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"These seventeen stories provide perfect examples of what a short story can do. John McNally is the king of making the ordinary extraordinary-a man trying to return a gift some eighteen years later; a tragic local TV personality's change in life; the divorced man hooking up with a bartendress and having to take her back to his camping trailer parked in a snowbank; a monster-loving boy in love with a girl prone to seizures-and, thus, universal. Ghosts of Chicago is about Truth and Obsession, which makes it, also, about Deception and Bafflement. It's about characters being self-haunted. I will remember these stories, and teach these stories, and talk about these stories for a long, long time."
George Singleton, author of THE HALF-MAMMALS OF DIXIE |
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"The ghosts in these stories are indeed haunting, but in the most profound, heartbreaking, hilarious and human ways. Cumulatively McNally's stories have the pulse and swagger of the finest sociological novel, but individually they have a wholly different effect. Lives are laid bare with stunning clarity in tales in which one moment, one exquisitely crafted turn of phrase has the power to reveal the truths and lies, disappointments and wonders of a lifetime, an era and a city."
James P. Othmer, author of THE FUTURIST |
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"It has been a long time since I've been so excited, provoked and haunted by a novel as I have been by America's Report Card. I want to run out and buy multiple copies--for my kids' teachers, my co-workers...even my stupid senator. I flat-out can't wait to talk about this book, which is a brilliant, laugh-out-loud satire of contemporary American life with a tender, angry heart and enormous compassion for the little guy. You've got to read it. John McNally is emerging as one of the best American writers of the new century."
Dan Chaon, author of YOU REMIND ME OF ME AND AMONG THE MISSING
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"In America's Report Card, John McNally takes on domestic espionage, the American school system, and the mutative nature of love. Brilliantly written, McNally's unblinking novel is an earnest and hilarious portrayal of the American psyche at its worst and its best."
Erika Krouse, author of COME UP AND SEE ME SOMETIME
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"This book is charming, sensitive, and at times flat out hysterical. I knew kids like Ralph--and they scared me--but none of them had his heart, his humor, or ultimately his entertaining story. I hated to say goodbye at the end of the book."
Mitch Albom, author of THE FIVE PEOPLE YOU MEET IN HEAVEN
"The Book of Ralph should earn John McNally the wider audience that his talent and wit deserve."
Chicago Tribune
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"John McNally's vivid, skewed characters, his vibrant prose and hilarious situations make The Book of Ralph, with its undercurrent of menace, a serious joy."
Richard Russo, Pulitzer-Prize winning author of EMPIRE FALLS
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- Winner of the John Simmons Short Fiction Award, 2000.
- Winner of the Nebraska Book Award, 2001.
- Book Sense 76 paperback pick, Nov/Dec 2000.
"Troublemakers confirms McNally's status as a major and exciting new talent."
The Capital Times (Madison, WI)
"John McNally has that rare gift of achieving both humor and poignancy, and his ability to evoke the personal past in all its delicious detail makes one think of an American Roddy Doyle."
T. C. Boyle, author of DROP CITY
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"Troublemakers consists of 11 incredibly rendered stories of boys and men who have been marginalized. While the stories are connected by McNally's searing, darkly comic style of storytelling, each one develops a fresh set of characters and demonstrates a new dimension to the author's fierce prose and controlled craft."
San Francisco Bay Guardian
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