"The Surf Guru" from The Surf Guru by Doug Dorst (2010)

"The Surf Guru" is, obviously, the title story of Dorst's collection The Surf Guru but it is also the first story. The story is ok but could have used some simple editing. The headings within the story are useless, get in the way, and seem to be used in the way a college freshman would use headings in a research paper to meet a page requirement so his/her grade won't be docked (yeah, I teach college composition). Without those headings, the story would instantaneously be a more nuanced, subtle narrative with a little more heart. As it is, with those headings, the information about the Surf Guru seems clipped, lacking in depth and feeling, and as if I were reading headlines with a few preview lines from my feed reader and it seems just that--information--rather than narrative.

I have to say, this wasn't a promising start to the collection. I'm not a huge fan of short stories--they just aren't my genre and they require so much more to be well-done that it is glaringly obvious when something is of kilter. And too often something is amazingly off kilter. Plus, once I've read the story, I feel finished. I don't feel anything else drawing me in to read more of the book unless the stories are connected and then, really, that feels more like a novel than a collection anyway. So, we'll see about the rest of this book . . .