We Regret to Inform You: Stories

The trouble with most short story collections is there's always the clunkers. The stories that drag you down, and make you put the book down to come back later in hopes that the next story is going to pick you up.

This book has no such clunkers. When I put the book down, it was reluctantly, because I had adulting to do. Without the adulting distractions, I would've finished it in one sitting. As it is, I want more.

The stories are sometimes sweet, sometimes so sad, and, in the case of the story the collection takes its name from, so funny. I was actually anticipating that story being sad. Normally, the phrase "We regret to inform you" is followed by death and sadness. That was a lovely surprise.

Every story has another story lying just beneath, which is my favorite kind of story. Such as Plaything, which, from the blurb about the book, I anticipated being just clever and funny. I feel like maybe I'm projecting myself here? But the deeper meaning I took away from it left me rather speechless. Same with My Father, the Statue.

This is the second book in a week that dealt with the issue of asking. The Kind of Person Who, which made me tear up just a bit, and whose formatting I adored. I could've read an even longer story set up like this, though I can see it getting tiresome. In this, it was perfect.

The LGBT element is so unexpected, and so perfect. By the Stream on Moving Day, which starts the collection, set me up to know I was going to enjoy these stories. So simply done, and so touching and just beautiful.

Thawed, which again, would be a really fantastic full sized story, but done in short form doesn't ruin anything. The idea of being frozen, then awoken when the world is so different, including (especially including) so much less hatred that your views are antiquated. That "fairy" is as outdated as "colored" is now. Magnificent.

Not one I didn't enjoy. Absolutely magnificent to find in a short story collection.

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We Regret to Inform You by Tim Fredrick Tim Fredrick Publication: 3/31/2015 eBook Review Copy, 138 pages ISBN-13: 9780692371558

A boy strives to become a world record holder.
A man wakes from cryosleep to learn he has months to live.
A catnip toy seeks affection from a cat.
A father turns to stone.

Writing in varied voices and pulling from different genres, from science fiction to fantasy to absurdism, Tim Fredrick explores male relationships with insight and humor. The characters in these fourteen stories-parents, siblings, lovers, and friends-struggle to find connection with those around them and contend with the inevitable fallout that accompanies love, heartbreak, fear, neglect, dysfunction, and fulfillment.

We Regret to Inform You challenges our conceptions of what men want out of relationships and examines moments that transcend our expectations and bring us closer together.
My Thoughts:
We Regret to Inform You by Tim Fredrick is a highly recommended collection of 14 short stories. There were times, while reading this short collection, that I felt a real personal connection with the author. Not that we even remotely run in the same circles, but the connection was that of one human to another. I wanted to be able to talk to him and just say, "Yes, I understand that feeling. I've been there." or "That is simple hilarious and can I send a copy to someone (or two)?" (Title story) I also felt that the order in which the stories are presented is well chosen.

I enjoyed almost all of the stories with just a few exceptions, but that perhaps had more to do with my inability to relate to the story the content (i.e. not male, not gay). I do have a good friend, a first best friend, to whom I would especially like to recommend this collection. Or I might just have to send him a copy.

Table of Contents - asterisks denote the stories I enjoyed the most

*By the Stream on Moving Day - A story of a first best friend This One Night in the Bar Where I Work - a story of spittle
*Plaything - Stream of consciousness from a catnip mouse
*Egg-and-Spoon - a boy seeks to break the Guinness world record A Tale of Five Thousand Erections - self-explanatory
*Thawed - cryogenically preserved man is brought back
*The Drawer - packing at the end of a relationship My Right Armpit Sweats More Than My Left One - a man seeks answers
*We Regret to Inform You - a letter informing the recipient that he has been proven to be a "Total Dick"
*Driving Lessons - a younger brother gets driving lessons from his older brother
*The Kind of Person Who - She/He was the kind of person who....
*The Cat, on Snow - reflections on
*Dusting - cleaning day
*My Father the Statue - a family deals with a medical condition

Disclosure: My Kindle edition was courtesy of Tim Fredrick for review purposes.

Tim Fredrick proves himself to be a risk-taker as a writer. In his collection of short stories, WE REGRET TO INFORM YOU, Fredrick tackles a number of character voices and a variety of short fiction styles, but the theme that runs through many of these tales is a sense of just how difficult it is for Joe Everyman to express himself.

"We regret to inform you" might have come from a number of his characters' mouths. In each case, the act of speaking is itself an act of regret. In "By the Stream on Moving Day," his protagonist feels the ache implicit in the definition of nostalgia when he meets up with his childhood best friend, Henry, who, on their last day together as kids, put his toe in the water, testing whether what Henry felt was sexual love. When the narrator, who may be named "Buddy," hears Henry admit that this may have been the moment when he realized he was gay, Buddy chokes on a piece of ice, incapable of revealing whether he felt the same way. In "Egg and Spoon," Jim seeks a Guinness World Record and his brother's affection by carrying an egg in a spoon around and around the local high school track. And in "Thawed," my favourite story, Fredrick imagines that while hundred-year old corpses brought back from being cryogenically frozen may be cured of the disease that would have killed them, the process can do nothing to cure the prejudices they went into suspended animation with.

Fredrick plays with second person narration in "A Tale of Five Thousand Erections," which is great, unless the you being addressed is female. "This One Night in the Bar Where I Work's" stream-of-consciouness narration feels shallow, until you realize that the fight at the center of it is itself banal.

Overall, Fredrick shows terrific promise as a storyteller, and I'm curious to see where his writing takes him next. One thing is for sure, Fredrick is not limited by the boundaries of gender and sexuality. He tries on different writing styles as one does clothes--some of the pieces are not all that flattering, but at the end of the day, there's an eclectic wardrobe filling the shelf.