CORONADO

My interest in fiction with a Boston setting led me to discover Dennis Lehane some years ago. When I learned that we are alums of the same high school (thirty plus years apart) I was hooked. His Boston tales are authentic and jsut plain fun to read. His flair for the language andskill at crafting plots set him apart from other writers. in Coronado Tales, he stretches westward and stretches his imagination and the reader's a good deal also. These five short stories and the play-scriptreinforce Lehane's reputation as an artist and story teller and remind us that the short story is an art form itself.

Nothing uplifting in these stories, although beautifully written.

This is a collection of a play and five of Lehane's short stories, including "Until Gwen," a story I'd read in The Best Stories of 2006 and one of the best short stories I've read in years. "Coronado," after which the collection is named, is the script for a stage play that includes the events of "Until Gwen" and gives more back story, rounding out some of the characters. It's an interesting, if not necessary, addition to the story. The other stories, particularly "Running Out of Dog," are gritty and intense and really dark and pretty good, but none of them touch "Until Gwen." And overall, the book felt a little thin for a short story collection.

After waiting 3 years since Shutter Island for DL's next book, this collection of short stories and a play came as a major disappointment.Might DL have a writer's block problem?Some of the stories are quite good, except ICU, which is a failed attempt at being kafkaesque. But they don't add up to a book. DL should have written a few more for a more solid collection.The play is just plain bad. The scenes based on "Gwen" are so much weaker than the story. Filling it up with the triangle scenes and the doctor/patient scenes doesn't make it a real play. It is still just a collection of scenes. The dialogues are sometimes miserably juvenile, reminding me of high school efforts at drama. The father/son war of the Gwen-story does not bear being stretched anyway, the man's badness is so overdone, it ought to stay tucked away in a short story.I think the best of the stories is "Gone down to Corpus". That is also juvenile, but in the sense of looking at young people who are feeling hopeless. Convincing, and very "economical", as the cover blurb announces. Economical probably stands for very short. "Running out of Dog" is a very violent and very bloody, well constructed story about another hopeless situation: when hope comes late to a man, it is dangerous. That's the aphorism around which it is constructed. Some more like these, and I would have given more stars.

I liked it a lot. I read it my Kindle. I've read all of Lehane's books and liked them all.

I read this book in three days and don't regret any second of it. I was a tad bit disappointed in some of the punctuation errors but other than that, it's a brilliant compilation of remarkeable talent.

Two of the short stories in this book, "Running out of Dog" and "Gone down to Corpus" are not new stories. Running out of Dog is a spelendid example of what we expect from Mr. L. writing about ironies and tragedies of average people. But, it should have been noted that 40% of this book is not original.The others are average reads, over before we have any understganding of the characters Mr. Lehane writes so well about. None of the others are full of tension, irony, comedy, tragedy, and suspense we've all come to expect. They are mediocre stores meant to sell on the author's excellent reputation.We waited a long time for another Lehane. This book certainly does not showcase his talents.

I really like the short story format from authors. It provides a different perspective on their writing. I especially enjoyed the adaptation of the story to a play.

This book was great, simply great! Dennis Lehane is the new Harry Crews, writing Americana low life trailer trash books just the way they should be written, unpredictable and with no respect for political, legal, or moral authority. His characters are erratic and unreliable, suffering from just about every personality disorder you can name; depression, mania, stress, grief, alcohol, drugs.These stories are unpredictable, uncontrollable and, in a way, challenging. I absolutely loved the first story ‘Running out of Dog,’ where Blue is employed by the mayor to sit up in a tree and shoot all the stray dogs in town, dogs that move through town “in a pack like wolves, their bodies stripped to muscle and gristle, tense and angry, and growling in the dark.” But what’s going to happen when Blue, who’s “the kind of guy you never knew if he was quiet because he didn’t have anything to say or, because what he had to say was so horrible, he knew enough not to send it out into the atmosphere,” runs out of dogs to shoot? What then?Lehane’s writing truly is top drawer. His women sink into men’s flesh the way heat does. “It wasn’t just that [Jewel Lutt] was pretty, had a beautiful body, moved in a loose, languid way that made you picture her naked no matter what she was wearing. No, there was more to it. Jewel, never the brightest girl in town and not even the most charming, had something in her eyes that none of the women Elgin ever met had.”Then again, there’s Blue’s mother; “Sometimes they’d pass his trailer together and hear the animal sounds coming from inside, the grunts and moans, the slapping of flesh. Half the time you couldn’t tell if Blue’s old lady was in there f***ing or fighting.”The stories run on, each one better than the last until we reach ‘Until Gwen,’ in which LeHane surpasses himself. Bobby’s father is a “mean old man” who’ll steal from you or kill you, it’s all the same to him. He is cold, calculating, superficially charming and remorseless. A terrific story.And then, with ⅔ of the book read we suddenly find ourselves reading the very same story again, except in script format, as if for a play, and you find yourself thinking, “What! I don’t want to read a play!” But LeHane has captured you and keep on reading, unbelievably enjoying this format with added storylines and sub-plots to it.When reading these tales you feel something in your head “go all shifty and loose and hot as a cigarette coal.” Not to be missed

I started reading Lehane with Kenzie-Genarro series where i read all 6 books over a span of 8 days. And at the end if Day 8, i felt like I'd lost a good friend. It was that good! And with that expectation in mind, I read Coronado. Its taken me 6 days and I'm only midway reading. I've decided not to finish the book because I still want to love Lehane's writing.

Excellent collection of short stories and a play from a really, really brilliant American writer better known for his novels

I'd always enjoyed Dennis Lehane books. There was a certain safety about the detective series and Mystic River - great thrillers, all set in the familiar Boston environment. I was disappointed in Shutter Island and thought it maight have been because he'd stepped outside of his comfort zone. This though was a great surprise - these short stories have real depth - this is the type of writing that I'd expect from a James Lee Burke novel. The characters have real depth and the stories leave you wanting to know more - always a good sign. More of the same please.

Stories are well written but not a fan of short stories