Book Reviews

Sam the Cat and Other Stories

Random House, 248pp., $22.95

There's a sameness about the protagonists of Matthew Klam's stories: All are men in their late 20s or early 30s with well-paying but unsatisfying jobs in advertising or the like, with brash and sarcastic exteriors, and sensitive, little-boyish cores. They're love- and sex-hungry men who always have girlfriends or wives at their sides, though most of the relationships on display here are walking on wobbly legs. In a lesser writer's hands, this endless parade of similar-minded men would be blandly repetitive, perhaps evidence of a lack of imagination. But Klam's stories are so witty, assured, and damned entertaining that this sameness doesn't detract from the collection's strengths; it is one of its strengths. Klam nails what it means to be a heterosexual man in America today.

"Issues I Dealt With in Therapy" is both a redemptive love story and a man's knee-slapping account of going to an old friend's overblown wedding on a Nantucket-like island. The groom, once a close friend of the narrator's, is now a bigwig in Washington, a status-obsessed blowhard. The narrator, aided by a few glasses of wine, concludes his rehearsal dinner toast by saying, "How come you never call me back, you fat, pusillanimous, popcorn-eating, obsequious, spermy, whoring, curry-barfing ass licker?" How can you not love this guy? Later, the narrator's medical resident girlfriend, starved for sleep, falls into slumber before they can have sex, causing him to reflect: "I loved her so much I couldn't think. I loved her because I was horny. I was horny because I was sad, because the night had been awful, because it was almost over." Again and again, Klam's men wage the battle between horniness and love with depressing, hilarious, and, well, honest results.

"Sam the Cat" stands out because its narrator says emphatically that he loves women, yet finds himself developing an obsessive and embarrassing crush on a guy who looked like "those handsome, pretty male models you see in Calvin Klein ads." Never has a story about sexual confusion been so funny, and so sad.

The collection's one misfire is the final story, "European Wedding," which feels clumsy and messy, perhaps because it's not written in the first person, a form which Klam has mastered here. Last summer, Klam was named one of the best American writers under 40 by The New Yorker, which originally published all of these stories. The kudos are justified -- Sam the Cat is a remarkable debut.