The Old Priest

[A standout.] First, for the characters in the stories and their rich internal lives; second, for the craft; and finally, because several of the stories took me places I didn't expect to travel and made me think about storytelling in new ways I might not have without reading the book.

* TriQuarterly *

Along with a title story that has the scale and scope of a novel, these stories feature people who 'struggle every day with good and evil.' Whether it's a digressive story of family dissolution with a touch of the magical or a casino worker's evocative drive home along the Jersey Shore, the author is finely attuned to those defining moments when hope and giving up become difficult to distinguish. The stories are always provocative; they overturn our expectations, and the characters' lack of self-pity is just one source of their power. The prose is often powered by yearning and takes us through recklessness and defiance to deliver a benediction where we would not expect to find one.

* Amy Hempel *

This writer's 'beat' is mostly southern New Jersey—with a few side trips to Las Vegas—and he knows the tawdry casinos, sex clubs, and trailers not from the vantage of tourists but from the people who live and work there. The acid voices that tell these stories of losers and self-deluders are cut a tiny bit by the sugar of pity, but never by self-pity. There's a stern moral force behind the gaze of this writer, who sees and tells and does not look away.

* April Bernard *

With deft, wry prose and characters so vividly drawn you know them, Wallace introduces readers to a world as distorted as a fun house mirror, peppered by meth addicts, alcoholics, disgruntled spouses, die-hard gamblers, and a fascinating old priest. . . .The title story is the gem of the collection, a provocative piece of metafiction with the breadth of a novel. It is a stunning examination of Catholic guilt, a predatory priest, and the fallout of a teenage encounter that leaves in its wake confusion, shame, love, and loss. The relationship, at once ambiguous and deeply troubling, is recursive and spans decades. The brilliance of the story is its very uncertainty, why the narrator returns time and again for his friend's approval.

* Mid-American Review *

"The Old Priest is a wonderfully nuanced collection, whose stories are well grounded and vibrant with lively characters and revealing details. A splendid debut."

* Ha Jin *

Anthony Wallace's stories resonate with a strong narrative voice. They are melancholy stories whose oral nature juxtaposes adjectives and metaphors to create a haunting imagery. . . . Even with their somberness, it's difficult to read these stories and not be caught into the storyteller's spell. . . .In the midst of these stories of potential futility, it is Wallace's crafting and use of beautiful language to balance emotions and complex levels of development that keeps the reader from also losing hope. Long after finishing the collection, these stories sit and haunt the thoughts of the reader, reliving that sense of 'maybe this time' that lives in us all.

* North American Review

• Winner of Drue Heinz Literature Prize 2013
• Commended for Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award (First Fiction) 2014