This Is Not Happening to You

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Review “This Is Not Happening to You, the debut collection of stories from New York writer Tim Tomlinson, might just rescue the twenty-first century literati set from a jetlag inducing conservatism and PC hysteria. Tomlinson gets to the gutsy and often hilarious truth of who we are in prose that’s poetic and unforgiving—like a well-timed right hook. No sprigs of lavender here. Just a heady and sardonic car crash of characters you won’t be able to turn away from: murderous movie star widows, wild boys and their dogs, rogues and their half-grasped lovers, people on all kinds of edges, ex-poets at the bar. Tomlinson has the audacity to tell it how it is and we should get down on our knees and thank some dank, dark force of nature for that.”—Sally Breen, author of Atomic City, a novel, and the memoir The Casuals  “If you like your short fiction sweet and prim with nice neat endings that land on the right side of the fuzzy moral line, DO NOT READ THIS BOOK. If you prefer your characters a bit unsavory, morally challenged, and wildly memorable, you will not be able to put down this kick-ass collection. With Zen-like mastery of language, a razor-sharp eye for detail, and talent for finding danger and surprise in the familiar, Tomlinson holds his own with the best writers of the genre.”—Bronwen Hruska, author of Accelerated  “These spare, unsentimental, and skillful stories draw us in from the start. Tim Tomlinson obliges us to confront our failures and foibles without flinching, writing with searing honesty and considerable courage about people in trouble of various kinds—and does that not include us all?”—Sheila Kohler, author of Once We Were Sisters, a memoir, and the novels Cracks, Dreaming for Freud, and ten other works of fiction.  “This Is Not Happening to You ranges with imaginative ease across locales and characters—a wealthy socialite in the Hamptons, a bitter, old Korean War vet in the suburbs, a thirty-something New Orleans barfly with delusions of grandeur, and many others. Quickly sketched but fully realized, these figures stumble into extreme (yet somehow plausible) situations that expose their all-too-human delusions. Above all, Tomlinson focuses on the cruel and inventive ways that desire makes each of us in turn predator and prey, martyr and buffoon. In the hands of a less assured talent these stories would offer only a grim ledger of sin and stupidity, yet Tomlinson leavens them with humor that is by turns wry, searing, and tender, although never sentimental. Sui generis as Tomlinson’s sensibility is, it draws on one of the richest traditions in American Letters, the New York state of mind.  By turns sardonic, irreverent, bold, psychologically astute and always engaging, Tomlinson has placed himself in the company of celebrated New York writers past, a pantheon that includes Hart Crane, Anatole Broyard, Dorothy Parker, and above all, Leonard Michaels, who would have recognized a kindred spirit in the magician of TINHTY. While the Manhattan that inspired generations of artists has all but disappeared, in Tomlinson’s stories we encounter a late florescence of a unique sensibility, ‘Made in New York’ stamped on every page.”—Robert Anasi, author of The Gloves: A Boxing Chronicle, and The Last Bohemia: Scenes from the Life of Williamsburg, Brooklyn Read more