That cover though....so beautiful and intriguing. What initially drew me in to read this set of short stories.
While some stories I loved and thought brilliant ("The Misunderstandings")- and super funny!...some were just okay- and one made me pretty uncomfortable. Overall would still recommend though.

I received a copy of this book through NetGalley for an honest opinion. My thanks to Brock Clarke, Netgalley and
Algonquin Books for the opportunity to read and review this book.

Published by Algonquin Books on March 13, 2018

The Price of the Haircut is a collection of tragicomic (or in a few cases, twistedly comic) stories that blend humor with perception. After the mayor in “The Price of the Haircut” tells the city that a race riot wasn’t caused by yet another shooting of an unarmed black man by a white cop, but by a quarrel over a barber’s racist remark after he gave an $8 haircut, the white narrator and his friends lament all the bad but expensive haircuts they’ve had. They want to save money and get a bad haircut for only $8, but can they patronize a barber who makes racist remarks? The frivolous logic they employ to wrestle with their moral dilemma is hilarious, but the story’s larger point concerns the willingness of white people to pretend that racism doesn’t exist while agreeing that if it did exist, it would be awful, a point they would happily make in a patronizing and self-congratulatory way to their black friends if they had any.

In the volume’s most bizarre story, “Our Pointy Boots,” young men and women ask the question: “How does the thing that promises to be different, the thing that promises to make you feel good, end up making you feel as bad as everything else?” After they return from war (except for the one who died), the same young men and women just want to march around the Public Square in the pointy boots they thought would make them feel good. This is a tragically funny story that lampoons all the clichés about returning veterans and reminds us that people are individuals, not clichés. Ultimately the story is about the importance of holding onto something that makes us feel good during all those times when feeling good seems very far away. And it’s about the importance of holding onto ourselves if all else fails.

In “The Pity Palace,” a man in Italy is too sad to venture outside of his home because his wife left him for Mario Puzo. After jettisoning the friends who warned him that he needs to go outside if he wants to keep his friends, he has no one to take care of him, compounding his desperate loneliness. His former friends have circulated flyers inviting people to visit the man’s home, which they have dubbed “The Pity Palace,” in order to pity him. Feeling pity for the man makes visitors feel better about their own lives (except for those who complain that he isn’t pitiful enough), which says something sad but honest about human nature. The story’s kicker lies in the growing realization that the man is even more pitiful than he appears to be.

“What Is the Cure for Meanness?” should be a sad story told by a young boy about his mean father and emotionally wrecked mother, and while it is a sad story, it’s also very funny. The son is trying to avoid his father’s meanness and is only partially successful, although he’s more insensitive than mean to his mom. But their life is filled with misfortune — everything the mother cares about dies or leaves — and maybe meanness is the natural response. Still, as the title suggests, meanness might not be inevitable.

The narrator of “Concerning Lizzie Borden, Her Axe, My Wife” is a research-obsessed husband who is afraid to lose his wife to her congenital heart defect and is instead losing her to his inability to give her the space she needs. That doesn’t sound funny, and it’s not, but the tour of Lizzie Borden’s house (which frat boys have mistaken for porn star Lezzie Borden’s house) is hysterical.

“The Misunderstandings” is narrated by an unemployed man whose takes his unhappy family to dinners at local restaurants, each leading to misunderstandings that lead to more family dinners at other restaurants, all paid for by restaurant owners in sort of a “pay it forward” spirit. Speaking of family dinners, one of my favorite stories in the volume is “That Which We Will Not Give,” a celebration of family stories that are repeated every year at Thanksgiving dinners and other barbaric family rituals.

“The Grand Canyon” is a five-page run-on sentence that describes a moment in a woman’s honeymoon when she considers how to paint the Grand Canyon and whether the painting should include her husband masturbating into it. “Children Who Divorce,” a story about jealousy, imagines that child actors reunite to act in updated, dinner theater versions of their original productions, minded by a doctor who tends to the actors with daily group therapy sessions (the current group suffers from Gene Wilder withdrawal).

Brock Clarke has a knack for creating strange — sometimes bizarre — situations or characters, and finding within them those things that are common to us all. The stories encourage readers not just to laugh, but to understand people and their lives in new ways, to understand how other people are, in fundamental ways, just like us, not matter how unlike us they might be.

RECOMMENDED

The Price of the Haircut by Brock Clarke is a very highly recommended collection of eleven short stories.
These stories are bursting with social satire, wit, surreal situations, and peculiar plot twists. The writing is excellent and the stories were perfectly presented, the characters are humorous and flawed, but somehow relatable. The situations seem absurd, yet ordinary. I loved every single story in this collection.

