Title: ”The Mute Ventriloquist’ by Simon Van Booy
Collection/Anthology?: The Secret Lives of People in Love (Beautiful Books)
Date Read: 14 June 2011
Briefly: Childhood friends Drake and Kristine meet up accidentally after years apart. They begin a relationship, then one day the talk turns to Oskar, the old mute ventriloquist who used to live in their basement of their Brooklyn apartment block.
Afterthoughts: And so it is with much sadness that I come to the final story in this collection, but what a story it is. It’s slightly longer than what I’m used to from Van Booy (at least as far as this collection goes), but just like the rest of the stories in this collection it reads beautifully. This story is, to be honest, rather odd with some even odder locations, but thinking back on it there are some quite profound moments in these ‘odd’ places such as Drake’s visit to an all-night Wallmart, and his brief journey to a local racetrack.
Rating: 
This story was read as part of a review of Simon Van Booy’s collection, The Secret Lives of People in Love. If you want to find out more about this collection then I invite you to either swing by my ‘forethoughts’ post, or to visit the product page on the publisher’s website; The Secret Lives of People in Love is published in the UK by Beautiful Books, and in the US by Harper Perennial.
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