Leaving the Sea

While many of the stories in Marcus's (The Flame Alphabet) new collection are far more accessible than much of his earlier work, there are plenty of experimental pieces here. New listeners should enjoy writerly in-jokes (such as a third-person story about a writing teacher, which includes an observation that writing in the third person avoids the self-pity problem inherent in stories written in the first person) and marvel at what Marcus can do with a short story that consists largely of waiting at the coffee cart at work. Those who haven't encountered Marcus before need to be prepared for a set of works about miserable men, brilliantly crafted by an author whose favorite words seem to include moist and swollen and who returns almost unrelentingly to such themes as masturbation, shame, and the bleakest possible kind of survival. Expert readers Andrew Garman, George Guidall, Brian Hutchison, and Andy Paris take on the task, each with an effective deadpan style that is particularly helpful where the language is more challenging and where listeners might struggle to get a feel for the unspoken rules of Marcus's world but still hope to get at the essence of the story.