The Brick Murder: A Tragedy and Other Stories

A remarkable collection of stories

These stories show a writer in confident control of his craft. At times we encounter a commingling of irony, satire, and graceful lightness reminiscent of Updike; at other times we find an unsettling, incongruously humorous world perhaps suggestive of Carver. The titular story is a marvelously "over the top" satire against literary forms, academic conventions, and deadly military mindlessness. "Bob the Negro," which deserves a place in major fiction anthologies, plays brilliantly off Ralph Ellison's masterpiece and hilariously excoriates the racism still unfortunately prevalent in American society. Other outrageously funny yet poignant satires include "Outsourcing" (you'll never look at the Wally World smiley face the same way again!), "Official Friend," "Calling It Off" (achingly funny), and "Culture Clash." In "Sand Castle" we see Mr. Ayau's adroit commingling of whimsy and wistfulness, fantasy and futility. As William Blake says, "To see a world in a grain of sand"--or in a sand-grain castle, complete with Carveresque cathedral! The collection ends on a deeply ironic note: Death might be a numbers game, but at least it's often a "creative" numbers game--which might prompt us to reflect uncomfortably on the ways we "aestheticize" suffering and death through various artistic media or "games." Finally, however, what I remember most from this collection are the two stories with child protagonists, "Murray and the Holy Ghost" and "Spawning"--both written with extraordinarily sensitive craft, gentle insight, and compassion in the face of the horrors (dark religious fundamentalism, family strife, the ever-present physical fact of suffering and death) that the world tries to foist upon the childhood mind. To modify Wordsworth a bit, the suffering child is indeed the father of the suffering man. This collection of stories, Ayau's Eleven, merits careful, appreciative reading. Read more