Silvano carroll biography of michael

The first time I finished a Michael Carroll story, I had an experience similar to the first time I finished a Jane Bowles story: I felt confused by what seemed like an abrupt ending, a lack of resolution—and then the story flooded back on me as if returning with the tide.

The stories in Michael Carroll’s Little Reef, out in June from the University of Wisconsin Press, make up worlds that you swim in rather than drive through. Carroll takes readers into the mercurial human psyche, all the while grounding us in the external world through masterful, funny dialogue and connections between friends and lovers.

Though the stories in Little Reef have a postmodern way of asking the reader to do the work of interpretation, there is also a strong foundation in the classic tradition of fiction, and it’s easy to see that Carroll reads widely…and a lot.

As with all writers who defy tradition in their craft, I was