I was turned onto Kevin Brockmeier after reading "The Year of Silence," a short story of his that appeared in Best American Short Stories 2008, edited by Salman Rushdie (which, by the way, is an excellent collection--a wonderful birthday gift from my friend Sarah). The stylistic elements of Nicole Krauss and Jonathan Safran Foer come through in many of the stories Brockmeier has included in The View from the Seventh Layer, his most recent collection of short stories; Brockmeier tends towards the fantastical much more often, though. Krauss and Foer, the reigning power couple of Brooklyn's literary scene, hold the top two spots on my list of favorite authors, and I was hoping Brockmeier could climb the same mental pedestal on which I've placed Krass and Foer.
While I enjoyed the book overall, individual stories appealed to me more than others and I found that I appreciated the author's meditations on mystery and philosophy more than the fantastical and futuristic. Four of Brockmeier's stories are titled "A Fable..."--the most lasting stories probably being "A Fable Containing a Reflection the Size of a Match Head in Its Pupil" and "A Fable with Slips of White Paper Spilling from the Pockets." In the latter story, a man unknowingly purchases God's overcoat at a thrift store and begins receiving prayers on notes that appear in the coat's pockets. It is this brand of romantically-magical realism that I admire in Krauss' Man Walks Into a Room and The History of Love; "A Fable with Slips of White Paper Spilling from the Pockets" was exactly the kind of story I anticipated from this collection.
I've checked out a novel of Brockmeier's, A Brief History of the Dead, in order to read more of his writing. The View from the Seventh Layer convinced me to stay tuned for more of Kevin Brockmeier's work, but did not incline me to crown him a budding favorite author of mine.
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