by James Lee Burke
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Product Description
In this moving collection of short stories, James Lee Burke elegantly marries his flair for gripping storytelling with his lyrical writing style and complex, fascinating character portraits. The backdrop of the hurricane-ravaged Gulf Coast is a versatile setting for Burke's stories, which cover the scope of the human experience -- from love and sex to domestic abuse to war, death, and friendship.
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Average Customer Review:
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
 Brilliant and thought-provoking, 2008-08-29
James Lee Burke is a master at descriptions be they of surroundings or feelings.
This book is a collection of short stories with a range of situations that people can be faced with and told by a master craftsman in describing how those people felt.
There are no easy answers in these stories and no fanciful scenarios, the stories have a realistic feel of hope combatting hopelessness. The strength of the human spirit is dominant in these stories and Burke is a writer who should be read.
0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
 Short fiction by Burke, 2008-01-06
It takes a slightly different set of skills to write a short story instead of a novel. The former is not just a miniature version of the latter; it has its own structure and style. James Lee Burke is a great novelist, but that does not mean necessarily that his short stories would be equally great. And the truth is, they're not, but they are still pretty good, at least based on the sampling provided in Jesus Out To Sea.
This book is a collection of eleven short stories published between 1992 and 2007. For the most part, the tales take place in the South and involve characters from the wrong side of the tracks. The major exceptions are "Winter Light" and "A Season of Regret", two similar stories about retired, middle class professors dealing with violent people. Most of the other stories are in Dave Robicheaux territory: people struggling to get by in a region filled with poverty, drugs and just plain viciousness.
These are not really crime stories, even though there is plenty of crime within. Instead, they are more slice-of-life stories that are more character than plot driven. Typically, the main characters are being crushed by the circumstances of their lives, usually only finding escape in drugs and alcohol. For example, in Mist, Lisa Guillory first suffers the death of her soldier husband in Iraq and then descends into an increasingly sordid life, one in which she will be forced into chemical addiction and crime.
Over the fifteen year span in which Burke wrote these stories, he also published over a dozen novels, so obviously short stories are not his principal form of writing. The Jesus Out To Sea stories do all have Burke's distinct voice with his powerfully descriptive imagery. What they don't have is quite the depth of his longer works. With the stories averaging just over twenty pages (and none over forty pages), this is a quick, well-written read that should satisfy Burke's fans.
0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
Jesus Out to Sea, 2008-01-04
very entertaining. Each story is well written, any of which could have been expanded into a full book.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
Eleven gems, 2007-12-18
Some short stories are mini-novels, expandable into something larger, like Boswell's 'portable' or (as we would say) condensed soup. Others are like poems--demarcated slices of life. The stories in Jesus Out to Sea are like the latter, though two of them have actually found their way into Burke's novels, A Stained White Radiance and Burning Angel. The title and cover art suggest that these are post-Katrina stories; several are, but others are set in Houston and Montana and several are set many decades ago. The overarching tone is somber and sad--winter stories of the spirit. One reviewer said that they are cut from Dave Robicheaux's world but without Dave there to bring justice or, at least, resolution. That is a fair description, though there are glimmers of hope. All are beautifully wrought and the collection is highly recommended.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
A master, 2007-12-03
He is among my favorite authors. A new book comes out, I buy it. I am never cheated. I look among the new authors for someone to measure up to him. I have not found anyone. Only he, consistently, can make me pause, reread and marvel at the writing. The images and language that fill the pages are amazing. You would not be disappointed to start here with this collection, if you have not yet discovered James Lee Burke.
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