Praise for Tacoma Stories
Foreword Reviews Book of the Day selection
Wiley's characters are far from absurdist; it might even be accurate to say that they are mid-to-late 20th-century approximations of Chaucer's pilgrims . . . all starting out together from Tacoma on a journey through adulthood. . . . Across the pilgrimage of their lives, we see a slow burnishing of their hopes and dreams, but also of their failures. Tacoma itself, like Dublin in James Joyce's Dubliners, also asserts its own force of character. . . . Wiley has finally given his city the loving touch it deserves. -Peace Corps Worldwide (Ann Neelon)
One reads in the hope of delight. And that's what [Tacoma Stories] provides. The linked stories that make up the collection are deeply pleasureful reads. -Peace Corps Worldwide (Mark Jacobs)
[Wiley] is able to articulate a familiar and endearing world of Tacoma, humanizing the city to a reader who may not have even heard of the 'City of Destiny.' -Tacoma Ledger
A marvelous mixture of humor and contemplative nostalgia, Tacoma Stories shows us that cities are more than just a collection of buildings, landmarks and roads. They're a delicate web of lives and stories, each one connected in ways we might never expect. -Puget Sound Trail
Read[s] well as a literary version of a concept album with a unified theme. -Tacoma Weekly
Tacoma is underrepresented in literature, so this book presents a tremendous opportunity. -Seattle Review of Books
Wiley's antic, wrenching collection of 14 interlocking stories reveals the subtle connections among a dozen characters whose unpredictable lives evolve through the decades in the title city. . . . [It] provides a tentatively affirmative answer to the question raised by a fictional version of the daughter of Orson Welles and Rita Hayworth: 'Do you think a town can act as a hedge against the unabated loneliness of the human heart?' -Publishers Weekly
This linked set of seriocomic stories that hopscotches across a half-century . . . emphasizes unlikely transformations over time-and, as the title suggests, the role of place in those transformations. And though Wiley juggles plenty of characters, he has a light touch that's fitting for a book rooted in the free-wheeling '60s. -Kirkus Reviews
Compelling. . . . The genius of [Tacoma Stories] is that the relationships between characters and their backstories add depth to each entry, but the individual tales are still strong enough to stand on their own. -Foreword Reviews
Wiley shines in the short form, absorbing the reader in slices of one town and its inhabitants while rendering them universal. -Shelf Awareness for Readers
An extraordinarily entertaining read from cover to cover. -Midwest Book Review
Very highly recommended. . . . While the narratives are all strong individual stories, presented together as a whole they create a masterful collection and reflection on life over the decades. -She Treads Softly
Vivid and as varied as you can get. . . . Amusing, chilling, and sometimes downright bizarre, readers of short story collections with a unified theme will enjoy this. -Barbarian Librarian
Richard Wiley is one of our best writers. These stories satisfy in the way that brilliant short fiction always satisfies; one feels as if one has absorbed the expansive vision and drama of a novel. Read slowly, and I bet you'll want to read again. -Richard Bausch, author of Peace and Living in the Weather of the World
It's a strange and winsome feeling I have, reading Tacoma Stories, the blue sensation that Richard Wiley has made me homesick for a place I've never been, mourning the loss of friends I never had, in a life where each and every one of us is loved, however imperfectly. Think Sherwood Anderson inhabiting Raymond Carver's Northwest and you'll have a clear picture of Wiley's accomplishment. -Bob Shacochis, author of Easy in the Islands and The Woman Who Lost Her Soul
Select Praise for Richard Wiley
A gifted writer who can create and sustain tension with spare, unembellished prose. -New York Times Book Review
In what I like to consider a one-man mission of 'literary reparations' . . . Richard Wiley appears not necessarily to integrate but to insert himself unobtrusively, a watchful eye and empathizing listener, into alien identities, operating through plain, credible protagonists. -Wole Soyinka, Nobel Laureate in Literature
Wiley writes like he was born and raised everywhere. -Charles Johnson, author of Middle Passage and Night Hawks
If there is such a thing as global fiction, Wiley is writing it. -Russell Banks, author of The Sweet Hereafter and A Permanent Member of the Family
Wiley has given us a fascinating and utterly convincing portrait of a young man caught between two cultures and struggling to understand both. -T.C. Boyle, author of The Tortilla Curtain and The Relive Box and Other Stories, on Festival for Three Thousand Maidens
