Cheerleaders from Gomorrah: Tales from the Lycra Archipelago
Confluence, 1993
“John Rember’s work is exciting, reckless, and brilliant. Read this book. You will have a fine time; you will be appalled and delighted.”
—William Kittredge, author of Hole in the Sky
Above all else, the characters in John Rember’s second book of stories value hedonism, physical beauty, and athletic prowess. They attempt to ski, run, bicycle, ride, dance, and copulate their way to salvation. But readers of the Old Testament and The Book of Mormon will also recognize that Rember’s people live in places watched over by an unforgiving God, a God unamused by humankind’s pretentious claims to Eden in the post-Ironic Recreational West. And yet, despite their comic insistence upon looking for redemption in all the wrong places, Rember’s characters also earn delicate, glittering, impossible moments of joy and grace.
Reviews
Tim Sandlin, New York Times
“John Rember [has written an] exceptionally good book of short stories.... Mr. Rember...must have followed the old writer’s adage ‘Write what you know about,’ because his stories, set in and around the ‘neon glitter’ of Gomorrah, Idaho, crackle with authenticity.... Writers like John Rember are creating a new myth for the West. Reality can’t be far behind.”