The Incurables: Richard Sullivan Prize in Short Fiction

In the book’s opening story, “The Bridge,” a new sheriff must confront a suicide epidemic as well as his own deteriorating mental health. In “Classmates,” a man sets off to visit the wife of a classmate who has killed himself. Is he hoping to write a story about his classmate or to observe the aftermath of what his own suicide attempt, if successful, would have been like? In the title story, a down-on-his-luck porn actor returns to his hometown and winds up in the mental health ward of the local hospital, where he meets a captivating woman. Other stories in the collection include “A Map of the Forbidden,” about a straight-laced man who is tempted to cheat on his wife after his adulterous father dies, and “The Boy behind the Tree,” about a problematic father-son relationship made more so by the arrival on the scene of a young man the son’s age. In “I Return,” a father narrates a story from the afterlife, discovering as he does so that he is not as indispensable to his family as he had believed.

 

“The beautiful stories in The Incurables, like the walking wounded who inhabit them, haunt the borderline between the land of the dead and the land of the living, where the bridge and remedy, as Mark Brazaitis knows well, is love. The lives within are urgently affecting, yielded up with strength and wit, with power earned the hard way, and most of all with wisdom.” —Janet Peery, author of Alligator Dance, The River Beyond the World, and What the Thunder Said

 

"The Incurables is a wonderful collection of stories about life, mental illness, and the human condition. The stories are wry, compassionate, and provide a deep understanding of the strengths and frailties of human nature and the ways in which individuals play out the hard cards they are dealt. Or don't." —Kay Redfield Jamison, author of An Unquiet Mind