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The Coat That Covers Him: and Other Stories
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An Excellent Summer Read!

Title: The Coat That Covers Him: and Other Stories

Author: Michael Hoffman

Publisher: Authorhouse (December 2004)

Genre: Fiction/Short Stories

ISBN Number: 1418494402

Paperback: 644 Pages

Price:  $29.50

 

Rating: Highly Recommended

thecoatthatcovers.jpg

June 8, 2005

 

I have just read and enjoyed Michael Hoffmans The Coat That Covers Him and Other Stories.  It was a long but worthwhile read written in a unique style. Six shorter stories set the mood for the main story.  An artful combination of plots drive these stories with subjects ranging from a man who believes that he is a murderer and is approached by a young girl looking to sell her body to him followed by a man who loses his key thus creating an unexpected chain of events that you’d never imagine. (The ideas are so witty and complex that I am allowing myself a run on sentence with this one!)

 

The main story, however, is about Sidney Levin. Sid is a well-traveled man involved in a love triangle between his wife Natalie and his Japanese girlfriend Keiko. He lost Keiko as she married another man named Jon many years before.  After Jon dies, he pounces on the opportunity to rekindle that flame with Keiko. However, he willingly submits to the advances of Keiko’s teenage daughter Mariko and she is impregnated. She moves in with her Uncle and Sid seems to settle for Natalie but the story does not really end there?

 

These stories will engage various senses as you read, comprehend and digest the material.  It is written in a poetic form that grants the stories and the characters an added sense of tangibility as some of the emotions, reactions and responses are experienced by all of us in some small way. Hoffmans travels to Japan and Canada serve as a common theme as the characters always seem to end up or exist in one of those locations or the other, with Japan being the predominant location.

 

Add The Coat That Covers Him and Other Stories. to your summer reading list!  If you’re looking for an engaging read that could be accomplished in a day or even a week you will find it in the pages of this book.

 

Reviewed by Tyrone V. Banks

Buy it now!

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