Meltdown in the Cereal Aisle: Revised and Expanded Edition—published in 2015
In nine interconnected stories, David V. Matthews depicts the ordinary and secretly-subversive lives of high-school students, university professors, aspiring creative types, and dissatisfied office workers in Western Pennsylvania from the 1970s to today. With a meticulous eye for detail, he shows how America’s sociopolitical ideologies have shaped—and misshaped—characters who crave nothing more than the brief, transcendent moments that art, music, religion, sex, cheesy pop-culture, or patriotic hydrants can bring. Satirical and serious, hilarious and heartbreaking, Meltdown in the Cereal Aisle heralds the arrival of a quirky new talent.
Praise for the original (2012) edition:
“David V. Matthews offers a strong debut short-story collection…[with] plenty going on beneath the surface. At its best, the book blends the thematic concerns of literary fiction with the snappy pace of genre work.”–Bill O’Driscoll, Pittsburgh City Paper
“The book is a dark comedy, recalling the bared fangs of Jonathan Swift….[Matthews] wields his pop-culture acumen similarly to Don DeLillo, more as a petard on which to hoist an entire misguided, shallow culture.” —Kristofer Collins, Pittsburgh Magazine
“David Matthews’ first collection of short stories, Meltdown in the Cereal Aisle, is by turn, tender and tough, full of both satire and earned sentiment, all rendered vividly in a voice that is fresh and original and bristles with ribald comedy and recurrent pain. It is heart-breaking and humorous and hard to put down.”—Chuck Kinder, author of Honeymooners: A Cautionary Tale
You can buy Meltdown in the Cereal Aisle: Revised and Expanded Edition on Amazon here.
You can also read more fiction by David V. Matthews at his blog.
DAVID V. MATTHEWS 