"Before Hiroshima" is 31-year-old American Joshua Barkan's first published collection of fiction, and the title story, which makes up almost half the book, is what makes you sit up and take notice.
The second half comprises five shorter, less polished stories gathered under the title "Suspended." These all exhibit to varying degrees Barkan's chief strength (not one to be sneezed at, either): a flair for storytelling, a genuine sense of drama.
Things happen in this quintet of modern vignettes, set variously in Hawaii, Uganda, Shanghai, Costa Rica and Boston: Lions attack, jeeps crash, people are robbed or lose their memories or shoot themselves. There are dull moments, but they are consistently redeemed by action, and this is rare enough to be refreshing. Each story is built around an original and interesting narrative idea. Still, compared to "Before Hiroshima," none is much more than a decent rough draft, waiting to have the cliches and the patches of trite dialogue winnowed out.
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