Written over a period of three years and across a range of styles and formats, Walking with Albert is Keith Weaver’s first short story compilation. These stories range from micro-narratives of a few pages in length to what could be called miniature novellas. Weaver’s stories cover vast thematic territory, taking the reader from high-level discussions of Big Physics to the tiniest mysteries of the human heart. One story concerns a young man’s unrealised expectation of winning a Fields Medal, while others explore the joys and challenges of life in the country, past and present. Probing, experimental, often funny, and occasional political, this collection presents the darkly fanciful situation of a cat that defies anti-Semitism from the past, and another story about a death on a golf course. Weaver’s imagination ranges across the human and animal worlds and extends to the world of things. In one story, two starkly mismatched men find something in common on a summer morning, while another story concerns itself with a pair of toast tongs. Taken together, these works of short fiction represent a bold new direction in a body of work that includes three novels, a novella, and works of nonfiction.
Walking with Albert
April 15, 2019
Fiction