COUNTING BACKWARDS FROM A HUNDRED Short Story Collection / Phelps Publishing / 1988 / Illustrations and design: Roger Baker My only short story collection, Counting Backwards from a Hundred gathers up nine tales, some of which I started developing as a teenager and others growing out of my life as a husband and a father. The stories are told in the first person and third person, are expressed in the past and the present tense, are drawn verbatim from real life experiences or inspired by those experiences and further elaborated. One of them was seeded by an overheard conversation at a party. So far I’ve only dedicated one book to my wife who in truth deserves several. But if it has to be one (for now) I’m glad that it’s this various collection which spans - and in its way reflects - so much of the time we’ve enjoyed together. - Herman Goodden REVIEWS “The stories in this new collection offer bravely personal assessments of the human condition that are at once extremely funny and deeply moving. Herman Goodden writes with an unpretentious approach to his material that masks a superb control of the interplay of people and events that produce in life those moments both hilarious and shadowed with pain. Often this dual focus gives a sense of the irrevocable flowing away of time . . . This is a superb collection featuring Goodden’s inimitable prose which has never been expressed so well.” - Bridget Ambroglio, London Free Press “Goodden is adept at recapturing adolescence in all of its emotion charged idiocy, and he can do a pretty fair scrutiny of embarrassing middle-aged behaviour too . . . Goodden makes us laugh and he makes us cry; and somewhere between the two he makes us think.” - Sheila Martindale, Canadian Author and Bookman |