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The Middle Ground Stories Jeff Ewing 9781775381303 Books

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The Middle Ground Stories Jeff Ewing 9781775381303 Books

I received a copy of this book to preview from the publisher, Into The Void, in exchange for this honest review.

Reading Jeff Ewing’s The Middle Ground is like going on a cross-country road-trip, taking only the back roads, stopping in small towns, where colorful locals in the diner or gas station tell stories about other locals that make you look around and wonder about life. For me, a lover of stories of this ilk, I found Ewing’s collection of stories evocative and ultimately irresistible. Many of them (Double Helix, Lake Mary Jane, Dick Fleming is Lost, Hidden Folk, Ice Flowers, The Armchair Gardener) drew me back again and again. Gorgeous and gritty.

As with any collection of short stories, one looks for the warp or the weave that connects them together. It’s never one thing. For me, these stories seemed to have a lot to do with how people come to accept what is, even while they yearn for things to be different. These are people who live somewhere above despair, but below contentment; there is reason to change, but not enough. Ugh. Who among us hasn't been in that place for one thing or another? For this reason, Ewing's characters are knowable and relatable.

Consider this line from The Armchair Gardener:
“He’d always been told that with enough drive you could do anything you set your mind to, and it was a decided disappointment to find out that wasn’t true. There were faster people, smarter people. He was somewhere down in the fat middle of the curve in every area that mattered.” From: The Armchair Gardener.

Or this, from Repurposing:
“She closed her eyes, felt herself spinning. She hoped this wasn't really the end or some new beginning.”

Jeff Ewing is also an award-winning playwright, clearly evidenced in the dialogue in these short stories. Here is a bit from The Armchair Gardener:

“When his wife left him, he took that in stride too. Looking down at him in his chair, this same chair.
“If you got up off your ass once in a while.”
“True enough, I should.”
“I need more than this. There’s got to be more.”
“I’m sure there is. I hope you find it.” She didn’t bother closing the door after her, and it was a good eight hours before Ed got up to do it.”

Another thing I love about this short story collection? The characters and the genuine emotions and mortifications they face. Like the middle-aged man, being watched by a woman as he walks away. Through narration we learn this:
“He felt her watching him as he turned away; it put an odd hitch in his stride, he had no idea why—he’d been walking, after all, for years.” Ha! I love that. Ewing captures the self-consciousness one feels in such a situation (or maybe that’s just me? At any rate, I empathize).

The Middle Ground is exceptionally well-written; lyrical but not full of itself. Evidence of the craft, yet not writerly or stilted. There is something special here, and I look forward to more from Jeff Ewing. Enjoy the read!


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The Middle Ground Stories Jeff Ewing 9781775381303 Books Reviews

I was amazed by the images created by a rich, personal language in The Middle Ground by Jeff Ewing. He creates a mystical tone to convey the mysteries of our everyday experiences. His stories skillfully represent interactions with people and nature that are intriguing and poignant.
I enjoyed Ewing’s stories in a similar way I enjoy Alice Munro’s. Characters often have dull lives and are immersed in bleak settings. When their circumstances change, they evolve in subtle ways. The writing is both sophisticated and straightforward, full of melancholia and ambiguity. I highly recommend this book. “Coast Starlight” was one of my favorite stories.
This collection of short stories offers a glimpse into personal tragedies - small and large - while tempering misery and restlessness with acceptance and hope. Ewing alludes to grief, regret and disappointment without being held hostage to them; instead, his narrators find a reason to go on - truly locating "the middle ground". The book offers clear, incisive prose and the occasional breath-taking epigram, giving the book a larger compass than its precise Western settings would suggest. A rewarding, worthwhile read.
Here is a collection of short stories that really grabbed my attention. More than that, they held it as they transported me into the Californian countryside where time slows, characters muddle through, families and individuals work out relationships that are both complex and deviously simple. The stories reminded me of Annie Proulx at times, with their clear prose and ability to absorb the reader into landscapes that breathe life, remorse, the beauty hiding in the struggle to keep going.