Contents include:
The Price of the Haircut: The mayor of a town determines that a riot was due to a man who said a racist comment while giving an eight dollar haircut. Racial attitudes are examined through a group of men who have been getting expensive, but bad haircuts for years. The men wonder if it would be better to go to this barber and only pay eight dollars for their haircuts.

The Grand Canyon: A woman tells the story of her honeymoon at the Grand Canyon in one long run-on sentence.

What Is the Cure for Meanness?: A young man gives his mother gifts that subsequently die. The first gift that died was a lilac bush, which he gave to her after his Dad left his mom for another woman on her birthday.

Concerning Lizzie Borden, Her Axe, My Wife: A man is kicked out of the house by his wife and six days later invited to join her on a trip to the Lizzie Borden Bed and Breakfast in Fall River, Massachusetts - and take the official two-hour tour.

Good Night: A parent struggles to accept affection from a son without caustic commentary.

Our Pointy Boots: Soldiers suffering from PTSD return home from war and tell reporters that, "The first thing we’re going to do when we get home is put on our pointy boots and parade around the Public Square."

The Misunderstandings: A dysfunctional family has a horrible night of family discord turn into a misunderstanding that turns into more misunderstandings, all of them curiously beneficial.

That Which We Will Not Give: A family has a shared story about the time their mom asked their dad for a divorce and he wouldn’t give it to her. The story could differ, "depending upon who was telling it and which part of the story they chose to emphasize."

Cartoons: An ex-wife is taking a cartoon-drawing class at the community center.

Children Who Divorce: Child actors from a well-known movie, who all married young, then divorced, and loved the star in the movie, are participating in a play/remake of the story. They have a doctor who listens to them to make sure they are mentally prepared for the show.

The Pity Palace: In Florence, Italy, Antonio Vieri believes his wife has left him for "the famous American author who wrote those best-selling novels about Italian gangsters in New York, and Antonio Vieri was feeling sorry for himself, so very sorry for himself that his friends warned him that if he did not stop feeling sorry for himself, he, Antonio Vieri, would become famous for it throughout Florence... " A tourist/entrepreneur begins selling tickets to tourists to meet the very sad, miserable Antonio Vieri.

Disclosure: My review copy was courtesy of Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill.
http://www.shetreadssoftly.com/2018/03/the-price-of-haircut.html
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2333993796
https://www.librarything.com/work/20742097/reviews/154044077
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https://twitter.com/SheTreadsSoftly/status/976173014629994498

Thanks to Algonquin for the free review copy of this novel. All opinions are my own.
This book is a collection of short stories that take on a vary sarcastic and satire tone. I enjoyed getting to read about how the author portrays all walks and stages of life. At times, I was laughing so hard while reading this.
I do love short stories and enjoyed even the really short ones.
There was a story that I couldn’t connect with that made me uncomfortable, so I didn’t finish it. Other than that, it was a decent read.

Bitter Truths Wrapped in Sweet Candy Coatings

It seems to me that in his novels Brook Clarke has shown himself to be a master of inventive word play, comic absurdity, and irony - all tucked into the vaguely disorienting structure that is familiar to us as a hallmark of the postmodern novel. Clarke can be clever, tender, profound, and wildly funny.

In these short stories, though, there seems to be a more powerful undercurrent of something else - bitterness, or possibly anger. Whether we are addressing failed marriages, failed wars, failed jobs, failed lovers, failed children, failed adults, or failed lives in general, there is a darkness, and no particular signs or promises of redemption. Sure, there is still the comic absurdity. And there is the masterful and disorienting juxtaposition of the ordinary, the extraordinary, the magical, and the bizarre. Sometimes there is just structural playfulness or literary joking. But, still with all of that, the predominant tone is in the minor chord.

The narrators of these pieces, (most are told in the first person singular, or the more unnerving plural), are contemptible in a delusional, clueless, sadsack sort of way. Cheating husbands, mean children, casual racists, inattentive lovers, distant parents - they're all here and they seem to want forgiveness, or validation, and yet realize they deserve none. They all spew a carefully and precisely calibrated mix of truth and falsehood, with instances of great insight punctuated by profound self-delusion. It's a little unnerving that they can also be very funny, but of course that's one of Clarke's signature strengths.

And so, with all that said, I enjoyed almost every piece here. Clarke challenges you with difficult characters, implausible plots, antic developments, and hopeless choices, but he does it with such style and wit that you keep diving back in. I've found that with his novels, and it's now confirmed here with this little candy dish of sweet-and-sour treats. A nice find.

(Please note that I received a free advance ecopy of this book without a review requirement, or any influence regarding review content should I choose to post a review. Apart from that I have no connection at all to either the author or the publisher of this book.)

Some of Clarke's longer stuff is really inventive and comedically tragic and ultimately his shorter stuff seemed similar but maybe not as refined. Enjoyable and certainly worth a perusal.