When the Nines Roll Over and Other Stories

From Publishers Weekly
Benioff is on a roll. His first novel, the crime drama The 25th Hour, was made into a critically acclaimed film directed by Spike Lee. He also wrote the screenplay for the summer blockbuster Troy. In his latest project, an octet of thoughtful short stories, he takes it down a notch from those high-profile projects, but he definitely doesn't rest on his laurels. The book begins with the title story, about a jaded hipster record executive who is trying to steal a talented and sexy young singer away from a small label. It's a tautly told tale with a wonderfully evil edge. Hip is hard to do, but Benioff can pull it off, as when the reader follows the protagonist into a series of increasingly restricted VIP rooms: "Tabachnik had been places with four progressively-more-exclusive areas, where the herds were thinned at each door by goons with clipboards, turning away the lame." Like a lot of great short stories, it leaves you wanting to continue on with the characters to see where they end up. The other seven stories in the collection are a varied lot, ranging from the tale of a young soldier grappling with the moral complications of having to execute an elderly woman to a drama about a lovesick young man's decision to secretly scatter his girlfriend's father's ashes. The stories are offbeat, but not overly obtuse, and each one is driven by fully formed characters. This is a superb collection, and it proves that Benioff can handle the long and the short of the fiction game. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From The Washington Post's Book World/washingtonpost.com
The literary world blasts commercial fiction -- rightly -- for its formulaic plotlines and predictable characters but gives its own books a pass. It ignores the obligation to provide the audience with genuine reading pleasure. It risks lulling readers into comas. Luckily, the best stories in two new collections by David Benioff and David Means will rouse readers out of this awful sleep.Benioff is a storyteller in the old style: He creates an interesting premise, then steps aside to let it play out. There's a reason this kind of writing has lasted for ages; simply put, it's fun to read. The successful stories in When The Nines Roll Over are so thoroughly enjoyable that you may not reflect on their acute perceptions until you've put the book down for a while.One such tale, "The Devil Comes to Orekhovo," starts out with ruthless power: "The dogs had gone feral. They roamed the countryside in packs, their claws grown long, their fur thick and unbrushed and tangled with thistles." The story's main character, Leksi, a young Russian soldier, is on a three-man patrol in Chechnya. The first few lines, about the fearsome dogs, might describe the men just as well (war warps many lives). Leksi and his more experienced companions are sent to capture a mansion that may be an outpost for Chechen rebels, but instead of a firefight the soldiers find an old woman, hiding, and Leksi is ordered to take her into the woods to shoot her. This is when the story acquires its true shape. The woman recounts, among other things, the titular folk tale, and upon learning it the reader understands that Leski's moral dilemma has been building from the first line. In her tale the devil comes looking for a wife but is tricked by the woman he wants, who escapes his clutches. But in the real world devils aren't so easily fooled. The question is not whether Leksi will be changed by this war, but how much. This is Benioff at his best -- big strokes, an epic in 36 pages.David Means, meanwhile, thrives on the small scale, although his ambitions are just as grand. The Secret Goldfish is a collection of 15 stories, most of them relatively short, propelled by language and oddity more than any straightforward narrative. Means works with digressions and leaps, locating his wisdom in the accumulation rather than delineation of details.The man loves death, that's for sure, and thank goodness. Means enjoys himself when characters face slaughter, and this enjoyment transfers to the reader (or to this reader anyway). It's not that Means dwells on gore but that he describes the mortal moments in transcendent prose. In "Michigan Death Trip," he takes us through a series of brutal deaths in the 26th state. A hunter's end comes like this: "He's up near Muskegon, in state forest land, on a cool, clear, beautiful winter morning with the smell of pine sap and the windbreak of the tree line fine against the gray winter dawn. He's in peace. He's in silence. So the shot that comes out of the woods behind him, from the rifle of a kid just learning to hunt, a .22 shell -- making its way, spinning nicely, held steady by its rotations -- follows a clear trajectory to his chest through what, if it were slowed down enough, might be the most beautiful moment in Michigan history." Both Means and Benioff excel when telling stories about real people caught in distinct dilemmas. Unfortunately, these collections suffer dearly when they forget this recipe. Though they are vastly different writers, their collections suffer from the same glaring problems. The first is that neither has more than one memorable main character in the entire book. There are a wealth of lively secondary players and interesting plots, but time and time again the stories are steered by underwhelming men (and women) who plod along until you, the reader, are struggling to understand why this chucklehead is the one you're supposed to follow. This failing becomes evident more quickly in Benioff's writing because his language is clear and his stories direct, but the pieces in The Secret Goldfish can be just as sluggish. While we're told these main characters are experiencing heartache or confusion or pain, I never quite believed it. They moved, cried, breathed, yes, but their revelations felt cribbed from a literary handbook -- not earned, just expected. There are times also, in both books, when the stories are too small for the great emotions being indulged. Both Means and Benioff can be mawkish, particularly about the heartfelt moments in men's uneventful lives, and stories like Benioff's "The Barefoot Girl in Clover," about a man trying to find a woman from his youth, and Means's "Counterparts," which follows the life cycle of an affair, are weak structures for the heavy lifting each ending requires. You wish they might vary the tone of the books a bit, let little stories do little jobs well, instead of doing big ones badly.As much as I take both books to task, I still recommend them highly. Though each collection contains some forgettable stories, it's ludicrous to expect that books will be uniformly excellent. I, at least, have never read a perfect book and tend to think you find perfection only in stainless steel knives and television screens, things that are reliable but hardly transcendent. Benioff and Means risk falling flat by varying tone, plot or wisdom from one story to the next, and the reward for such daring is occasional excellence. That's no backhanded compliment: A handful of piquant stories offers so much more satisfaction than the flavorless porridge served up in much contemporary literary fiction. Reviewed by Victor LaValle Copyright 2004, The Washington Post Co. All Rights Reserved.

