optimism versus pessimism. The challenge is there, and few hopes slip past its Argus-like gaze unaffected.Claudette Doneo, twenty years old, had aspired to emulate her high school teacher, Mrs Garfield, and see the world. She would also love to find someone with whom she could share life’s adventure. But her aggressive boss at the greasy spoon where she is getting by in Del Mar, CA, definitely ain’t it. When she meets Eileen (Oliver’s sister), who is running a new local church from an old warehouse, some new possibilities are revealed. They are an odd lot, looking to space ships to take them up to heaven. But Eileen seems pretty nice.Marlene Ranagan, in 1957, is living a life of suburban despair. She and her husband are a Jewish couple in a not-so-welcoming NYC suburb, one featuring covenants no deity would inspire. She yearns for something better than having to pop a mother’s little helper whenever her feelings get the better of her, and having a husband who is content to spend his free time in front of the TV watching cowboy movies and drinking beer. She is not without her interests, though, a neighbor who might become more than just that, and an education in art she had ignored to become a homemaker. A stranger comes to town looking for a war-buddy who had taken up with some crazy UFO cult, and the town does not know how to deal with him. Brian Castleberry - image from his siteStanley West is a struggling black writer, living in Harlem with his uncle, a professor at the City College of New York. A bit of a poser, he is trying to find himself, poet, painter, ne‘er do well. He has a very dark run-in with a suburban crowd that find him a convenient target for their misplaced fear and rage. Take one Black man. Add a dollop of Bircher-level mentality leading a fearful suburban enclave, and the results are grim.In 1967, Skip Michaels sells Great Books subscriptions door to door, partaking of the product in hotel rooms, diminishing day by day in a soul-suck of a marriage, and tries to cope with being a northeasterner living in very southern Jacksonville. But in his heart of hearts, he always had an artistic yearning. He never got far with it, but fate has a surprise in store, in the form of a gumdrop-shaped insurance salesman, who passes on some information that sparks Skip’s long-sidelined dream anew.Alice “Listen Up People” Linwood is a forty-eight-year-old counterculture radio personality in 1972 Phoenix. She spouts what a lot of people see as conspiracy theory folderol. But her audience is growing, particularly since she began focusing on Nixon and Watergate. Alice used to belong to a group whose motto was “Look to the Stars,” but after JFK was assassinated she cast her gaze a bit lower. The big deal impending is that her primary source is in town, on the run, with major dirt for her that can change her world.Joan Halford still lives in Long Island’s Ridge Landing in 1977, about ten years after her bigot of a husband passed. The guy was so sweet that their son, Scott, a drummer in a band, declined to return home for the funeral. She and her husband had done some damage with their intolerance, but time and reflection have taken a toll. Joan may be ready to move past some of her boundaries and enjoy a wider vista. This was the hankie tale of the bunch for me. If she had a choice, if she’d learned anything tonight, she would never speak to any of them again. But she knew, here, too, that this wasn’t how things would work out. She would find a way to call Stacy, and later find a way to ask Wolfboy’s forgiveness. And inside she would hate them both a little for knowing her too long, for not letting her change, not letting her find out who she really was. What she was, what she wanted to be, or what she wanted others to see in her was that song “Pretty Vacant” by the Sex Pistols, just emptied out and gone, as if someone better than Ted or Chris or anyone ever asked her, that’s what she would say and if they laughed, she would beat them to the ground like she had Wolfboy. Or she wouldn’t. Of course she wouldn’t. 1982, Debbie Vasquez is playing Ms. Pac-Man at the Crazy-Eight Arcade in Waterbury, CT. Her friend Nathan, aka Wolfboy, invites her to a party being held by Brain-Dead Ted. (She’d rather dig her eyeballs out with sporks.) But Nathan’s brother’s band will be playing at the party and she’s got it bad for them. Her father is/was a rock star, so music permeates, but he was not much of a father. She’s got issues, which manifest in her being tough-as-nails. She has very push-pull relationships with her friends. Debbie lives with her mother, and has not yet found her dream, but grows a piece over a tough night of experiencing and remembering. I grew up in a small town in Oklahoma. In the late ’80s a mall was built in the next town over, and at its center — as far as I was concerned — was this dark arcade where I would occasionally run into people I knew from school or others of my age from nearby towns. I feel like in my pre-teen imagination the place was a kind of salon for dorks like me. Of course, I’d only have 15 or 20 minutes to roam around wasting quarters while my mom was looking at shoes or something. But it’s buried deep in there, and through that memory I discovered the character of Debbie, who is much cooler than I ever was, and much tougher. - from the Bookweb interview In 1987, Mikhail Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan were talking treaty, the former trying to hold the wolves at bay over his Perestroika and Glasnost policies, the latter contending with his Robert Bork failure and Iran-Contra scandal. Jack Penrod has troubles of his own. Originally, he’d pictured retiring at fifty-nine to be filled with travel and projects around the house. Instead he’d spent most of his time puttering from room to room and getting on his wife’s nerves. She wasn’t used to him being around all day…what he really wanted to tell her he couldn’t put together in words. Something about how he missed her so desperately, how it seemed anymore they were strangers passing on a sidewalk, how he’d started to itch with this feeling that he’d wasted all his life doing next to nothing. His dead brother keeps appearing to him, alive as you or me. He is not, sadly, visible to Jack’s long-suffering wife, who had thought her husband was done with this delusion years before. It seems Jack’s brother has a mission, a twelve-step-like need to make at least some amends. The late brother had not led the most exemplary life, although he did hold the family together after their parents left, when the brothers were teens. There was a particular apology he needed Jack to give for him. Road Trip! Jack speaks of the past with the partner of the apology recipient. As she spoke about it all, he began to see it in his mind, and as it formed, he felt a warm glow at the base of his neck. Here was a dream, yes, and the two of them, connected to it only by hearsay, frolicked in its possibilities. A town was more like a family, spreading out in all directions, changing its neighboring towns like falling dominoes. The vision of this better place seemed so easy to make true, and he had to stop himself from reaching out and taking her hand in his. To his surprise they had already become friends. There are two seminal events from which the rest emanate like shock-waves from a blast, the UFO sighting in 1947 and a Tulsa-like pogrom years later. They serve to tie the tales together, giving the hum of historical background sound a structure. Cults come in for a bi-polar look. The Seekers of the 1940s may have had some nutty canon, but they were a benign, hopeful group, forward-looking, cheerful, friendly, warm. A very different sort of cult forms around a rock star, based on hedonism and nihilism. That musician is another character who gets minimum direct screen time, but whose influence permeates the stories. Characters are linked to each other from story to story, one or two at a time. The image I kept in my head as I wrote and revised was of a painting with a foreground and background. In the foreground are these characters in each of their stories, but looming behind them is this shared background…this structure allowed me to create a sense of characters flowing through history, absorbed in their personal lives even though we (readers, I mean) can see and understand that history, those bigger shifts happening around and to them. - from the Vol. 1 Brooklyn interviewCastleberry has given his characters range, even if we only see them for a ninth of the book, and a smattering beyond. They question their lives, their futures, and their pasts. There is, however, a character who appears in person or by reference in most of the stories, Zelig-like, whose goal seems to be to make the most misery for the most people, to pour buckets of cold water on the fires of passion, to spark fires where the potential exists to cause a conflagration, to lie, deceive, and worse, much worse. He embodies the antithesis of hope, the line you may not cross. Castleberry gives him a human form, and banality to boot, although I wondered in reading if he may have hopped off one of those 1947 saucers, if it had come from a hostile civilization. Overall, this is an exceptional book. The linked-stories form succeeds in offering close looks at a diverse cast of characters while still taking us through a stretch of 20th century America. Castleberry looks at hopes and dreams, the challenges they face, and how they might vary from era to era. For this first novel, we might refer to Sam Spade, in The Maltese Falcon, misquoting Shakespeare, for a suitable summary. It’s the stuff that dreams are made of. He looked up into the deep vastness above, hoping for a shooting star to arc earthward, something he could take home as a sign. But there was only the chill in the air and the big country around him, floating loose, unmoored, starved for meaning. Review posted – July 10, 2020Publication dates----------June 30, 2020 - hardcover----------August 17, 2021 - trade paperback==========In the summer of 2019 GR reduced the allowable review size by 25%, from 20,000 to 15,000 characters. In order to accommodate the text beyond that I have moved it to the comments section directly below.

