This is the best collection of short stories I have ever read. Each one is a mini-novel, fully fleshed out, raw and bruising and intimate. Rash uses the first person in each of the stories, and that sense of listening to a person tell their own story is captivating. It is like sitting across the table from someone and having them say, “I will tell you something that happened to me, and you will wish you didn’t, but you will believe it.”

I have consciously avoided reading Ron Rash over the past four years. I read his novel, [b:Serena|2815590|Serena|Ron Rash|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1347430224l/2815590._SX50_.jpg|2841515], in 2016 and I disliked it more in retrospect than I even did when I had first finished it. I thought Rash a good writer, but I also thought he would likely not write anything that would have real appeal for me, since I had been assured by more than one person that [b:Serena|2815590|Serena|Ron Rash|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1347430224l/2815590._SX50_.jpg|2841515] was his best, his finest, and his defined style. I had another of his books sitting on my physical bookshelf and I put it, unread, in the giveaways when I moved. I am now wishing I had held on to it and given Rash another try.

Moving away from my mistakes and back to this powerful collection, I must say that Rash views the human condition from the underbelly a lot of the time. His characters are frequently already beaten down by life and social position, or they find themselves in situations that the reader realises are sure to go bad at any moment. There is a kind of tension that permeates the stories, keeping you on the edge of your seat waiting for the axe to fall, and sometimes you become so involved that you feel when it does it will fall on you and not on the fictional person at all.

Rash is also not afraid to draw on his store of literary knowledge and life experience to add reality to his stories. In the story, Free Bird, the Lynyrd Skynyrd song plays a major role and we are treated to a reference to Flem Snopes. These references made the story, and the protagonist, come alive for me. His descriptions of The Last Chance bar and its occupants were so vivid that I felt I had stumbled into the dive joint and could smell the vomit and alcohol.

The range of people and situations is wide here. Not one story mimics or recalls another. They are set in different places and different centuries, but each and every one of them works. And, the final test of a great short story for me, not one of them feels unfinished or truncated. Rash knows exactly when to get out. Taking a hint for that last line, I believe it is time I “got out” as well. Read this!


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First time I've ever liked a book of short stories. 75% of these are great, 20% good, and 5% a bit off, but overall great. 4.5 starts ( )

So I had just finished a read that was painful and went on forever. I needed something to get me back in balance. A book of short stories would be the thing. Something that I knew would be good. I grabbed Burning Bright by Ron Rash. I had never read anything by Ron Rash before but I had read enough about his ability to write a good short story that I was confident it would be the answer I needed. I read it in three days. Could have read it in one. It was depressing. It was sad. It was more sad. And I loved almost every bit of it. A few of the stories seemed to have a message that felt a bit too much like a sledgehammer upside the head, but otherwise the stories were simply where I wanted to be. The writing was simple. The characters were brilliantly drawn. Falling Star and Waiting for the End of the World were two of my favorites, but there were others. I find myself fully recovered. Ready to read another day. ( )

A gorgeous collection. "Hard Times," the lead story, was at first my favorite. Then I read the next one, "Back of Beyond," and it became my favorite. By the time I got to "Dead Confederates," I gave up picking. Rash isn't sentimental about the South -- he loves it and he's also pretty clear-eyed. "Back of Beyond" should be a companion reading to the [a:J.D. Vance|15109469|J.D. Vance|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/u_50x66-632230dc9882b4352d753eedf9396530.png] best-seller, [b:Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis|29446025|Hillbilly Elegy A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis|J.D. Vance|https://d2arxad8u2l0g7.cloudfront.net/books/1471374387s/29446025.jpg|47200486]. This is the same universe, though transferred to Sylva, North Carolina. So many beautiful lines -- but that really doesn't do Rash's writing justice, since it's never flashy, just right. ( )

Desperate sorrow and relentless tragedy, that is what Ron Rash is dealing in with this set of stories. And I am selling my furniture so I can stand at his door with a handful of cash. I am as addicted to his sparse, unapologetic prose as his Appalachian derelicts are addicted to meth.

With only one story to mitigate the hopelessness, this volume was more difficult to get through than Nothing Gold Can Stay; even so, it only took me a couple days to finish because I couldn't put it down. ( )