Voodoo Heart

By: Scott Snyder

Narrated by: Kevin T. Collins

Length: 9 hrs

Publisher's summary

Scott Snyder’s protagonists inhabit a playfully deranged fictional world in which a Wall Street trader can find himself armed with a speargun, guarding a Dumpster outside a pawnshop in Florida; or an employee at Niagara Falls (his job: watching for jumpers) will take off in a car after a blimp in which his girlfriend has escaped. But in Snyder’s wondrous imagination there’s a thin membrane between the whimsical and the disturbing: the unlikely affair between a famous actress - in hiding after surgery - and a sporting goods salesman takes an ominous turn just as she begins to heal; an engaged couple’s relationship is fractured when one of them becomes obsessed with an inmate at the women’s prison next door. Dark, funny, powerful, this debut collection underscores the remarkable gifts of a fiercely original young writer.

©Scott Snyder (P)2013 Audible, Inc.

Chapter Titles

Not sure why Audible is so adverse to giving chapter titles on their app. It's particularly important for a short story collection. So here they are:
1. Blue Yodel
It’s 1918. A young man reminisces as he chases a silver blimp across the country in hopes of reuniting with his lost love.
2. Happy Fish, Plus Coin
The story of a seemingly indestructible man, who has cheated death twice so far and cheats it again for a third time when he tries to save a runaway from the runaway’s rich and powerful family.
3. About Face
While working at a juvenile boot camp, one of Miles assignments is to chauffeur the director’s sickly daughter, Lex, to her weekly dialysis appointment. Lex and Miles get to know each other intimately but it’s McCray, an inmate of the camp, that shows Miles who he really is.
4. Voodoo Heart
Jake is great at the beginning of relationships, but inevitably something snaps and he hurts the one he loves best. He’s made it five years into his current relationship, by far the longest he’s been in, but he’s starting to feel a cold shift in his heart….
5. Wreck
She has it all: fame, fortune, and beauty. But while Grace convalesces in a small rural town after an accident, she falls in love with a different way of living. Is it enough for her to give up the life she knew?
6. Dumpster Tuesday
Max has a bone to pick with country singer, Dick Doyle, who has a severe brain injury that’s left him basically comatose—except when he miraculously comes to life to perform on stage. Is it an act, or isn’t it???
7. The Star Attraction of 1919
Showboating airplane tricks and rides, John travels the states just after the conclusion of WWI with a runaway bride (not his).

I read Voodoo Heart in print over 10 years ago and loved it. Was curious to see if it still held up and if the audible version was any good. It did and it was…and that’s coming from someone who doesn’t generally like short stories. These melancholic and at times disturbing vignettes are not directly related to each other, yet are cohesive with similarly poignant threads of self-reflection, identity, and love lost. Concurrently, they’re balanced with just enough whimsy, nostalgia, and humor to keep the reader (at least this reader) from ending it all. These little stories are on the open ended side, but I think it works well in this short story medium. The narrator does a fine job too; I didn’t find his reading to be detracting or distracting, and his voice + inflections were fitting for the main character of each story. Lastly, I don’t put much stock in book blurbs, but I see that Stephen King wrote the blurb on the front cover of this book and agree that the audience between King and Snyder would be very similar.