From Booklist
Agony. Betrayal. Camaraderie. Desire. In this eclectic short-story collection, Benioff explores the alphabetic range of experiences that characterize modern adult life. From the droll (an aspiring actress-slash-waitress hired to sling "hash browns and one-liners" in a sitcom about a greasy spoon) to the disturbing (an inexperienced Russian soldier captivated by a clever old woman he's been commanded to kill), the author delivers on the promise of his pungent 2001 debut, The 25th Hour. In the title story, the eccentric drummer of a punk rock band gathers friends to mark a milestone for his beloved Ford Galaxie 500. The smitten narrator of "Neversink" is burned by the manufactured tales of a mercurial ex-lover. In "The Barefoot Girl in Clover," an aging, former football star seeks out a free-spirited beauty he encountered in his youth. A deft stylist who's a notch or two tamer than Chuck Palahniuk and T. C. Boyle, Benioff finds levity amidst the gravity in a world where the simplest of moments can change the course of our lives. Allison Block
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Book Description
David Benioff burst onto the literary scene with The 25th Hour, a debut praised by Janet Maslin of The New York Times for its "pungent, funny urban tableau full of shrewd operators and unfulfilled desires." Now, with When the Nines Roll Over, Benioff uses humor and rich characterizations to explore the sometimes thrilling, sometimes pathetic state of the American urban male. Over the course of eight stories, some with an appealing touch of the surreal, we are introduced to a faded football star, soldiers in a Russian winter, a punk rocker, and other young men on the cusp of discovery and loss. As he evokes the various states of agony and pleasure—humiliation, rebellion, camaraderie, and desire— Benioff displays a profound understanding of the contemporary male psyche. With its knowing, often amusing stories, When the Nines Roll Over confirms the promise of a gifted writer emerging as a storytelling force.

