Product Description

In When the Nines Roll Over, David Benioff uses humor and rich characterizations to explore the sometimes thrilling, sometimes pathetic emotional lives of a diverse set of characters. Over the course of eight stories, we are introduced to a host of young people on the cusp of discovery and loss. As he evokes the various states of agony and pleasure—humiliation, rebellion, camaraderie, and desire—Benioff displays a profound understanding of the transformative power of a single moment and how sadness can be illuminated by a humorous flip side. When the Nines Roll Over confirms the promise of a gifted writer emerging as a storytelling force.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #213635 in Books
• Published on: 2005-10-25
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 240 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Benioff is on a roll. His first novel, the crime drama The 25th Hour, was made into a critically acclaimed film directed by Spike Lee. He also wrote the screenplay for the summer blockbuster Troy. In his latest project, an octet of thoughtful short stories, he takes it down a notch from those high-profile projects, but he definitely doesn't rest on his laurels. The book begins with the title story, about a jaded hipster record executive who is trying to steal a talented and sexy young singer away from a small label. It's a tautly told tale with a wonderfully evil edge. Hip is hard to do, but Benioff can pull it off, as when the reader follows the protagonist into a series of increasingly restricted VIP rooms: "Tabachnik had been places with four progressively-more-exclusive areas, where the herds were thinned at each door by goons with clipboards, turning away the lame." Like a lot of great short stories, it leaves you wanting to continue on with the characters to see where they end up. The other seven stories in the collection are a varied lot, ranging from the tale of a young soldier grappling with the moral complications of having to execute an elderly woman to a drama about a lovesick young man's decision to secretly scatter his girlfriend's father's ashes. The stories are offbeat, but not overly obtuse, and each one is driven by fully formed characters. This is a superb collection, and it proves that Benioff can handle the long and the short of the fiction game.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From The Washington Post
The literary world blasts commercial fiction -- rightly -- for its formulaic plotlines and predictable characters but gives its own books a pass. It ignores the obligation to provide the audience with genuine reading pleasure. It risks lulling readers into comas. Luckily, the best stories in two new collections by David Benioff and David Means will rouse readers out of this awful sleep.

Benioff is a storyteller in the old style: He creates an interesting premise, then steps aside to let it play out. There's a reason this kind of writing has lasted for ages; simply put, it's fun to read. The successful stories in When The Nines Roll Over are so thoroughly enjoyable that you may not reflect on their acute perceptions until you've put the book down for a while.

One such tale, "The Devil Comes to Orekhovo," starts out with ruthless power: "The dogs had gone feral. They roamed the countryside in packs, their claws grown long, their fur thick and unbrushed and tangled with thistles." The story's main character, Leksi, a young Russian soldier, is on a three-man patrol in Chechnya. The first few lines, about the fearsome dogs, might describe the men just as well (war warps many lives). Leksi and his more experienced companions are sent to capture a mansion that may be an outpost for Chechen rebels, but instead of a firefight the soldiers find an old woman, hiding, and Leksi is ordered to take her into the woods to shoot her. This is when the story acquires its true shape. The woman recounts, among other things, the titular folk tale, and upon learning it the reader understands that Leski's moral dilemma has been building from the first line. In her tale the devil comes looking for a wife but is tricked by the woman he wants, who escapes his clutches. But in the real world devils aren't so easily fooled. The question is not whether Leksi will be changed by this war, but how much. This is Benioff at his best -- big strokes, an epic in 36 pages.

David Means, meanwhile, thrives on the small scale, although his ambitions are just as grand. The Secret Goldfish is a collection of 15 stories, most of them relatively short, propelled by language and oddity more than any straightforward narrative. Means works with digressions and leaps, locating his wisdom in the accumulation rather than delineation of details.

