Damned If I Do by Percival Everett Review

Damned If I Do is a collection of 12 short stories by Percival Everett and the quality balance of the book overall is tipped slightly more towards better than not. The collection is nicely book-ended by the two best stories here: The Fix and Randall Randall.

The Fix is about a magical handyman that can fix anything. It’s Twilight Zone-esque and was a really compelling way to open the book. A very memorable story that seems to suggest the human species takes more than it gives and is therefore unfixable, ie. doomed, or damned even.

Randall Randall is about a grumpy man who writes a prickly note to his neighbour about her car parking then proceeds to make increasingly terrible decisions until he has the worst day of his life. The blurbs on Everett’s books often mention his humour - this is the first story of his I’ve read that was actually funny, albeit in a very dark way. I loved this story - it starts well and gets better as it goes. It’s easily the best one in the collection and closes out the book brilliantly by leaving you wanting more.

For a writer often focused on race, there weren’t too many stories in this collection that addressed it. Alluvial Deposits and The Appropriation of Cultures were the only two, both of them pretty decent. Alluvial Deposits is about a man from the Fish and Game Commission looking for permission to traverse private land to inspect the water and encounters a racist old white lady. The Appropriation of Cultures is about a black musician reworking the famous Confederate song Dixie for a black audience. Both are interesting and unpredictable, while also not particularly engaging, lacking any real stakes.

True Romance is the last of the good stories here, about a grouchy romance writer living in isolation being courted by Hollywood to use his rural property for a movie. This and Alluvial Deposits both read like good opening chapters to a novel rather than self-contained short stories.

I won’t go into too much detail about the stories I didn’t like - suffice it to say, they didn’t do anything for me. Generally, they’re all well-written but dull and almost instantly forgettable. A lot of them also featured fishing which is why there’s a fish on the cover (or it’s a nod to Jesus and the fishes/loaves story, which might tie back to The Fix’s Christ-like handyman). I can’t think of a drearier pastime but I’m guessing Everett’s a fishing fan.

The one that stands out of all the stories I wasn’t taken with, and is easily the worst one in this collection, is The Devolution of Nuclear Associability, an apt title for a plain inscrutable story. It read like a riddle mixed with maths equations. I had no idea what to make of it - an experiment of style over substance, probably.

Despite the inevitable crap that’s nearly always in every short story collection, I got enough enjoyment out of Damned If I Do to recommend it to fans of the medium and this author.