B. J. Hollars's debut short story collection offers ten thematically linked tales, all of which are out to subvert conventional notions of the Midwestern coming-of-age story. The stories feature an assemblage of Bigfoot believers, Civil War reenactors, misidentified Eskimos, and grief-stricken clowns, among other outcasts incapable of finding a place in their worlds. In these marvelous stories, we can join a family on a very 21st-century trip along the Oregon Trail, watch as a boy builds a brother from a vacuum cleaner, follow a sandlot baseball team as it struggles to overcome an invasion by its Native American neighbors, and experience how a high school basketball squad takes to Sasquatch roaming its court. This genre-bending collection charts a bizarre pathway through the thickets of life on the road to adulthood. Pushing the limits of realism, these stories capture the peculiar rites of passage of growing up Midwestern.
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About B. J. Hollars
Reviews for Sightings
The Lit Pub
The 10 stories in Sightings are all spins on classic 'coming-of-age' tales, and Hollars admits to a fascination with the genre. . . . Indeed, in every story Hollars finds a way to undercut the sentimentality that seems to be a staple of many coming of age stories, whether it's by incorporating surreal elements in 'Sightings' and 'The Clowns,' or using an unreliable narrator to tell the story.
Fort Wayne Reader
Sightings is a collection that digs deep into adolescence; its pain, its fear and its joy. The stories are captivating, often funny, always thought provoking as they draw the reader in to capture and recapture their own experience of early adulthood.
Pleiades
All of these stories represent a talented tightrope walk between genres and a gentle lesson in craftsmanship for aspiring storytellers . . . An imaginatively sculpted collection of absurdist concepts applied liberally to the equally preposterous notion of growing up.
Kirkus Reviews
Hollars provides plenty of material in these pages for both enjoyment and close reading.
The Show Me Librarian
This collection masterfully shares stories about coming of age in the Midwest and demonstrates the author's skill with well-crafted prose, true-to-life characters, and reflects on the time in one's life that is worth nostalgia, even with all its anguish and social dysfunction.
Los Angeles Review of Books