3.5 stars: “Nine Shiny Objects” by Brian Castleberry is a novel of nine short stories involving characters whose lives were affected by a racist attack on a community in New York. Each chapter has its own protagonist, and each chapter is in five-year intervals, beginning in 1947 and ending in 1987. Because the cast of characters are broad, taking character notes is advised to get the most out of the novel. I needed to go back to each previous chapter to see how these chapters meld. It’s a bit confusing, but worth the work.Castleberry has an ambitious story. The heart of the story is that a man has a utopian idea of building a community where everyone is equal. Every member is judged on their goodness. This man has a vision of all races living in harmony, which in the early part of the 20th century was unheard of. This community is created and the surrounding town folk rebel, with deathly consequences.It’s not immediately obvious how each character is related to the event. After finishing the novel, I went back and scanned the stories again, allowing the characters, dates and situations to jell in my mind. What Castleberry does brilliantly is capturing American life in those five-year increments. Remember automats? The invention of color TV? Mayonnaise versus salad dressing? The Cuban Missile Crisis?? The age of valium and other anti-anxiety mother’s helpers. Oh, and talk radio influencing government conspiracy theories. Castleberry also shows how just a few individuals can incite badness. Although his racist event occurred in the early 1960’s, it seems like we continue to repeat ugly history. Some humans just don’t like harmony and racial progress.I cannot say this is a novel for everyone. Its beauty is understated. The storyline is not obvious.

