Dybek, Stuart - Kirkus Reviews (review date 15 February 1990)
Kirkus Reviews (review date 15 February 1990)
SOURCE: “Fiction.” Kirkus Reviews 58, no. 4 (15 February 1990): 204-05.
[In the following review of The Coast of Chicago, the critic compares the collection to Dubliners and Sherwood Anderson's tales in its design, scope, and realism.]
Grounded in the realities of ethnic life in Chicago, Dybek's second collection of stories (Children and Other Neighborhoods, 1980) transcends street-corner sociology for an urban poetry of spirit and myth; his lyrical prose derives its power from his switchblade sharp imagery—as well as Proustian sensitivity to the smells and sounds of city life.
Every story here, from the half-page shorts to the lengthy, conventional narratives, serves as a gloss on the others, creating a coherence of design and texture truly worthy of comparison with Joyce's epiphanic Dublin tales or Anderson's Midwestern elegiacs. “Bottle Caps,”...
[The entire page is 420 words long]
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