I read a lot of stories, and Tim Gautreaux has a voice unlike any other. His particular Louisiana tone is so precise, the strangeness of some of his characters is heartbreaking. They are everyday and odd at the same time. As the title of the collection indicates, they take risks and do things that no "ordinary" person would dream of doing, and they somehow seem not to regard the perils as we think they should. We cringe at the choices they make, we hope for the best, we turn the page, we sih. ( )

This set of short stories has some recent buzz on LT so I thought I'd sample it. The first and title story made me feel uneasy. We are all imperfect parents after all. But the second story made me fall entirely in love with Gautreaux. He is just a downright nice person, and though some of the next story lines are intimidating, I feel safe in his hands. Memorable! ( )

I received a copy of this book from my LTSanta, Ridgewaygirl, who knew that I like short story collections, and I quite enjoyed it. The eleven stories here are set primarily in the deep South (Louisiana, to be specific), with a few exceptions. Gautreaux develops a wonderful sense of local color and community. Most of the characters are poor, uneducated, and flawed, struggling along against the tide. There's the grandfather babysitting his four daughters' four illegitimate children (two of whom have the fabulous names of Tammynette and Moonbean--not a misspelling); the elderly widow who tries to talk a burglar out of robbing and/or killing her while plying him with food; the priest who gets into more than one scrape for being unable to say no; the one-time heiress, aging and lonely, who befriends her piano tuner and ends up playing in a hotel lounge; and many many more. Gautreaux is a fine writer indeed, and I will undoubtedly seek out more of his work. (As a side note, I'm now reading Burning Bright a collection by Ron Rash, which rather pales in comparison.) ( )

While not the twisted, sadistic tale of tortured youth that the title might suggest, Welding With Children is, hands down, one of the best short story collections around. Though the eleven stories are set in Louisiana and the American West—these familiar characters could live among us in cities and towns everywhere. Gautreaux creates people who aren't searching for material goods. They're looking for some sort of purpose and real emotion that their everyday lives lack. As in life, only sometimes do his characters know exactly what they are searching for. Sadness and hope are brilliantly mixed together in each story, and there is such originality contained in this collection that it's a definite reread. One armed hitchhikers, kidnapped Alzheimer's victims, a prison convict sitting in a bullring—colorful characters abound, and they're waiting for your eyes to find them in Welding With Children.

(5/01) ( )

Years ago, I read the title story and it stuck clearly enough in my mind that when I ran across a copy of the book, I wanted to read it. Considering that I have forgotten entire novels, this is notable. The story remained much as I had remembered it; the first person recounting of a day spent caring for his daughters' children, and the realization that he is not free from blame in his daughters' life choices. Set in a small town in Mississippi, there's both a strong atmosphere of people not quite getting by, of cars rusting in side yards next to decaying porches, and an undercurrent of hope.

That sense of resilience is, along with rural Mississippi, the common themes of this excellent and diverse selection of stories. Gautreaux takes set-ups that with Daniel Woodrell or Donald Ray Pollock would end in a blood bath and steers them in unexpected directions. In one story, a desperate criminal's home invasion is written with an off-beat humor, as he is thwarted by the elderly woman he finds in the house, and as her neighbors notice something is wrong. In another, an old man, disoriented in the Wal-Mart parking lot, is kidnapped by a carelessly cruel opportunist. This is the harshest of the stories, but there is a bright note in the man's desperate attempts to remember his past. Other stories deal with the remnant of a leading family, living in her decaying house and relying on the piano tuner for company, a priest whose drinking problem and inability to say no lead him into illegal acts and middle-aged man attending a writing workshop finds that he may be the only attendee with a desire to improve his writing.

I'll be looking for more by Tim Gautreaux. He's a fine writer with a strong sense of place. ( )