In Universally Adored and Other One Dollar Stories, Elizabeth Bruce gives readers 33 ways of looking at a dollar. Her empathetic, humorous, and disarming embrace of plain-spoken people searching for a way out, charms and provokes. These are bittersweet stories of resilience and defiance.
In "Universally Adored," a colour-obsessed artist draws a facsimile of a dollar-a masterpiece universally adored-to win her girlfriend back. While checking for spare change in the laundry, in "Bald Tires" a Tennessee housewife with a malcontent husband finds an unused condom in his Sunday trousers. In "The Forgiveness Man," a runaway teen with a newborn follows a vagabond healer absolving the bedraggled godless through hugs of forgiveness. And in "Magic Fingers, a ladies' room attendant tracked down by her abusive ex finds refuge in a cheap motel with a 1970s era bed massager.
Riffing on the intimate object of a dollar, Bruce's humane short fictions-from a great mashed potato war to the grass Jesus walked on-ring with the exquisite voices of characters in analogue worlds.
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One dollar. The old woman pressed the worn bill between her hands.
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(@VineLeavesPress, 30 January 2024, e-galley, 162 pages, copy @PoeticBookTours, #BlogTour 5 March)
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This is a new author for me. I really enjoyed Universally Adored and Other One Dollar Stories. I liked the premise of the collection. Each story features a one dollar in some format or another. All of the stories are quite different and I liked the way the author explores the dollar. No two stories were the same and I was never sure what to expect when I turned the page. The collection is split into five thematically linked sections. I especially liked Universally Adored, Ricky Steiner Was Supposed To Die In Prison, Gas Station, Dolores and Festus. I'd recommend this.
