"Ivan Prashker's Hazardous Pay, Shirt Talk, And Twenty-Four Other Stories is a quietly devastating and beautifully controlled collection that moves from childhood to old age with the assurance of a writer who understands not just narrative craft but emotional consequence. These stories are not built on spectacle. They are built on accumulation of memory, regret, and endurance-and the result is a book that feels both intimate and historically weighty... The war and Holocaust stories are especially restrained and powerful, refusing melodrama in favor of moral tension and lingering unease. Prashker is deeply interested in what survives after catastrophe-not just people but habits, silences, and guilt. Later stories, particularly those about aging and friendship, achieve a remarkable tonal balance: wry, observant, and quietly heartbreaking. Even a casual reflection on baseball or clothing becomes a meditation on time, loss, and what remains when most of life is already behind you... Across all of its sections, this is a book about endurance: how people carry what they cannot fix, how families transmit wounds without intending to, and how time does not heal so much as reshape. It is rare to find a collection this consistently strong, this emotionally coherent, and this honest about the long arc of a human life."
-IndieReader Reviews
"A collection of tough, unsentimental short stories... The tales are largely set in late-1950s and 1960s New York City, with references to Willie Mays and Sandy Koufax. They often explore loss and growth, Jewish identity, and the lingering impact of trauma, sometimes connecting across pieces such as "The Minyan" and "Room 503," in which a boy's grandfather is beaten to death with a lead pipe... Saul Bellow is referenced in one story, and the prose style has a fair amount of Bellow, along with some Robert Stone. Many of the themes and narrative moves recur, so the tales resonate with one another. They are best read one at a time or in sections, allowing readers to absorb their weight gradually. Reading the impressive collection all at once can feel a bit overwhelming, but taken slowly, the stories reveal the persistent presence of memory, loss, and the challenges of growing up... A sharply observed, unsparing collection."
-Kirkus Reviews
"Heroism and identity are rarely recognized in everyday life...[but] that level of heroism is what drives author Ivan Prashker's Hazardous Pay, Shirt Talk And Twenty-Four Other Stories. The short story collection offers snippets of everyday events of Americans from all walks of life, from young girls facing the death of childhood innocence to an elderly mother waiting for a sign her son had survived as a POW. Through these ordinary individuals this book shows the power of strength through kindness, and the ways in which people find their true identity...readers who enjoy short story collections, especially those that fuse short form drama and family storytelling with military and war action thriller settings will absolutely love this book."
-Hollywood Book Reviews
