Make Some Wretched Fool to Pay: Stories by Christopher Lowe
In the South, the relationship between the game of football, the fans, and the players is unlike that of any other region in the country. For many up-and-coming football stars, the road to success is long, grating, and filled with more interpersonal conflict than any outsider could imagine. This is the premise of Christopher Lowe’s short story collection Make Some Wretched Fool to Pay; each story focuses on the grief of loss and the power imbalances between children and their guardians, whether they be parents, coaches, or boosters.
Within the fifteen stories that Make Some Wretched Fool to Pay comprises, readers are immersed in a gritty, dreary American Deep South setting, many of them taking place in southern Louisiana. We see the perspective of high school football stars (“Five Star”), daughters of coaches (“Robards + Redbarn”), and sons of violent fathers (the collection’s title story). In many of the stories, characters have to deal with bereavement and the aching grief left behind by the memories of their parents or idols. In others, the point of view is from those who cause the grief. It’s a harsh, cruel world that Lowe explores, and his writing style only emphasizes the tension and angst embedded within the words on the page.
Michael Knight, author of Eveningland and At Briarwood School for Girls, praises Lowe’s work: “Along comes a writer like Christopher Lowe to remind us that everything we do leaves a mark and that football is more than just a game, especially in the South. There is violence in these pages, love and loss in equal measure, children bearing the legacies of strong women and broken men. Every word of this collection, every single word of it, rings true.”
An excerpt from the short story Absence, included in Make Some Wretched Fool to Pay by Christopher Lowe:
About the Author
Christopher Lowe was born in Mississippi, spent many years in Louisiana, and now lives in Illinois. He is also the author of Those Like Us: Stories and three prose chapbooks, including A Guest of the Program, winner of the Iron Horse Literary Review Chapbook Competition. His writing has appeared widely in magazines and journals including Brevity, Quarterly West, Third Coast, Booth, and Bellevue Literary Review.
I thoroughly enjoyed the book and the stories. You have a knack for describing things down here as they really are.