Every author (ok, I shouldn’t make generalizations, but at least most authors) dreams of writing The Great American Novel. And this guy went and did it, just like that, straight out of the gate. What an auspicious debut indeed. I selected this book quite randomly on Netgalley, I remember receiving the notification of approval and not quite knowing what the book was about or why I chose it, but once I read the first few pages…that was it, gone, transported to another time and place, completely immersed in the narrative, stolen away the way only the best books manage to do. I can sing this book’s praises for a while, but it’ll all amount to something like…awesome. Awe inspiringly terrific writing, awe inspiring cleverness of the narrative structure, awe inspiring characterizations. It’s just so good. I read tons, but it’s been a while since a literary novel has this effect on me. So this is all to tell you why the novel was great, now let’s talk about why it’s a great American one. It begins like this…in 1947 an American aviator reports seeing bright objects in the sky, a story that so beguiles a rambling tumbleweed of a Chicagoan that he sets off west following an impossible dream. Once there he establishes a community dedicated to the dream and promise of extraterrestrial life. Something of a free thinking free spirited commune or maybe something of a cult. Either way it doesn’t quite sit well with the local villagers with pitchforks and the situation ends up in tragedy. The results of this situation resonate throughout decades with a myriad of directly and tangentially involved characters all across the country. Each character is given a chapter, each chapter is set precisely five years apart. And thus we the readers get to experience the changing mentalities and shifting paradigms of the last century in the US. Through personal tragedies and private triumphs of micro and macro scale, the sociopolitical panorama of decades can be witnessed. Some of the stories are more directly connected, some read almost as standalones, but the universe remains the same and the final chapter ties it all up smartly and well, albeit disquietingly in a way. There is an underlying connection, like a current, that propels each story, each character in their individual quests, whether it’s a peace of mind or the eponymous shiny objects in the sky. Everyone’s got their own version of the famed American dream and everyone pursues it to the best of their abilities. Abilities often curtailed by personal or social or financial or romantic or otherwise limitations or, in fact, enhanced by the flip coin side of it. The stories are great, but the characters go beyond that, so much so they come to life, in all their flawed beauty, they may not be made likeable always, but the author does the tougher trick yet, he renders them understood. And so, you have some of the best character writing in recent literary fiction. And so, you have a magnificent book, a magnum opus, albeit one of a manageable page count, an epic in its own right and a terrific read all around. Recommended. Recommended. Definitely definitively recommended. Thanks Netgalley.

