A Cold Glass of Milk

4/5 ( ratings)

Hailed as "original, inventive, and rich in tales that amuse, delight, and move" and "a collection that gets under the skin quickly," A Cold Glass of Milk, by Nathan Leslie, is published by Uccelli Press of Seattle, WA. The stories included in Nathan Leslie's A Cold Glass of Milk originate from a variety of richly individuated characters, including pretentious ballet teachers, children whose best friend is a tree, goat tenders, taco makers, tacky art salesmen, mushroom hunters, and nudie car models. We witness the construction, destruction, and reconstruction of various family units. Each speaker invites us into their experiences as honestly as they know how, inviting the reader to relive with them the details of their life, as if verbalization was their last hope to make order out of the seemingly senseless plethora of details that make up their collective experience. The stories coalesce around such unifying motifs as the issue of how we learn to define ourselves in modern American culture by what we buy, what we do for a living, who we sleep with, what we want or don't want. Readers will find themselves forced to redefine their definition of "normality." The speakers in Leslie's stories do what all good characters are supposed to: They take us out of our familiar world, show us something new, and then, as we are leaving, we turn for one quick look back and recognize ourselves in the losers who want so desperately to win, losers who don't know they're losers, losers who can't afford to lose one more thing.