Like Bradbury, Hollars manages to invoke the sights, sounds, and smells of small town America through the eyes of his teenage heroes ― and with as much ease.
― The Lit Pub
The 10 stories in Sightings are all spins on classic ‘coming-of-age’ tales, and Hollars admits to a fascination with the genre. . . . Indeed, in every story Hollars finds a way to undercut the sentimentality that seems to be a staple of many coming of age stories, whether it’s by incorporating surreal elements in ‘Sightings’ and ‘The Clowns,’ or using an unreliable narrator to tell the story.
― Fort Wayne Reader
Sightings is a collection that digs deep into adolescence; its pain, its fear and its joy. The stories are captivating, often funny, always thought provoking as they draw the reader in to capture and recapture their own experience of early adulthood.
― Pleiades
All of these stories represent a talented tightrope walk between genres and a gentle lesson in craftsmanship for aspiring storytellers . . . An imaginatively sculpted collection of absurdist concepts applied liberally to the equally preposterous notion of growing up.
― Kirkus Reviews
Hollars provides plenty of material in these pages for both enjoyment and close reading.
― The Show Me Librarian
This collection masterfully shares stories about coming of age in the Midwest and demonstrates the author’s skill with well-crafted prose, true-to-life characters, and reflects on the time in one’s life that is worth nostalgia, even with all its anguish and social dysfunction.
― Los Angeles Review of Books
In these amazing stories, which are rife with savagely entertaining characters, the most exhilarating sighting of all is Hollars’s adept humor and impeccable prose, page after page. Readers indeed come away with the feeling of having had a true encounter with the fantastic―this unique collection, a bildungsroman at the intersection of private journal and urban legend, is not to be missed.
— Alissa Nutting
Book Description
Unconventional Midwestern coming-of-age stories
About the Author
B. J. Hollars is author of Thirteen Loops: Race, Violence and the Last Lynching in America and Opening the Doors: The Desegregation of the University of Alabama and the Fight for Civil Rights in Tuscaloosa. He is editor of You Must Be This Tall to Ride: Contemporary Writers Take You Inside the Story, Monsters: A Collection of Literary Sightings, and Blurring the Boundaries: Explorations to the Fringes of Nonfiction. He is Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire.
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