https://www.themaineedge.com/style/th...America has always been fertile ground for those with … unconventional ideas. That fertility ebbs and flows, to be sure, with one of the high points – perhaps THE high point – being the middle of the 20th century. The odd energy of the post-war period manifested itself in a tendency for people to search for enlightenment in new ways. And once the notion of ETs and UFOs entered the picture, well – things got weird.People didn’t understand … and people who don’t understand can be dangerous.That weirdness and its generational aftermath, for those inside and outside alike, serve as the foundation of Brian Castleberry’s debut novel “Nine Shiny Objects.” This novel-in-stories of sorts takes a long look at the America of the latter half of the 20th century, viewing it through the lens of a short-lived fringe group of UFO fanatics and the traumatic fallout of the years following its collapse.By following a variety of individuals via their connections to the group, we bear witness as the booming postwar years give way to the counterculture ‘60s, the hedonistic ‘70s and the go-go ‘80s. But even with the growing generational remove, all of the people we encounter bear the psychological repercussions springing from the too-brief life of that initial collective while also dealing with a changing America.In June of 1947, a failed actor-turned-pool hustler named Oliver Barnville is directionless in Chicago. A lost soul, casting about for something – anything – that might give his life meaning. When he first sees the sensational headlines about the sighting of nine pulsing, moving lights in the sky over the Cascade Mountains. These lights were moving with purpose and at speeds that far exceeded any known aircraft. Oliver sees this story as a sign, and immediately sticks out his thumb and (literally) heads for the hills. Along the way, he meets an Idaho farmer named Saul Penrod and his family, making what was once a solitary quest into a different sort of journey – a journey in which some would follow while others would lead.Thus are born the Seekers, a collective of outsiders and oddballs looking for something and willing to look to the sky in order to find it. These square pegs sought to eliminate the divisions among humans, eschewing commons prejudices with regards to ethnicity or gender or race – the sort of free thinking that was viewed with considerable suspicion by mainstream America. But when the Seekers’ efforts to wade into that mainstream take a tragic turn, the fracturing moment sends ripples through the years that follow. The horrible tragedy at its center impacts the futures of those who were there and the generations thereafter.The ones we meet over the course of the ensuing decades are a disparate group: a scholar; a waitress; a traveling salesman; a paranoid radio host; a struggling poet; a hedonistic rock star; a painter; and a troubled teenager. We meet them all as the years pass, their connections to the Seekers’ utopian beginning and violent end tethering them all to one another in ways both overt and subtle. Through their individual stories, the larger narrative of what actually happened to the Seekers – and why – is told. And as that larger narrative is assembled, we also see American evolution, the changes in societal attitudes and ideologies, the slow swing of the political pendulum – writ large.All of it in the afterglow of nine shiny objects.“Nine Shiny Objects” is an intriguing work of fiction. Each of these pieces offers a compelling and sometimes heartbreaking character study, a look at how the same thing can hurt different people in different ways. Each of these people carries with them proof of a fundamental societal rot (though each views that proof in their own and occasionally oppositional way); that proof colors and infects their engagement with the world around them – usually to their detriment.It’s also a reflection of how fearfulness regarding new ideas or somehow shifting the paradigm may take different forms, but is always lurking. There will always be those with unreasonable expectations on either side of the ideological divide; in a way, this book is about the fallout when those expectations are inevitably not met.Goldsberry shows a remarkable restraint for a debut author in his slow, quiet distribution of pieces of the larger puzzle; the primary connections our changing character perspectives and leaps forward in time are obvious, but there are myriad secondary and tertiary connections as well that are fascinating to watch unfurl.The depth and intricacy of the plotting is really something to see, connections on connections on connections that spider out from our titular objects in a manner that cleverly evokes the sorts of red-thread connection webs that we associate with conspiracy theory. And with so many of our narrators rendered unreliable by their own connections and biases, well … the truth might be out there, but good luck figuring it out.“Nine Shiny Objects” is a thoughtful and thought-provoking novel, a portrait of American culture’s ongoing battle between idealism and cynicism. It’s also a story of connections (the ones we see and the ones we don’t) that offers a half-century-long look at what your beliefs can bring you – and what those beliefs might ultimately cost.

