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In his debut story collection, Short People, Joshua Furst presents a thoughtful, haunting look at the lives of children experiencing emotional and psychological growing pains. From a born-again son coming to grips with puberty ("[w]hy shouldn't he have looked at the Playboy the tough boys in the bathroom tried to force on him before they gave him a swirly?"), post-baptismal blues, and his parents'... More

In his debut story collection, Short People, Joshua Furst presents a thoughtful, haunting look at the lives of children experiencing emotional and psychological growing pains. From a born-again son coming to grips with puberty ("[w]hy shouldn't he have looked at the Playboy the tough boys in the bathroom tried to force on him before they gave him a swirly?"), post-baptismal blues, and his parents' casual disregard of sin-free living, to a nerdy Boy Scout's public humility at camp and the sexual politics among high school girls, Furst follows kids as they try to find acceptance from their peers, as well as themselves. Interspersed are snippets of the weak, abused and neglected; children with succinct and poignant fates. While these interjections interrupt the pace, they are not superfluous, and Furst ties them together rather nicely.

While Furst occasionally breaks out of character and some of the children and families seem a bit too dysfunctional, issues perceived to be of critical importance--like TV watching in "The Good Parents"--captivate young minds:

It didn't matter what we were watching, the momentous thing was that we were watching, breaking the taboo--and without any negative psychological effects. No, TV was helping us. Though we wouldn't have been able to put it this way, we knew, we just knew that if we logged enough surreptitious hours, the massive assimilating force behind them would shove all our weirdness and eccentricities into a cellar where no one could see them. We'd put an end to the whispers, the jeers, the abrupt pointed silences.

Furst's Short People contains stories that linger on, and the playground down the street will never seem the same. --Michael Ferch

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