Performance Art: Stories by David Kranes

​    I'm delighted to be the first person to rate and review this. Maybe my words will inspire readers looking for something different, something quirky, some kind of a oddball show just like this one.
    I found this book on Netgalley late at times and read the description very sleepily, so the actual book turned out to be something of a surprise, since I seem to have expected nonfictional account of lives of extreme performance and instead got the fictional versions thereof. But aside from that, it was a pretty enjoyable read. 
   Mind you, fictional or nonfictional, this was very much up my alley as most things even remotely circus adjacent tend to be. I mean, give a story about magic and magicians any day and odds are I’ll find it magical In fact, most of my favorite stories in this collection were about magicians, especially about the kid.
     I never remember the actual titles, apologies, but there were about ten stories in this collection and all of them ranged from good to very good. The quality was somewhat uneven, but then again the stories span decades of the author’s writing career so that (much like occasional dated references) was to be expected. Actually, as a dedicated movie buff, I found the dated references story to be fun in that who’s who of the bygone era trivia sort of way. It isn’t the only movie related story either and I liked the other one a lot. It was right up there with the magic.
   Overall, interesting and entertaining bunch of tales, featuring interesting and entertaining protagonists. There are many different approaches to short fiction, but the author took the one I prefer…an entire three act proper narrative done in reduced page count. Pleasantly offbeat and with an excellent ear for very natural, organic sounding dialogue, these stories were well worth a read and served as an excellent introduction to a new to me author. These artists put on quite a performance. Recommended. Thanks Netgalley.