The man loves death, that's for sure, and thank goodness. Means enjoys himself when characters face slaughter, and this enjoyment transfers to the reader (or to this reader anyway). It's not that Means dwells on gore but that he describes the mortal moments in transcendent prose. In "Michigan Death Trip," he takes us through a series of brutal deaths in the 26th state. A hunter's end comes like this: "He's up near Muskegon, in state forest land, on a cool, clear, beautiful winter morning with the smell of pine sap and the windbreak of the tree line fine against the gray winter dawn. He's in peace. He's in silence. So the shot that comes out of the woods behind him, from the rifle of a kid just learning to hunt, a .22 shell -- making its way, spinning nicely, held steady by its rotations -- follows a clear trajectory to his chest through what, if it were slowed down enough, might be the most beautiful moment in Michigan history."

Both Means and Benioff excel when telling stories about real people caught in distinct dilemmas. Unfortunately, these collections suffer dearly when they forget this recipe. Though they are vastly different writers, their collections suffer from the same glaring problems. The first is that neither has more than one memorable main character in the entire book. There are a wealth of lively secondary players and interesting plots, but time and time again the stories are steered by underwhelming men (and women) who plod along until you, the reader, are struggling to understand why this chucklehead is the one you're supposed to follow. This failing becomes evident more quickly in Benioff's writing because his language is clear and his stories direct, but the pieces in The Secret Goldfish can be just as sluggish. While we're told these main characters are experiencing heartache or confusion or pain, I never quite believed it. They moved, cried, breathed, yes, but their revelations felt cribbed from a literary handbook -- not earned, just expected.

There are times also, in both books, when the stories are too small for the great emotions being indulged. Both Means and Benioff can be mawkish, particularly about the heartfelt moments in men's uneventful lives, and stories like Benioff's "The Barefoot Girl in Clover," about a man trying to find a woman from his youth, and Means's "Counterparts," which follows the life cycle of an affair, are weak structures for the heavy lifting each ending requires. You wish they might vary the tone of the books a bit, let little stories do little jobs well, instead of doing big ones badly.

As much as I take both books to task, I still recommend them highly. Though each collection contains some forgettable stories, it's ludicrous to expect that books will be uniformly excellent. I, at least, have never read a perfect book and tend to think you find perfection only in stainless steel knives and television screens, things that are reliable but hardly transcendent. Benioff and Means risk falling flat by varying tone, plot or wisdom from one story to the next, and the reward for such daring is occasional excellence. That's no backhanded compliment: A handful of piquant stories offers so much more satisfaction than the flavorless porridge served up in much contemporary literary fiction.

Reviewed by Victor LaValle
Copyright 2004, The Washington Post Co. All Rights Reserved.

From Booklist
Agony. Betrayal. Camaraderie. Desire. In this eclectic short-story collection, Benioff explores the alphabetic range of experiences that characterize modern adult life. From the droll (an aspiring actress-slash-waitress hired to sling "hash browns and one-liners" in a sitcom about a greasy spoon) to the disturbing (an inexperienced Russian soldier captivated by a clever old woman he's been commanded to kill), the author delivers on the promise of his pungent 2001 debut, The 25th Hour. In the title story, the eccentric drummer of a punk rock band gathers friends to mark a milestone for his beloved Ford Galaxie 500. The smitten narrator of "Neversink" is burned by the manufactured tales of a mercurial ex-lover. In "The Barefoot Girl in Clover," an aging, former football star seeks out a free-spirited beauty he encountered in his youth. A deft stylist who's a notch or two tamer than Chuck Palahniuk and T. C. Boyle, Benioff finds levity amidst the gravity in a world where the simplest of moments can change the course of our lives. Allison Block
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Customer Reviews

Must reading for all urban males!
At a time when the shelves are FILLED with wonderful and interesting books about contemporary life from a female perspective, at long last there is a book that does the same thing for guys.

I found this as I was desperately looking for something to read on a long plane ride, and it was fantastic. Funny, and insightful. Some of the same themes and sensibility as Palahniuk's FIGHT CLUB, but much more relevant to "every day" life: if you liked FIGHT CLUB, you'll love this even more! Are the characters exotic and off beat? Yes, and that makes it more fun. What makes it captivating is that what these characters go through is something any one -- and particularly, any guy -- can relate to, at least to some extent. This book will make you laugh and it will make you think: what more can you ask for! You will not regret this purchase!!!!!

