It’s official: the critics love Fred McGavran. His short story collection The Butterfly Collector has been receiving great reviews. (Ahem, ahem, ahem.) And now there’s another one, just posted yesterday by the good people at Hayden’s Ferry. Here are some of our favorite sections from the review:
Fred McGavran’s horror exhibits an unusual but effective component of compassion, and his compassion is redolent with irony, wry wit, and not a little slapstick.
I see McGavran as a humorist. I will go so far as to compare him to David Sedaris, though they have nothing in common with the exception that they have both written very funny Christmas stories. David Sedaris’ Six to “Eight Black Men” is read aloud annually during my Christmas celebration, and now so will McGavran’s “The Annunciation of Charles Spears.”
Thanks to Debrah Lechner for the great review. You can read it in its entirety here. We’re very pleased to know that one of Fred’s stories will now be a part of her holiday tradition!
The Butterfly Collector, which won the 2007 St. Lawrence Book Award, is available from Black Lawrence Press and Amazon.