This book has some very strong stories in it, especially "The Staying Freight" which starts the collection off with a bang and is the best short story I've read this year.
But, as is the case with a lot of collections, it feels uneven.
I think this might be why people tend to do less short story reading. With a novel, you can get involved and assume that you'll be reading one unified story throughout, so if you like the first 40 pages you'll probably like the entire thing. But with short stories, you can't ever know what the next few pages will bring.
This book also fits in with the sort of rural, prairie gothic literature you see making the rounds right now, titles such as The Devil All the Time by Donald Ray Pollock, Train Dreams by Denis Johnson, and books by Daniel Woodrell.
If that's the kind of thing you're into, I can't recommend anything more than Knockemstiff by Donald Ray Pollock. I found that book to be tight, consistent, and unified in both its narrative voice and the overall tone.
Alan Heathcock has some good stories in him, clearly. But by the end of the book I started feeling like the recurring characters and settings were restricting more than freeing.
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