Literature, Fiction
ISBN: 9798985312423 (Print) 9798985312430 (eBook) $14.99 (Print); $9.99 (eBook) Paperback, eBook About the Author
R. SEBASTIAN BENNETT was born in New York City and grew up in Southern California. He has degrees from Columbia University; the University of Southern California; and the University of Louisiana, where he was a Doctoral Regents Fellow. The founding editor of the Southern Anthology and the former director of the Creative Writing Program at Muskingum University, Mr. Bennett has also taught fiction writing at the University of California Los Angeles and the University of Louisiana. He was a finalist for the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction and his writing has appeared in numerous publications worldwide, including Columbia Journal, Fiction International, the Los Angeles Review, New Orleans Review, the Texas Review, the Wisconsin Review, Paris Transcontinental-Sorbonne, Equus, the Bombay Review, and the Galway Review. Mr. Bennett’s novel, The Final Yen, was published by Sunbury Press in 2021. His website is rsebastianbennett.com.
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A Taste of Heaven: Short Fictions
“I need to ask you something,” begins one questionable protagonist in R. Sebastian Bennett’s latest collection, “Did you mean it when you said I had a psychic connection with the cat?” In an atmospheric, panoramic journey stretching from Louisiana’s Cajun territory and Florida’s alligator-ridden swamps to the subway tunnels of 1980s Tokyo, the obstinate misfit characters in these fourteen brilliantly crafted pieces are simultaneously redeemed—and one-upped—by the inspirational weirdness of the even stranger world around them. A nameless narrator who dresses up as a priest for a hobby descends into increasingly alarming adventures when he encounters an over-willing parishioner; a sufferer of an unspecified condition believes he is severely allergic to something in his apartment (probably himself); residents of a trailer park gradually become enmeshed in rival not-so-secret societies; and someone loses a foot. In its mysterious, technically perfect creations, A Taste of Heaven reveals a gloriously organic world that bursts with wonder.
Advance Acclaim for A Taste of Heaven
“Bennett writes elegantly, even as nearly every story turns in unexpected directions and surprises the reader at the climax. A Taste of Heaven is both skillful and surreally--even absurdly--amusing. The settings and points of view vary, but the stories are all precisely descriptive, many of them containing animals: dogs, cats, fish, horses, birds, alligators, and even crawfish. --Harold Jaffe, author of BRUT: WRITINGS ON ART & ARTISTS and editor of Fiction International |