All Around They’re Taking Down the Lights is about men and sometimes movies and the underside of trying to live up to male tropes. The men in these stories hurt and get hurt. They push too hard and not enough. They disappoint others and themselves. Their movie-moves damage. And their small successes, sometimes empty, sometimes meaningful, happen in places away from spotlights, far from Hollywood.
Praise for All Around They're Taking Down the Lights
"All Around They’re Taking Down the Lights is full of bruised dreamers searching for a better
shake in things and often losing their grip. Adam Berlin captures his leading men with tender and ruthless precision. A bracing collection."
—Steve Almond, author of My Life in Heavy Metal and All the Secrets of the World
" Shooting the breeze with the men in All Around They’re Taking Down the Lights is like watching The Million Dollar Movie on a black & white tv with a busted volume control as the iced neck of a bottle of vodka grows warm in your hand. Each slicked-back story stars an alienated antihero who can haul a lesser man up or drive a better woman down. This collection is cinema for those who refuse to be satiated, not by lust nor liquor nor luxury. Strike out everywhere and seek adventure nowhere. Do you dare me? Berlin asks us. We do, the reader replies. We do."
—Alison Ruth, author of Starlight Black and the Misfortune Society and Near-Mint Cinderella
"His subject may be the movies, but please don’t mistake Adam Berlin for a Hollywood
hack—he’s a master stylist, and these sharp, sleek stories of masculinity and its discontents
breathe fresh life into the form."
—Adam Wilson, author of Sensation Machines and Flatscreen
"Actors, alcoholics, and other deluded men populate Berlin’s debut short fiction collection….In
these 15 stories, Berlin probes the depths of male fantasy, fear, and self-invention, and the dark
ends to which they often lead."
—Kirkus Review
"After a long stretch as a novelist Berlin has raised the curtain on his short stories, no collar or leash, which is what’s expected of our short story writers. The young short story writers are imitating the old (or worse, punctuating their sentences with emojis) and the old are repeating themselves. Here we get hefty originality. Berlin’s characters in All Around They’reTaking Down the Lights swagger, drink, fight, and fail—and then detox themselves with vigorous workouts the next morning to do it all over again."
—Hugh Blanton, A Thin Slice of Anxiety
"Though, often, their talents don’t meet their aspirations, and good judgment typically falls
through the ropes, there’s a gutsy, prizefighter swagger to the tough Marlon Brando-type
dreamers in All Around They’re Taking Down the Lights. Berlin’s finely honed, punchy prose hits
all the right marks."
—Nicholas Litchfield, Lowestoft Chronicle