Praise for "The Great American Songbook"
Praise for The Great American Songbook
"Allingham's aim is presumably the same: to build a mood, a perception of the world, with these disparate and inscrutable but well-executed stories."
"A debut collection which oscillates in style and subject but not in resonance.
Alike only in their timbre, these well-crafted stories are sometimes mischievous, as in “Bar Joke, Arizona,” in which each character embodies the setup of a wisecrack; sometimes solemn, as in “Love Goes to a Building on Fire,” which draws parallels between the various, expanding homes a doomed couple shares; always sedately sincere.
Alternately roguish and melancholy, always mellifluous."
- KIRKUS REVIEW
"The debut short story collection from writer Allingham focuses on the complicated relationship we have with music. Some of the stories are funny and some are tragic, but all of them are beautiful — Allingham writes with a real sense of compassion, and his prose is self-assured, original, and, well, musical."