I recently read Dead Aquarium, a short story/novella collection by Caleb Michael Sarvis (Mastadon Publishing, 2018) while on a cruise to the Bahamas. Thoroughly exhausted, and lulled by the hum and vibration of the ship’s engines, I slept fourteen hours the first night – just what the doctor ordered, in addition to sunshine and sea breezes, to lift my spirits and give me a fresh, optimistic outlook on life.

But then I started reading Sarvis’s book.

He’s a good writer, skilled with words, with not a tired metaphor to be found. In fact, my favorite among the stories concerns a young man named Miles and his Grandpa Sly, a former copywriter trying to help his grandson avoid clichés about darkness in an essay he’s written for school. Not only could I relate to that struggle as a professor and professional writer; I also found myself heavily invested in the story as a woman who has spent the past decade losing every member of my nuclear family to the ravages of old age.

Sarvis is the kind of wordsmith that causes me to nudge my husband, snoozing in the next deck chair, to say, “Listen to this….” But he’s also young enough to be my son, and that makes me feel guilty about the kind of world my generation is leaving his – and the kind of semi-hopeless but filled-with-grim-determination attitude we’ve fostered in people his age, and that this collection reflects.

That’s not to say I didn’t enjoy the book; I did. Sarvis drops us into the lives of quirky characters at pivotal turning points in their damaged lives, and seems to be riding along with us to observe what happens. He makes us care about them, even the mad ones, and they linger after the last page has been turned, flitting in the shadows at the edge of our consciousness.

The book is dark, but it’s the kind of darkness that Grandpa Sly calls, “dark as the essence of a life looked back on.”  Read it, and tell your friends to buy it.

Then have a daiquiri, and listen to some Bob Marley. Every little thing’s gonna be all right.