Overview

""A...vivid collection of urban tales...containing keen insights...full of believable, distinct and memorable characters."" -Kirkus Reviews2024 PenCraft Award Winner""In these beautifully written stories, P.A. Callaro shows us a wide variety of people grappling with the fundamental problem of how to maintain vitality, creativity, kindness, and hope in a world that presents so many impediments to the flourishing of these crucial human virtues. Not Down in Any Map is a thoughtful, nuanced, soulful debut."" -Matthew Sharpe, author of The Sleeping Father, an NBC Today Show Book Club selection, and Jamestown, and former Adjunct Assistant Professor of Writing, Columbia University MFA ProgramIn this collection of twelve insightful and evocative stories, vivid characters bruised by their relationships, their decisions, or by life itself are compelled to move in new directions.These are everyday people tempted, or forced, to search for truth, guided by the signposts of their urban world. But along the way, each discovers a primordial truth: that the world is indifferent, and its signposts are ambiguous, often concealing truth rather than illuminating it.Written with fearless introspection, lyrical prose, and rich symbolism, Not Down in Any Map explores the choices we make between fear and courage, hostility and compassion, disillusionment and hope-momentous choices bearing the power to either curse or save.

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9781960090522

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An often vivid collection of urban tales that's full of memorable characters. New York City and the wide range of people who call it home are at the center of the 12 stories in Callaro's collection. In ""A Seduction of Oleanders,"" a young woman from Vermont, who's been transformed from a ""country rube to an adroit city navigator"" by four years at New York University, battles with her mother about returning to her home state. ""The Derev'ya Social Club"" sees Russian émigrés in a cafe in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, gossiping and nibbling biscuits while images of ""Stravinsky, Plisetskaya, and Gorbachev"" look on from the walls; after years of friendship, how well do the émigrés really know each other? ""The Cold Room"" ventures back to 1974, as a straitlaced 16-year-old boy from a similarly straitlaced family gets a job at a supermarket, only to find that the rules of adult life aren't quite as clear as he'd imagined. In ""Uncle John,"" Julian Serra, a ""native New Yorker with no interest in mock pleasantries,"" heads back to his home city after years in California; he's forced to confront his own abrasive nature as he lends a hand to an elderly and astute family friend. These and the other tales in Callaro's collection feature believable and distinct characters; for instance, it's easy to imagine Julian's temper flaring as he berates waitstaff, as well as his compassion emerging for an old man. However, other characters' backgrounds are relegated to dry exposition, as in ""The Derev'ya Social Club,"" in which Alexi's father is vaguely described as ""a man of culture who always carried some book of poetry in his suit pocket."" Still, the stories often contain keen insights, as when the boy from ""The Cold Room"" is left to ponder: If life's rules are so often ""ephemeral notions to be discarded,"" then what, if anything, is worthy of trust? An often vivid collection of urban tales that's full of memorable characters. -Kirkus Reviews 2024 PenCraft Award Winner for Literary Excellence

"An often vivid collection of urban tales that's full of memorable characters. New York City and the wide range of people who call it home are at the center of the 12 stories in Callaro's collection. In ""A Seduction of Oleanders,"" a young woman from Vermont, who's been transformed from a ""country rube to an adroit city navigator"" by four years at New York University, battles with her mother about returning to her home state. ""The Derev'ya Social Club"" sees Russian �migr�s in a cafe in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, gossiping and nibbling biscuits while images of ""Stravinsky, Plisetskaya, and Gorbachev"" look on from the walls; after years of friendship, how well do the �migr�s really know each other? ""The Cold Room"" ventures back to 1974, as a straitlaced 16-year-old boy from a similarly straitlaced family gets a job at a supermarket, only to find that the rules of adult life aren't quite as clear as he'd imagined. In ""Uncle John,"" Julian Serra, a ""native New Yorker with no interest in mock pleasantries,"" heads back to his home city after years in California; he's forced to confront his own abrasive nature as he lends a hand to an elderly and astute family friend. These and the other tales in Callaro's collection feature believable and distinct characters; for instance, it's easy to imagine Julian's temper flaring as he berates waitstaff, as well as his compassion emerging for an old man. However, other characters' backgrounds are relegated to dry exposition, as in ""The Derev'ya Social Club,"" in which Alexi's father is vaguely described as ""a man of culture who always carried some book of poetry in his suit pocket."" Still, the stories often contain keen insights, as when the boy from ""The Cold Room"" is left to ponder: If life's rules are so often ""ephemeral notions to be discarded,"" then what, if anything, is worthy of trust? An often vivid collection of urban tales that's full of memorable characters. -Kirkus Reviews"

An often vivid collection of urban tales that's full of memorable characters. New York City and the wide range of people who call it home are at the center of the 12 stories in Callaro's collection. In ""A Seduction of Oleanders,"" a young woman from Vermont, who's been transformed from a ""country rube to an adroit city navigator"" by four years at New York University, battles with her mother about returning to her home state. ""The Derev'ya Social Club"" sees Russian émigrés in a cafe in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, gossiping and nibbling biscuits while images of ""Stravinsky, Plisetskaya, and Gorbachev"" look on from the walls; after years of friendship, how well do the émigrés really know each other? ""The Cold Room"" ventures back to 1974, as a straitlaced 16-year-old boy from a similarly straitlaced family gets a job at a supermarket, only to find that the rules of adult life aren't quite as clear as he'd imagined. In ""Uncle John,"" Julian Serra, a ""native New Yorker with no interest in mock pleasantries,"" heads back to his home city after years in California; he's forced to confront his own abrasive nature as he lends a hand to an elderly and astute family friend. These and the other tales in Callaro's collection feature believable and distinct characters; for instance, it's easy to imagine Julian's temper flaring as he berates waitstaff, as well as his compassion emerging for an old man. However, other characters' backgrounds are relegated to dry exposition, as in ""The Derev'ya Social Club,"" in which Alexi's father is vaguely described as ""a man of culture who always carried some book of poetry in his suit pocket."" Still, the stories often contain keen insights, as when the boy from ""The Cold Room"" is left to ponder: If life's rules are so often ""ephemeral notions to be discarded,"" then what, if anything, is worthy of trust? An often vivid collection of urban tales that's full of memorable characters. -Kirkus Reviews

Author Information

P.A. Callaro was born in the Bronx, New York. He now lives with his familiy in Chester County, Pennsylvania. His stories have been published in The Muleskinner Journal, Umbrella Factory Magazine, and Bloom.

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