Much as there's a place for novels about the extraordinary and fantastical, some of the most rewarding stories mirror reality directly. This is the case for John Holman's Triangle Ray, a collection of short stories that trace the life of the titular character through his days as an African American caterer, paramour and aspiring writer in Durham, N.C., over the course of decades.
Holman's tightly focused stories reflect Ray's existence through the phases of his life like shards of a broken mirror--small snippets that, pieced together, form an arc. He chooses quiet moments that are both poignant and illustrative about Ray's character--the luncheon in which he discovers that his first wife will ultimately leave him, the professional breaks that give him the highest hopes, and the subtle, racially charged interactions that taint his workaday existence. The collection shares common ground with Richard Linklater's film Boyhood, whose focus on a young man in a different era carries the same melancholy sense of time's passage. Through Holman's wry, observant prose, we see more than just a highlight reel of births, deaths and loves gained and lost. We see, instead, the multi-faceted nature of a man's persona, and how that changes in the face of dreams thwarted and rearranged.
The beauty of Triangle Ray is its attention to the details that inform Ray's life, the same details by which any of us measure the passage of time. Experiences shape, erode and transform Ray, and it's the reader's privilege to witness his myriad transformations. --Linnie Greene, freelance writer