If you are the kind of reader who likes all your questions answered and everything nicely tied up at the end, then this novel-in-stories isn't for you. You'll be left scratching your head when you're finished, wondering what all that you just read means and how all the stories fit together. That being said, I found the book to be intriguing, engrossing, and--at its best--captivating in its writing, plot, and characters. Some stories work better than others, and you wonder if the author isn't being purposefully elliptical at times in order to go for the "Huh?" effect--but if you don't mind a little confusion and a few loose ends, this might be for you. It is certainly one of the most original and unique premises for a novel compared to anything I've recently read.

This book wasn't what I was hoping it would be (UFO chasers in the Cascades, with a lesbian romance subplot) but that doesn't make it bad. It was actually quite good. And there were the requisite UFOs, there was the lesbian romance (for a bit), so I consider it worthy of having paused the book I WAS reading to jump right into this one.

Boy, this one has me thinking, in a good way.

I am fortunate to have received a pre-sale proof from HARPER COLLINS PUBLISHERS, giving me an opportunity to read this significant new novel by BRIAN CASTLEBERRY. "A town that was more like a family, spreading out in all directions, changing its neighboring towns like falling dominoes. "NINE SHINY OBJECTS spans forty years, from 1947 through 1987 and a small group of interconnected characters whose destinies link to an incident in 1947 when a pilot reported what many believed to be alien aircraft, the "nine shiny objects" of the title. But this is not a science fiction novel. It is a story that draws to mind unresolved issues that continue to plague this country. Aliens by any definition remain flashpoints of society and victims of discrimination. The author cleverly arranges the nine chapters to tell each story of the relevant characters, and over the forty year time period. The plot is quite believable because there have been other groups like the Seekers in this novel that have tried to establish a town/community that reflects their moral, cultural and ethical foundations. And, like many of those, the result is extreme prejudice and violence. The characters, too, are well-defined and believable. The Seekers who create their ideal town of Eden Gardens keep to themselves, but trouble comes from outside their community in the form of fear and prejudice. Five stars for a creative and thought-provoking look at society.

"...trying for integration but by whose definition, not anybody he knew, just some average American middle-class pointlessness..."⁣⁣Nine Shiny Objects by Brian Castleberry is told in nine different parts, by nine different narrators. Each new narrator takes over five years after the previous narrator's story, starting in 1947 and ending in 1987. All of the characters are connected in one way or another, and they all tie back somehow to the nine shiny objects spotted in the sky one evening.  It's interesting once you figure out who each narrator is, in connection to the others along the timeline. One small moment can have so much impact, creating or altering an individual's course in life. I really enjoyed the inclusion of cultural and political events throughout United States' history as the stories unfolded. In addition, being from Long Island and living in Central Florida, these occasional settings added some relevance and familiarity for me as a reader. ⁣⁣𝘋𝘪𝘴𝘤𝘭𝘢𝘪𝘮𝘦𝘳: 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘲𝘶𝘰𝘵𝘦𝘥 𝘵𝘦𝘹𝘵 𝘪𝘴 𝘧𝘳𝘰𝘮 𝘢𝘯 𝘶𝘯𝘤𝘰𝘳𝘳𝘦𝘤𝘵𝘦𝘥 𝘱𝘳𝘰𝘰𝘧 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘣𝘰𝘰𝘬 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘐 𝘳𝘦𝘤𝘦𝘪𝘷𝘦𝘥 𝘧𝘳𝘰𝘮 Custom House Books 𝘪𝘯 𝘦𝘹𝘤𝘩𝘢𝘯𝘨𝘦 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘮𝘺 𝘩𝘰𝘯𝘦𝘴𝘵 𝘳𝘦𝘷𝘪𝘦𝘸.⁣

