Wells Tower

Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned certainly lives up to its title. Wells Tower’s collection of stories is nearly all about people whose lives have been blighted by fallings-out with family or loved ones.

Most of the stories are about a particular incident, and usually end with no resolution, and not even a suggestion of a hopeful outcome. You sometimes sense an ellipsis lurking behind his endings; there is more to this, but he’s not sharing it. Characters have little back-story, which is fair enough in a short story, but it leads them to be a little one-dimensional. One story I did like was In the Show about a single night in a funfair. It’s full of incident with quite a few characters getting attention, and more background filled in than Tower usually gives us. It’s stronger as a result, but still has a little bit of that ellipsis lurking at the end.

The eponymous story is the last in the collection and unusual in that it is a piece of historical fiction rather than set in the contemporary USA. It’s a story about some Viking raiders setting out on a voyage to pillage Lindisfarne. It’s an interesting idea for a story, and I was getting quite engaged until Tower fatally marred it with risible anachronisms like “gung-ho motherf***er” and “hassle”. There’s no excuse for horrible writing like that, and both Tower and his editors should hang their collective heads in shame.

Since I really only enjoyed one story in this collection, I can’t say I recommend it particularly. Maybe others might get ore out of Tower’s writing than I did. I think his stories lack the humour and style that might lift them above the pack in the manner of, say, Tony Birch. Instead, he has just written a collection of very downbeat, sometimes silly stories that would only appeal to somebody who needs a darn good depressing.… (more)