Robert Garner McBrearty
When I
Can’t Sleep
In this supremely entertaining collection of bite-size yarns that combine humor, pathos, and razor-sharp reverie, prize-winning micro-fiction maestro Robert Garner McBrearty stirs and startles and makes the reader shake with laughter. When it comes to real short, real brutal, poignant and punchy works of comic cleverness, McBrearty is the grand cabana, the big cheese, the ring to rule them all. — Nicholas Litchfield, editor of Lowestoft Chronicle Read the entire review
Reviews
“In this flash fiction collection, Robert Garner McBrearty casts his lens on a wide range of subjects, from the Garden of Eden to college teaching, from Spanish conquistadors to paid assassins, from the nature of art to psychological therapy. His prose is consistently riveting, his scenes charming and forceful and often humorous, his stories always insightful.” — Jack Smith, author of Hog to Hog and Miss Manners for War Criminals
“What are those rules of three of survival? Three weeks without food. Three days without water. Three minutes without air. But what about the blood? There is a lot of bleeding out in Robert Garner McBrearty’s restless collection When I Can’t Sleep, literarily and figuratively. We find ourselves, again and again, in twilit limpid liminal states as time runs on and time runs out. Remarkably, each piece pulses, a transcendent pleasure, capturing a moment of light-headed syncope, tipsy abandonment, and, yes, drained and draining grace.” — Michael Martone, author of The Moon Over Wapakoneta and Brooding
“Guns, knives, malice, mayhem, no wonder the characters in When I Can’t Sleep can’t sleep. Their stories open up the night, ignore the stars and planets, and take you into worlds you don’t want to leave.” — Pamela Painter, Ways to Spend the Night