Easy Living

Living is anything but easy in the worlds that Jesus Hardwell has created. A collection of thirteen stories most unusual in their variety of structure, technique, setting and tone.

So long as you didn’t try to burn it down, or annoy your fellows with a knife or something, they left you alone at the Beacon. It was cheap, the bar made deliveries, and the showerworked. Ceiling fans like huge propellers sliced the light, and the Cuban guy at the desk when night came would close his mind like a bag over his face – you could watch it happen – and turn to stone.

Many of the characters in Easy Living are, by chance or choice, loners; some exist on the edge of estrangement, such as the narrators of “Bloodgroove” and “Scherzo,” and a few – like Jules Gibson in “Saskatchewan” – have toppled over. “Grebec” is set in the rural world of an elderly man confined to house arrest for shooting a teen-aged vandal. In “Sandcastles,” three young boys encounter a lone woman burying L.P.s on a beach, and some strange games ensue. While the situations these people find themselves in skew to the dark side, the writing itself is tactile and surprising, and also very funny. This tension – hardscrabble subjects, lively styles – is a defining characteristic of the collection.