From the Back Cover
"Following his debut novel, The 25th Hour (the basis for Spike Lee's underseen and underrated 2002 film), this mostly fantastic collection kick-starts with the masterful title story, in which a music exec cherry-picks a sexy punk singer for stardom against the wishes of her drummer boyfriend. 'The Devil Comes to Orekhovo,' about a trio of Russian soldiers on night patrol in Chechnya, may be the best Hemingway story that Hemingway never wrote. And the wistful 'Barefoot Girl in Clover' an ex-jock's reminiscences about a romance he now realizes was the love of his life--could even teach the Greeks (if not Pitt) something about tragedy. A-" -Entertainment Weekly "Eight deliciously accessible stories follow the author's first novel (The 25th Hour, 2001) and his screenplay for Troy. All of these will hook you fast, and they'll keep you hooked, with the possible exception of "De Composition," a run-of-the-mill post-apocalyptic sketch. One story, "The Devil Comes to Orekovo," is thrillingly good. An 18-year-old soldier, Leksi, is on patrol with two hardened veterans. They order him to kill a defenseless old woman suspected of funding terrorists, though Leksi has never killed anybody. The soldiers are Russian and the woman is Chechen, but this study of war's brutal choices transcends time and place; the denouement has the satisfying inevitability of a work of art. Not quite in that league, but impressive nonetheless, is the title story, where Tabachnik, a talent scout for a major West Coast label, has his eyes on a singer with a punk-rock band playing New York. Moving cautiously, he detaches her from a poorly written contract and from her boyfriend, SadJoe, who stages a futile protest on the Los Angeles sidewalks. In the battle between blue-collar solidarity and really big bucks, old loyalties don't stand a chance. Show-biz opportunity comes knocking again in the slighter but well-crafted "Garden of No" as actress/waitress June gets her big break and, hating herself, flees from boyfriend Sam, the short-order cook. Benioff further demonstrates his range in "Barefoot Girl in Clover" (a former high school football star who goes searching for the lost love of his youth gets whipsawed by the past), "Merde for Luck" (two gay men struggle to stave off AIDS), and the barbed whimsy of "Zoanthropy," in which lions roam Manhattan and a humble museum guard claimshe's The Lover of the East Coast. The big city nurtures tall tales, a point made again in "Neversink," in which a young woman lures suitors by inventing a father who was, supposedly, a ferocious ex-biker and pal of Sinatra's. Technical accomplishment that's matched by a generosity of spirit. -Kirkus Reviews

About the Author
David Benioff adapted his first novel, The 25th Hour, into the screenplay for the Spike Lee film of the same name.


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Eight deliciously accessible stories follow the author's first novel (The 25th Hour, 2001) and his screenplay for Troy. All of these will hook you fast, and they'll keep you hooked, with the possible exception of "De Composition," a run-of-the-mill post-apocalyptic sketch. One story, "The Devil Comes to Orekovo," is thrillingly good. An 18-year-old soldier, Leksi, is on patrol with two hardened veterans. They order him to kill a defenseless old woman suspected of funding terrorists, though Leksi has never killed anybody. The soldiers are Russian and the woman is Chechen, but this study of war's brutal choices transcends time and place; the denouement has the satisfying inevitability of a work of art. Not quite in that league, but impressive nonetheless, is the title story, where Tabachnik, a talent scout for a major West Coast label, has his eyes on a singer with a punk-rock band playing New York. Moving cautiously, he detaches her from a poorly written contract and from her boyfriend, SadJoe, who stages a futile protest on the Los Angeles sidewalks. In the battle between blue-collar solidarity and really big bucks, old loyalties don't stand a chance. Show-biz opportunity comes knocking again in the slighter but well-crafted "Garden of No" as actress/waitress June gets her big break and, hating herself, flees from boyfriend Sam, the short-order cook. Benioff further demonstrates his range in "Barefoot Girl in Clover" (a former high school football star who goes searching for the lost love of his youth gets whipsawed by the past), "Merde for Luck" (two gay men struggle to stave off AIDS), and the barbed whimsy of "Zoanthropy," in which lions roam Manhattan and a humble museum guard claimshe's The Lover of the East Coast. The big city nurtures tall tales, a point made again in "Neversink," in which a young woman lures suitors by inventing a father who was, supposedly, a ferocious ex-biker and pal of Sinatra's. Technical accomplishment that's matched by a generosity of spirit.


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