Dick Cheney Shot Me in the Face: And Other Tales of Men in Pain - Tapa blanda

• Listed on The Oregonian's "NW books to read in 2017"

"O'Leary's tales may focus on men, but they feature humanity in all its emotional confusion, shot through with sympathy, humor and even a little hope."

--Amy Wang, The Oregonian

You’ve probably heard about the man Dick Cheney shot, but what if he wasn’t the only one?
 
Ian Davis is a loner; obsessive compulsive, and a recovering alcoholic. But when a homeless man – who resembles actor Gary Busey – starts harassing him, he resorts to dangerous old habits.
 
Kenny, a former sitcom star, is a veteran comedian whose career nose-dives after a damaging video goes viral.
 
In these eighteen stories we also meet: a distraught husband who experiences heartbreak and salvation after a texting teenager changes his life; a man who returns to his hometown to find his first love stacking jars in Costco; a western sheriff who confronts a pedophile, and his own past; and a successful attorney who abandons his career to play the iPad guitar.
 
Unexpected, humorous, sometimes dark, and surprisingly heartfelt, these award-winning tales explore the secret life of men as they pass into adulthood, middle age, and old age, confronting lust, pain, guilt, bewilderment, and mortality. The collection fearlessly distills for the reader tinctures of joy, pain, madness, heartbreak, greed, and other components of the human capacity for good and evil, for beauty and ugliness. O'Leary showcases humanity in a fluent, fun read, which will let you peek into the most intimate and the well familiar entrails of existence. Few books around these days possess the capability to bring both a tear to your eye and smile to your lips, within the span of a few chapters, such as this work does