These Tales Will Roll You Over...
"This is what you need to know about my father: He was a man who made a living killing animals, though he adored animals and disdained men. But I was his love's son and that gave me immunity from disdain, immunity from the cool hunter's stare he aimed at everyone else. His turn in this world was far from gentle, but he was gentle with me."

David Benioff from the short story "Zoanthropy"

I'm not a short story fan. Typically, short stories are either touchy-feely poetry fiascos that lack depth or they are compact verbiage crammed debacles that are too abrupt to allow proper character and plot development. Ironically, one of my favorite short story writers is Stephen King because he can scare the crap out of you in relatively short order. However, King doesn't count, because he considers 200 pages epigrammatic. Nevertheless, I actually stumbled upon an amazing work of short stories by the author of "The 25th Hour". The book is entitled "When the Nines Roll Over & Other Stories" by David Benioff. Each of the eight stories was a unique gem waiting to be discovered under some fertile yet shallow soil. I was able to read one complete novella during each of the study hall sessions I monitored during my 16th year of teaching at Susquehanna Township High School. Each tale left me invigorated and filled me with the gusto necessary to take on the challenges of the rest of my teaching schedule. I'm already worried about what I will do next week without the magical digressions each story provided me.

Although I enjoyed all eight of Benioff's short stories, four of them held a special place in my heart. "The Devil Comes to Orekhovo" was the most haunting tale in the lot. It began with two twenty-something veteran Russian soldiers (Nikolai and Surkhov) and an eighteen-year-old newbie named Leksi. The three men were scouting the Chechen countryside for enemy guerrillas. Since the Chechen terrorists were rumored to crucify unfortunate Russian soldiers and even place their severed heads on the doorsteps of their families' houses, the mission transformed Leksi's mental state into total disarray. Eventually the three men broke into a house to establish a headquarters of sorts only to stumble upon the residence's elderly female inhabitant. A cunning game of cat and mouse ensued, and the powerful story walloped its readers with one hell of a character piece and one amazingly assembled narrative.

My second favorite tale was entitled "The Barefoot Girl in Clover". Although fairly simple and contrite, this story involved a teenager's unplanned escape from his small New Jersey town via a stolen 1955 Eldorado. However, instead of running all the way to California as he initially envisioned, the young athlete only managed to make it to Hershey Park, Pennsylvania. While near Hershey, the car thief encountered a unique girl and fell head over heals in love. The one day romantic affair blossomed into a life altering experience with a wham-bam-smack in the face conclusion that any reader of this yarn could never forget.

I also really enjoyed "Zoanthropy" about an escaped lion roaming New York City streets, and I was fond of "Merde for Luck" about the horrors of AIDS and the ordeals regarding those pitiable people that served as Guinea Pigs during experimental drug treatments. All the short stories were written with impetus, style and compassion. As can be gleaned from the opening quote, Benioff also delivered potent expressions meant to sear the soul of his readers. Although I was unable to watch all of Spike Lee's "25th Hour" (it really bored me to tears), I know I would have enjoyed the original novel written by this truly remarkable author.

Jay's Grade: A

GREAT COLLECTION OF SHORT STORIES!
Some of the short stories in this collection made me laugh out loud -- others (particularly "The Devil Comes to Orekhovo") made me shiver. I thought this was a wonderful collection of stories and, ordinarily, I am not a huge fan of the genre -- I happened to pick this book up because I had rented "The 25th Hour" last weekend and enjoyed it. I TOTALLY disagree with others who characterized this as a "MALE" book: I am a 32 year old female and really loved it. "The Barefoot Girl in Clover" was very moving and made me remember my high school days. And "Zoanthropy" (my personal favorite) was offbeat, but really, really wonderful. This is a book that both men AND women will love. I've already lent my copy to a friend!