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.
Book
Reviews
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)
