Bad Kansas

Stories

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Pub Date 15 Sep 2017 | Archive Date 17 Aug 2017

Description

The eleven beautifully crafted stories in Bad Kansas reveal the complicated underbelly of the country’s most flown-over state and the quirky characters that call it home. In this darkly humorous collection, Kansas becomes a state of mind as Mandelbaum’s characters struggle to define their relationship to home and what it means to stay or leave, to hold on or let go. When a desperate woman finds herself on a date with a rugged man she has nothing in common with, she must decide whether to sacrifice the life of a bear in order to keep the man’s affection. After having a nightmare about a mallard, a young man wakes to discover he’s choking the woman he loves. When his mother starts dating a slimy pizza parlor owner, a young boy must choose whether to align with his mischievous older brother or remain loyal to his mom. The deeply appealing and peculiar characters in Bad Kansas are determined to get what they want, be it love or sex or power, in a world intent on denying them.

The eleven beautifully crafted stories in Bad Kansas reveal the complicated underbelly of the country’s most flown-over state and the quirky characters that call it home. In this darkly humorous...


A Note From the Publisher

Winner of the Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction. Becky Mandelbaum currently lives and works on a ranch in Colorado. She is the winner of the 2013 Lawrence Art Center’s Langston Hughes Award for Fiction. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Great Jones Street, Salt Hill, Juked, South Dakota Review, Midwestern Gothic, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, and Kansas City Voices.

Winner of the Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction. Becky Mandelbaum currently lives and works on a ranch in Colorado. She is the winner of the 2013 Lawrence Art Center’s Langston Hughes...


Advance Praise

"With heart and precision, and a fresh and resilient humor, Bad Kansas reveals the lives people are living in that flyover state in a collection in which every sentence is a made thing, never merely a vehicle for conveying information to the reader. Mandelbaum’s sharp eye for detail, a deep emotional intelligence, and a slightly canted—yet ultimately compassionate—worldview combine to produce complex, authentic, empathic characters, reminiscent of two of the greatest place-based collections ever: Richard Ford’s Rock Springs and Annie Proulx’s Close Range."--Pam Houston, author of Contents May Have Shifted

"A splendid debut—smart, funny, refreshing. I read it with delight."--Lynn Freed, author of The Last Laugh and The Romance of Elsewhere

"With heart and precision, and a fresh and resilient humor, Bad Kansas reveals the lives people are living in that flyover state in a collection in which every sentence is a made thing, never...


Available Editions

EDITION Other Format
ISBN 9780820351285
PRICE $24.95 (USD)
PAGES 176

Average rating from 4 members


Featured Reviews

“It’s either school, a job, or a girl,” she said. “Or death. Those are the only reasons for coming to Kansas. Unless you’re born here, of course. Then it’s a matter of escaping.’

This collection won the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction, and it may very well win more awards as well. Thanks go to Net Galley and University of Georgia Press for providing me with a free advance review copy in exchange for this honest review. The collection is now available to the public.

We have eleven stories here, all of them set in Kansas, and all of them excellent. Every story is built around a dysfunctional romantic entanglement. There are manipulative relationships, stalkers, couples held together by money alone, and there are pathetically lonely types that want to cling to a dying romance at all costs. Somehow, Mandelbaum takes a wide range of pathological partners and makes them hilarious. In addition, the character development surprises me, going beyond what one might anticipate in short stories. My personal favorite is “A Million and One Marthas”, which is darkly funny and skewers the wealthy and entitled, but it’s a hard call, because the quality is uniformly strong, with not a bad one in the bunch.

Nobody needs to know anything about Kansas to enjoy this collection, and by the time the last rapier thrust has been extended, you’ll feel better about not having been there.

Mandelbaum is on a tear. She’s witty, irreverent, and clearly a force to be reckoned with. Look for her in the future, and if you see her coming, step aside, because nobody, but nobody can stop her now. Highly recommended to those that love edgy humor.

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Bad Kansas: Stories by Becky Mandelbaum is a very highly recommended collection of eleven short stories. This collection is the well-deserved winner of the Flannery O'Connor Award for 2017.

All of the stories use Kansas as a metaphor for dislocation and disconnection, as well as a location. All of her characters are appealing and quirky as they deal with various relationships. Mandelbaum delves deep into their psyches and concerns with others as well as themselves.

There is no question that this is an exquisite collection of stories where every one of them is exceptionally well written. At time poignant and other times humorous this is a masterful collection and likely portends great things to come in the future for Mandelbaum. The stories include: Kansas Boys; The Golden State; A Million and One Marthas; Go On, Eat Your Heart Out; The House on Alabama Street; Night of Indulgences; Stupid Girls; Thousand-Dollar Decoy; First Love; Queen of England; and Bald Bear.

Most of the stories are set in Lawrence, Kansas or nearby (hardly there) Vineland. This is worth noting because the city is very much used as a place and a recognizable character in the stories. Since it is also currently my home, I recognize many of the places, streets etc., if only by name/reputation. If anyone attended the University of Kansas, they will also likely have a more memory-laden recall of various areas where students tend to congregate. Yet again, I don't think Kansas is all that bad, and most certainly Lawrence is hardly representative of the state, but it seems the state is doomed to be an example of a bad place to live.

Disclosure: My review copy was courtesy of the University of Georgia Press.

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'Bad Kansas' is an astonishing and entertaining collection of quirky, bizarre, sad and humorous short stories that all deal with Kansas, though in very different manners. There are a lot of different constellations: people who left (fled?) their home state, others who experience a bad case of home sickness after leaving, those who moved there for a job or love and either like or hate it. Through this kaleidoscope of anecdotes, we learn about that seemingly common state, that was known to me only as the home of Dorothy.
While I can't remember any of the stories in detail, I remember the feeling the stories evoked, a kind of bond with that place, both good and bad.

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