I love debut novels and being introduced to new authors work. Nine Shiny Objects makes a spectacular debut. It's a beautiful novel. In Idaho in the year 1947 a aviator witnessed nine lights that flickered over the Cascade Mountains. These lights fly literally faster than the speed of light. This causes a Chicago pool hustler down on his luck to hitchhike his way to Idaho. He inspires people on his journey and gains disciples that become known as "The Seekers". The Seekers are going to create a utopian society. They start a cult like community exclusive to them in the suburbs of Long Island New York. A terrible crime committed by a stranger one night. A complicated situation to that follows the generations for years to come. And a true testament to modern times of a more than ever divided America than ever before. A profound work. I give Nine Shiny Objects five stars for originality and a smashing debut. Thanks to Custom House Books via Harper Collins Publishing in exchange for an honest review.

Almost a series of interconnected short stories more than a novel, or in addition to a novel, this books tells the stories of nine people, with chapters set 5 years apart, starting with one of the first discoveries of UFOs. All the characters are somehow drawn to or connected to this event, even as time passes. Each story is well told, and a few are downright brilliant. And because time passes, we get glimpses into the society at the time. The resolution is satisfying though perhaps a bit opaque. And there’s somewhat a sense of writing to the structure rather than an organic flow among the various tales. But that’s a minor quibble — I really enjoyed this book, admired the writing and will definitely look forward to this author’s follow up novel, as this is his first book — which makes it an impressive feat, in my view.Grade: A-

I would like to have been there with Castleberry and his editor at Custom House when they were deciding what to call this work and how to market it. The title obvoiusly refers to the nine UFO's of the first chapter but it could just as well mean the nine "shiny" story/chapters. It is difficult, in my opinion, to characterize the book as a novel, although the story of "the seekers" and the Penrods always seemed to be floating around. As well, the generations of characters and their relationships weave in and around the 9 stories. So, it's not really a novel but it's more then a collection of short stories. I suspect that "novels" sell better then "collections of short stories" but that's probably just the cynic in me. At any rate, it's an excellent piece of writing. I'll be interested to see what Castleberry's next effort turns out to be.

It’s 1947 and a never successful actor takes a new, hard look at his current life in the face of witnessing the murder of his loan shark “friend” to whom he owed money. When he reads an article about an Air Force pilot who reports seeing nine flying saucers, the two incidents merge into a dream of creating a utopian world where bigotry and class distinctions disappear, and he sets off west to realize his vision. And with this slight sci fi lead-off, Castleberry takes his reader off on an extraordinary exploration of the human psyche, following the lives of quintessential Americans in interlinked stories that cover the next 40 years. From teenage girls flirting with nihilism to old men trying to make amends even after their death, these stories are dark, complicated ruminations on what makes life valuable. A beautiful debut.

I want to say this is a novel about a UFO cult. But it’s not. The development of and continued existence of the cult is secondary to the stories told here, of the people who dance around the cult’s periphery and are inexorably affected by its gravity. While I’m fascinated by cults and would have liked to read more about its inner workings, these individual character profiles are so nuanced, so compelling, more human perhaps than anything I’ve ever read put on the page, that I stand in awe of Castleberry’s prowess as a writer, his ability to inhabit the minds and convincingly of such different people and the decades in which they live. Just read it.