Chuck Augello’s new collection, The Inexplicable Grey Space We Call Love, is a wonderfully quirky grouping of short stories exploring the unexpected. Augello turns the most common, everyday life situations on their head with his surreal twists. With shared themes such as love and relational bonds, human eccentricity and infatuation, life dilemmas and hardships, this collection not only grabs the reader’s attention, but possesses the heart to hold it. Simultaneously humorous and thought-provoking, this is a collection of fourteen stories unlike any you will read this year.
A few of my favourite stories include:
- “Pizza Monks”: While preparing to close his pizza shop for the night, Flynn is surprised by a strange request: twenty large cheese pizzas to go, part of the last meal of a monk who plans to light himself on fire the next day. Flynn knows Phap Dong, often stopping at the local monastery to listen to the teachings of the monks; but he cannot comprehend why one would choose to make such a sacrifice. Perhaps Phap Dong can enlighten him one last time …
- “Cool City”: Dash is what you would call compulsive. To say the least. He eats twenty-seven pieces of linguine and one beefsteak tomato for dinner nightly, followed by two frozen waffles with peanut butter at 9:15pm for a bedtime snack. He taps every Stop sign he passes on the street and attends therapy twice weekly. Then one day Annabelle knocks on his door, proposing they follow the Fast Love movement and commit to falling in love with each other blindly. Can Dash and Annabelle find a common ground in “the inexplicable grey space we call love”?
- “The Project”: Work can be all consuming, especially when a special project or deadline arises. But Max takes this to an entirely new level, forgoing friends, sleeping, even eating in order to dedicate the maximum amount of time to his current coding project. When he decides to take a quick, unplanned trip to the grocery store one day, he bumps into a work acquaintance named Allison … and she just might give him a run for his money when it comes to her obsession with the code.
- “Thursday Night at the Tick Tock Diner”: A handful of regulars frequent the Tick Tock Diner on a nightly basis. They look forward to seeing the same staff, ordering the same food, and repeating it all over again the next night. One Thursday, however, this routine is knocked off track by a comical series of mishaps that changes the fate of multiple lives.
The Inexplicable Grey Space We Call Love will surprise you and make you laugh, prompting you to ruminate on life’s unique experiences and relationships. Augello’s writing, while economical and efficient, is also powerfully engaging. His words are effortless and clean, drawing the reader through each story. Full of heart and soul, you won’t regret reading this collection.
The Inexplicable Grey Space We Call Love is available from Amazon, Book Depository, and other good book retailers, like your local bookstore. Many thanks to Duck Lake Books and Lori Hettler of TNBBC Publicity for providing me with an advance copy. All thoughts and opinions expressed here are entirely my own.
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Synopsis | Goodreads
The stories in this collection explore the neuroses of loss and loneliness, tempered by the healing hands of love. Chuck Augello finds the absurd humor necessary to heal human fear and angst. This is a world where a pizza cook caters a self-immolation, computer code is tattooed into skin, and a hurricane makes the world whole. This is ordinary life, but not ordinary stories.
Chuck Augello is a contributing editor over at literary magazine Cease, Cows. He is the author of The Revolving Heart (Black Rose Writing) and his work has appeared in One Story, Literary Hub, The Coachella Review, and other fine journals. He’s been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. He also publishes The Daily Vonnegut, a website exploring the life and art of American writer Kurt Vonnegut. This is his debut collection.
