With over 80 books in our library, this year we're taking some time every week to highlight one of the books on the Eckhartz bookshelf. This week's book is "City U" by Bob Boone.
The stories in CITY U, Bob Boone’s third work of fiction, feature the inhabitants of a large city school – teachers, students, old folks, volunteers, administrators and a whole lot more. In a world such as this, things can happen.
*A counselor is asked to do something stupid.
*A former teacher, chaperoning a City U trip to Morocco, receives anonymous notes
*Two students decide to perform an act of mercy.
*A basketball player, who left City U to go big time, decides to do something else with his life and, at the same time, prevent a murder from taking place.
*An English professor, on one of the worst days of his life, discovers something that matters.
*A failed radical, his grieving widower father, and a seriously angry drama queen find themselves in a room together.
*An administrator decides what to do about an unwelcome visitor from his past
*A senior center coordinator tells his girlfriend why he ended a friendship years ago back in Wisconsin.
*A returning student and his idealistic Ivy League neighbor try to rewrite the town’s history.
Rather than “proving” a point, the stories in CITY U illustrate the human condition.
“Bob Boone’s stories have a haunting sense which inhabits his narrative, just below the surface. I am surprised, not just by the actions of his characters, but also by my own reactions which frequently catch me off guard, as I want to warn them from the vantage point of my own experience and failings. They are us, and we cringe and laugh with them.”
“Bob Boone has the unique knack of finding the uncommon in so-called common people. The dialogue of his characters always rings true, never mincing words. Boone is a master of twists and turns in his stories, always keeping his readers thoroughly engaged.”
“From the outside looking in, a small city college appears rather pedestrian, a weigh station for those unable to make a more elite school work but still hopeful of moving up some ladder or another. From the inside looking out, the perspective is much more refined, complicated, and intriguing. That is what Bob Boone does in his new short story collection, City U: he inverts the lens.”
“Boone’s economical use of dialogue serves a dual purpose, as characters reveal questionable attitudes in a small amount of space or, more often, withhold uncomfortable truths from themselves and others. These layered, often humorous classroom insights are buoyed by the author’s lean, clear writing style.”
