The first thing I want to point out is that this book starts out with a 50 page short story called The Mansion on the Hill. Now what is so short about a 50 page story? It's an alright story about a man working at what basically is a wholesale wedding venue, but it goes on for way too long. Long enough that when I finished this book I thought that it was its own sepearate book. Leave it to Rick Moody to find a way to make 50 pages seem like its own novel. He does even worse with The Carnival Tradition, one story split into two parts that have nothing to do with each other. It's a story of two people who are dating each other, but the first part is the girl's perspective and she's trying to get home but there are stray dogs there and then there's a bus crash, and then she asks some random guy on the street to help her navigate the rooftops to get to her apartment, but he ends up trying to rape her up there...Look, it's just a bit too much in such a short time. Then there's the guy's perspective and it's just him at a Halloween party when he's in high school which has nothing to do with the previous half and it's just maddening. Nothing in this book made sense. None of the stories are any interesting. There's one where a kid is recounting his father having an ostrich farm and something having to do with an ostrich egg. I just couldn't keep myself interested in this book one bit.
Really Rick Moody seems to be hit-or-miss. His novels are where he shines, and his short stories are where he unfortunately falls apart. Save yourself the trouble, get The Ice Storm, see him at his best, and put his short stories behind you.
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