This collection left me with images that lasted well beyond the final page!
Jeff Ewing's "Middle Ground" allows us to observe people neither here nor there but stuck in a middling American twilight zone of their own making. The how and why they are there we may or may not know but we know they suffer from inertia. They have been thwarted by life or have just let life happen to them and each day they have a choice to continue in quiet resignation or attempt a change if they can find the inner strength, if they are still curious. In these strange and sometimes disturbing tales what is nothing more than a blink, can be interpreted as a wink, bringing solace to a hurting outlier heart.
He closed his eyes and concentrated, but it was impossible to call back the future that had been like an ocean washing against them. How had it shrunk to this?
From Parliament of Owls/ The Middle Ground by Jeff Ewing

In this story collection, Ewing paints the beautiful and painful raw circumstances of his characters’ lives in a subtle, but quite powerful palette. He seems to have a direct line to the paradoxical places inside them and inside the reader—places we don’t often wish to fully inhabit. He captures, with great sensitivity, the errors and desires that preoccupy a soul, the very things we frequently want to disown. This exceptional collection draws us into dark and seductive pools of memory while revealing these poignant lives in real time, with all their imperfections, regrets, and better instincts along for the ride. Ewing also succeeds in creating a strong sense of place across stories. I could hear the pinch and snap of wanderers through the woods, hear the wind through the trees and cutting across wheat fields. I squinted through the fog. I could smell horses and roadside diners. I “could feel the shape” of a thunderstorm. I was very impressed and moved by this collection, and being a writer myself, also inspired.

Christina Robertson
I received a copy of this book to preview from the publisher, Into The Void, in exchange for this honest review.

Reading Jeff Ewing’s The Middle Ground is like going on a cross-country road-trip, taking only the back roads, stopping in small towns, where colorful locals in the diner or gas station tell stories about other locals that make you look around and wonder about life. For me, a lover of stories of this ilk, I found Ewing’s collection of stories evocative and ultimately irresistible. Many of them (Double Helix, Lake Mary Jane, Dick Fleming is Lost, Hidden Folk, Ice Flowers, The Armchair Gardener) drew me back again and again. Gorgeous and gritty.

As with any collection of short stories, one looks for the warp or the weave that connects them together. It’s never one thing. For me, these stories seemed to have a lot to do with how people come to accept what is, even while they yearn for things to be different. These are people who live somewhere above despair, but below contentment; there is reason to change, but not enough. Ugh. Who among us hasn't been in that place for one thing or another? For this reason, Ewing's characters are knowable and relatable.

Consider this line from The Armchair Gardener
“He’d always been told that with enough drive you could do anything you set your mind to, and it was a decided disappointment to find out that wasn’t true. There were faster people, smarter people. He was somewhere down in the fat middle of the curve in every area that mattered.” From The Armchair Gardener.

Or this, from Repurposing
“She closed her eyes, felt herself spinning. She hoped this wasn't really the end or some new beginning.”

Jeff Ewing is also an award-winning playwright, clearly evidenced in the dialogue in these short stories. Here is a bit from The Armchair Gardener

“When his wife left him, he took that in stride too. Looking down at him in his chair, this same chair.
“If you got up off your ass once in a while.”
“True enough, I should.”
“I need more than this. There’s got to be more.”
“I’m sure there is. I hope you find it.” She didn’t bother closing the door after her, and it was a good eight hours before Ed got up to do it.”

Another thing I love about this short story collection? The characters and the genuine emotions and mortifications they face. Like the middle-aged man, being watched by a woman as he walks away. Through narration we learn this
“He felt her watching him as he turned away; it put an odd hitch in his stride, he had no idea why—he’d been walking, after all, for years.” Ha! I love that. Ewing captures the self-consciousness one feels in such a situation (or maybe that’s just me? At any rate, I empathize).

The Middle Ground is exceptionally well-written; lyrical but not full of itself. Evidence of the craft, yet not writerly or stilted. There is something special here, and I look forward to more from Jeff Ewing. Enjoy the read!