Painted cities /

Set in the Pilsen neighborhood on the South Side of Chicago, these brief stories are ruminative, clever and soulful, encouraging the reader to digest them more slowly. Their suspense comes not just from wondering what will happen next but also from the ever-present and deeply pleasurable drumbeat: What is Galaviz-Budziszewski getting at, what idea is at the heart of this story? Over and over, he delivers the goods. Even a crooked floor is described so skillfully that the language gathers momentum and suspense: "All of our houses were off-kilter somehow, a limping back porch, front steps crumbling and broken like ancient ruins. In some cases the flaws were inside, like in our apartment, where I could roll a penny in the kitchen and have it continue through the living room, pick up speed in the bedroom, and, if the back door was open, hop the threshold right out onto the porch." Galaviz-Budziszewski writes with a scrappiness that feels specific to Chicago, that sense that underneath the most mellifluous images and metaphors there is a class struggle and a full-hearted desire to be the underdog, the one who sees everything. These stories get their hidden backbone from that desire, but they are also, and more obviously, poetic, in love with the city and with family and with childhood and with language. GalavizBudziszewski has a huge heart, and when it breaks - as it does when he speaks of fathers or missing family members in particular - it's almost unbearable.

The stories in Galaviz-Budziszewski's debut collection are all set in the neighborhood of Pilsen, located in the heart of Chicago, sometimes known as "Eighteenth Street and Throop." While one male protagonist, sometimes called Jesse and sometimes unnamed, appears throughout, it is the neighborhood, more so that its inhabitants, that holds the author's focus. Throughout the collection, Galaviz-Budziszewski creates and re-creates place, defines and re-defines its boundaries. His Pilsen is a "marooned" place, "a fairy land of low-riders, loud radios, sexy women with long dark hair, short-shorts, and deep, red lips," where "the smell of burning hickory" from the kielbasa factory mingles with the garlic and onion smell of "all of Pilsen.making their frijoles for the week." But Pilsen is also a place where you can see "drunken men brawling to the death," "wives get beat by their husbands," "children get hit by cars" and "those cars get[ting] chased down by neighbors and the drivers [beaten] into bloody pulps." Standout stories include "God's Country," in which Chuey, the son of gangbangers discovers he can raise the dead, and "Sacrifice," in which an older version of the narrator decides to kill his wife's ex-lover and the father of her child. "I am a desperate man," says this jaded, adult Jesse, "and my only wish is to come home to a family." While many stories don't stray far from what can be expected of the inner-city bildungsroman, Galaviz-Budziszewski strong ear for language and careful craft make an assured debut from an author worth watching. (Mar.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.