Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Unavailable
    Ball: Stories
    Unavailable
    Ball: Stories
    Unavailable
    Ball: Stories
    Ebook194 pages2 hours

    Ball: Stories

    By Tara Ison

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    “Captivating and disturbing” stories from an exciting and original new voice: “Think Mary Gaitskill or Miranda July, but more demented” (Publishers Weekly, starred review).
     
    Ball explores the darker edges of love and sex and death, how they are intimately and often violently connected, with bright, vivid stories set mostly in contemporary Los Angeles.
     
    In “Cactus,” a young girl comes to fear the outside world after the freakish, accidental death of her adventure-seeking boyfriend in the California desert; in “Wig,” a woman must help her best friend face cancer while covering up an affair with her friend’s husband; in “Fish,” the narrator sits watch over a dying uncle, but is distracted by the ravenous fish in the Koi pond near the hospital; and in the collection’s stunning title story, the bonds of friendship and pet ownership collide in the most startling and unexpected ways.
     
    With a keen insight into the extremes of human behavior and an assured literary hand, Ball is a stunning achievement by one of the West Coast’s most provocative stylists.
     
    “Twisted, dark, and wild . . . [Ison] is a talented writer who may have slipped under your radar. Be prepared to become obsessed.” —Hello Giggles
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOpen Road Integrated Media
    Release dateNov 1, 2015
    ISBN9781619026827
    Unavailable
    Ball: Stories

    Related to Ball

    Related ebooks

    Psychological Fiction For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Rooted

      May 10, 2019

      Rooted
      9 min read

    • Article

      Any Given Day

      Mar 29, 2021

      Any Given Day
      11 min read

    • Article

      Three Poems

      Mar 1, 2019

      I was like you once, a sealed plastic bag of water filters floating on the sea. I thought my numbers proved my time and space on earth. I thought having children was a way of creating more love. I thought thoughts I was ashamed to speak in case they

      15 min read

    • Article

      My Story My Friend Cath

      Mar 25, 2020

      My Story My Friend Cath
      5 min read

    • Article

      The Plague Legends

      Dec 1, 2021

      The Plague Legends
      12 min read

    • Article

      Beautiful In The Distance

      Jun 24, 2019

      Beautiful In The Distance
      10 min read

    • Article

      Four Poems

      Mar 1, 2024

      I was trying to look a little less like myselfand more like other humans, humans who belonged, so I put on a skort.Purchased in another life, when I had a husband and wrote thank-you notes and held dinner parties,the skort even had its own little poc

      6 min read

    • Article

      Three Poems

      Sep 1, 2020

      Yes, let the body swell and contract with the waves, which I tryto remember when I follow herinto the sea, not heeding the ambulances in me as we skim aboveurchins, their million arms. At dinner later, over spaghetti carbonara,and tiny silver sardine

      3 min read

    • Article

      Three Poems

      Nov 1, 2020

      1 The doctor makes a curving incision in the left topback of my skull andlifts the cap— “What areaam I here to work on?” But Ijust want to wish his son a Happy Birthday—It had been my aim, the reason I’dwalked right into this Doctor dream—In the morn

      11 min read

    • Article

      All This Blood and Love

      Nov 22, 2017

      All This Blood and Love
      6 min read

    • Article

      Gutbucket

      Feb 27, 2024

      Gutbucket
      18 min read

    • Article

      Reports From Near And Far

      Nov 25, 2021

      susanne paola antonetta MY HOMETOWN of Bellingham, Washington, is a last corner of the continental United States, a final chew of land before the long drink of the Pacific. We’re bound to the west by water, to the east by mountain, and twenty miles t

      17 min read

    • Article

      Skunk City

      Nov 25, 2022

      Skunk City
      3 min read

    • Article

      On One’s Land

      Sep 3, 2020

      On One’s Land
      5 min read

    • Article

      How the Lark Got Her Crest

      May 30, 2023

      How the Lark Got Her Crest
      15 min read

    • Article

      To Retreat, or Not to Retreat?

      Sep 22, 2017

      RACHEL MABE JUNE OF 2016 FOUND ME lying on a twin-sized daybed on the third floor of an unfinished house in Marquette, Nebraska—a village of 230 whose sole purpose seemed to be the two-step monoculture of corn and soy. Flies slipped through the shodd

