Blurb:

As Roderick Clark says in the Foreword, “It’s all about love, isn’t it?”

In The Benefits of Breathing, Christopher Meeks’s third collection of short stories, Meeks dives again into the human condition, particularly within relationships. As one reader wrote on Amazon, “Some authors need a lot of words to describe their worlds and their people. Christopher Meeks says a lot with a little.” The Los Angeles Times has called his stories “poignant and wise.”

In this volume, “A Dog Story” captures a crumbled marriage and the love of a dog named Scrappy. “Joni Paredes” shows the birth of a new relationship that starts at a daughter’s wedding. “Nestor by the Numbers” follows one man’s often hilarious online dating experiences after he finally accepts his wife is gone. “Jerry with a Twist” shows an actor on an audition while his pregnant girlfriend helps him through a crisis. These and seven other stories will bring you into the special world of Meeks.

As reviewer Grady Harp notes, if you’ve previously “discovered the idiosyncrasies of Meeks’s writing style and content, rest assured that this new collection not only will not disappoint, but also it will provide further proof that we have a superior writer of the genre in our presence.”
“If you like Raymond Carver,” said author David Scott Milton, “you’ll love Meeks.”

Review:

Christopher Meeks is an award winning writer and picking up his collection of short stories makes me feel excited. I love short fiction stories depicting events from our everyday life we all can connect with. This book has 11 beautiful short stories that are written in a simple manner with details of everyday life we can all engage in.

Meeks has focused on stories revolving around relationship, mostly on how we all feel when relationships crumble and when new ones blossom. I love how in one of the short stories, he described how perplexing online dating can be and how we define each phase of the dating period, as one person might seem to be a little more invested than the other.

In another story, we see how a mother of a grown-up girl meets an interesting man at her daughter’s wedding. Another one, by the title “The Benefits of Breathing”, describes an old man’s life surrounded by his loving family and this story provides us an opportunity to observe life from a 90-year-old man’s perspective.

A great short read. 4 stars for this book.