Short Story Library

If you are anything like me, then you have found that the cliché is true. Life is stranger than fiction. The world is filled with a diverse population who go through both entertaining and dramatic situations all of the time. While Stephen Shieber’s collection, Being Normal is a work of fiction, it comes a close second place to observing real life.

Stephen does a great job in this collection of short stories of showing the darker side of life. He simply tells a story about the lives most people do not write about. To me, it was a great book and one of the best collections I have read in a long time. His skillful writing made believable characters come to life and as a reader you are drawn to the situations they are in. You are left after some of the stories wondering does this type of crap really go on in the real world while knowing, it more than likely does.

Being Normal does a great job to show what the range of the word normal really is. Basically, no two people are going to define it the same. Your normal life may be ridiculous to me. Stephen does a great job in his book of showing the range of the dark side of life and painted over here and there of the bright side.

I would recommend this book if you are looking for a collection to make you think. Not fluffy thick material that may get lost in the translation but well written plots which leave you the reader satisfied at the end of each bit. The collection by Stephen Shieber is not sugar coated which makes his prose powerful. While we all would like the good guy to win in the end, sometimes who the good guy is gets confusing and what it means to win is blurred. Stephen does an excellent job of illustrating this in Being Normal.

It is January and if you made a commitment to help the short story world by buying a few collections to read, pick up a copy, you will not be disappointed.

Being Normal was published by Tonto Books. This is the first book by Stephen Shieber. If you are interested, please pick up a copy of the book on the Tonto Books website – http://www.tontobooks.com/beingnormal/