Bars of America

Bars of America - Hamish Hamilton, Abacus, Faber & Faber (US)

Bars of America - Hamish Hamilton, Abacus, Faber & Faber (US)

Bars of America is a collection of short fiction set in a cityscape of gas stations and banks, interstate freeways, rundown motels, fast food eateries, diners and downtown dives.

The humans who inhabit this science fiction vista meet and pass and, before they pass, buy each other drinks – in Fifth Avenue preppie bars, bars in the black ghetto, desert bars, sleaze bars. Brief encounters that take place in the present, that never lead anywhere. In the background: American cities, the threat of sex and guns. In the foreground: bartenders and pool-players, cops and cowboys and prostitute, losers and loners, white and black Americans, Chicanos, Native Americans, immigrants – fugitives from the runaway American Dream.

Reviews

There is time where things matter, and dead time spent waiting for buses or an engaged extension. There is also time where things matter, but not very much, and of this time Neil Ferguson is the poet. Ferguson’s characters inhabit a bleak world, from which the bars in these stories are a refuge, as well as a quintessence of the region in which they are situated. One is impressed by the virtuosity with which he keeps this conceit going; one is grateful, as one usually is with tours de force, that he not only knows how to spin out an idea, but also when to stop. Literary Review

A series of reflections triggered by places, which constantly brim over into soaring flights of fantasy Vogue

Cool stylish prose Tribune