Chairs
is a collection of sixteen original stories. Each Saturday morning,
over coffee, the members of Chairs gather to share the latest gossip,
scandals, myths, dangers, exploits, and loves that bind together their
small community. Sam Kohl, narrator of the main stories, reveals, with
perfect timing and ingenious twists, the clash of cultures as expats
meet Thais, Chinese, Karen, and Burmese. Chairs is a search for redemption.
Along the journey—from the Oriental Hotel to the jungles of Burma—is
a vividly created world populated by adventurers, body snatchers, executioners,
dreamers, collectors, diplo-mats, mistresses, ghosts, and war veterans.
Praise
“An
entertaining and insightful book.”
—The Nation
“Moore
is never very far away from a much older tradition—the one that
seems to say, ‘Come inside, stranger, and put your boots up on
the fender of the stove and let me tell you a tale.’”
—Ottawa Citizen
“Chairs
is well-written and interesting, and shows a side of a city that most
will never see, but will find in these pages a powerful and insightful,
even Hemingwayesque, clarity.”
—Edmonton Journal
“Chairs
is outstanding.”
—Guide of Bangkok
“To
his credit, Christopher G. Moore has the sharpest eyes and most discerning
mind on these shores, his being an expat notwithstanding. Indeed,
a good many locals are unaware of the levels and degrees of subterfuge
enmeshing them. To paraphrase Graham Greene, in another context, Moore
is our man in Bangkok.”
—Bangkok Post
“Another
excellent feature in this book is that although the short narratives
are all “stand alone”
pieces, they are also inter-related and impinge on each other in unsuspected
ways. Moore is much more than just a wordsmith, he is a literary craftsman.”
—Pattaya Mail
“Chairs
is rooted in the ancient traditions of storytelling as well as in
the new ones of metafiction.”
—The New Brunswick Reader
“Moore
manages to treat the stories with enough panche that we don’t
feel
that we are outside looking in—you’re already in.”
—Is Magazine (Singapore)