Ten very wet stories of floods and rainstorms make up Gert Loschutz's Dark Company, a set of surreal wanderings through the drenched streets of a nameless German town, as well as through the labyrinths of memory. Narrator Thomas is a 35-year-old skipper who lost his barge to a wrecker's yard and has since worked as an agent for several transportation companies and as the captain of a ship. His tales of adventure have the authenticity of Joseph Conrad, but with a modern unreliability and faltering over details more like Kafka. The fragments of plot, blurred by the passage of time, are rife with missing chunks of information and confused identities, with people who look like friends and lovers from his past but may not be, or who mistake Thomas for someone else.
For Loschutz, atmosphere is all. His tales are full of indirection and suggested connections; meaningful looks are exchanged, mysterious notes change hands. In "It's Not Friday Yet," Thomas may have witnessed a murder, and provides readers with clues that hover on the edge of a conclusion we can't quite see.
Loschutz's stories-within-stories are workingman's tales zigzagging from Berlin to Manhattan, from Vienna to Poland. His heroes are truckers and porters, bargemen and naval cadets, on boats and trains and cross-country trucks, making their way through the fog and the rain, encountering little horrors along the way. --Nick DiMartino, Nick's Picks, University Book Store, Seattle