      8 min read

    • Article

      Found in Situ

      May 25, 2021

      Found in Situ
      17 min read

    • Article

      An Open Palm

      Apr 14, 2022

      An Open Palm
      10 min read

    • Article

      How the Cicada Screams

      Dec 1, 2020

      How the Cicada Screams
      7 min read

    • Article

      Poetic Justice

      Sep 18, 2023

      Poetic Justice
      5 min read

    • Article

      Storyteller At The Fire

      May 3, 2020

      Storyteller At The Fire
      13 min read

    Reviews for Ball

    3.5/5

    15 ratings4 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 2/5
      Ball is a collection of eleven dark, creepy short stories by Tara Ison.
      Contents include:
      Cactus: a young woman's boyfriend dies in a freakish accident
      Ball: a young woman adopts an ugly dog who likes to play ball
      Bakery Girl: a teen works at a bakery
      Wig: a woman cares for her dying best friend while having an affair with her husband
      The Knitting Story: a woman knits and knits...
      Staples: a boyfriend's other, older, rich girl friend gets a face lift
      Needles: a couple leave Iowa and stay in a Motel 6 in Needles, AZ.
      Apology: a woman resorts to self mutilation to win back her husband
      Fish: a woman plans to feed her uncle's remains to some fish
      Musical Chairs: a man cheats on his fiance
      Multiple Choice: a woman has a boyfriend who requires choices that need to be made

      The collection is well written, but the themes of several stories were not very appealing, including the titular Ball, and they were a bit too disturbing. This was a so-so collection for me.

      Disclosure: My Kindle edition was courtesy of Soft Skull Press for review purposes.
    • 4/5
      This collection of eleven short stories is uneven, but predominantly good. The narrators are young women living in Los Angeles and most of the stories are written in the first person. They universally have dark themes with plots that start normally but progress to the unusual with shocking twists at the end. Ison’s protagonists all seem to have painful relationship problems involving rejection, betrayal, suffering, wounding, revenge, etc. They have needs to please, control, punish or seek companionship (including sex). By the end of the stories, each narrator seems to make a weird and stupid decision through twisted logic. Although it is uncomfortable to follow these characters, it is difficult to turn away.The best stories are CACTUS, BALL, BAKERY GIRL, WIG, FISH, APOLOGY and STAPLES. The protagonists in these stories are more or less damaged by some relationship issue and make unusual choices to resolve them. In CACTUS, a woman grieves for an environmentalist lover who perishes in a freak accident. She seeks to resolve her painful guilt feelings regarding forcing him to transplant a cactus from its natural desert environment to her backyard in a most unusual way. BALL’s protagonist falls in love with an adopted dog that expresses a neurotic need for affection by constantly seeking to play fetch. When she is forced to choose between her dog and her boyfriend, this woman settles on a strange and shocking solution. BAKERY GIRL is a pre-adolescent who is exposed to more worldly people in her part-time job at a bakery. She fantasizes about growing up but becomes disillusioned by the coarseness and degradation she experiences from her co-workers. WIG tells of a young woman whose longtime friend is having chemotherapy and has lost her hair. While lovingly supporting her decisions regarding the choice of a wig, she is also betraying her. In FISH, a young woman is the only family member who visits a dying uncle. We learn that she has ulterior motives related to a childhood experience with her uncle and that she is fantasizing about a strange way to dispose of his remains once he passes. An unfaithful wife who seeks forgiveness from her betrayed husband narrates APOLOGY. Her fruitless apology takes on bizarre manifestations. In STAPLES, a young man nurses an Internet dominatrix who is addicted to esthetic plastic surgery procedures. Throughout he maintains a relationship with his girlfriend, who provides him with the support he needs. The less successful stories are not as compelling, have more contrived plots (if that is possible) and weaker character development. These include KNITTING, NEEDLES, MUSICAL CHAIRS and MULTIPLE CHOICE.
    • 4/5
      A great collections of short stories. This is my first Ison book, and I am very impressed. The stories are multilayered and complex and the observations astute and revealing.Very good-- four stars!
    • 4/5
      Tara Ison's principal fascinations seem to be human cruelty, isolation and Los Angeles, more or less in that order. While not every story in "Ball" works, the best -- "Cactus", "Wig", "Apology" and the title story -- demonstrate of what happens to people when they make the conscious choice to refuse to connect and grow human beings refuse to connect and grow. Like her obvious literary progenitor, Mary Gaitskill, Ison is unsparing with her characters and doesn't hold back much, but her stuff doesn't have Gaitskill's cutting minimalism, and her prose is, if carefully structured and well-honed, more traditionally writerly. Not for the faint of heart, but not exactly a revelation, this is a good collection for readers with low tolerances for the soft, flowery stuff that wilts away rapidly in the merciless Southern California desert. The cover's a badly executed and wholly unnecessary ripoff of Alison Nutting's "Tampa." It's a pity: while Ison really isn't on Gaitskill's level, just about everything here blows "Tampa" right out of the water. Also, a quick look at Ison's bio revealed that the author had published here and there and taught here and there and uh, received a co-writing credit for nineties-era schlockfest "Don't Tell Mom, the Babysitter's Dead"? I didn't see that coming. My God, L.A.'s a weird place.