Acres of Perhaps

Stories and Episodes

By: Will Ludwigsen

Narrated by: John Fleming

Acres of Perhaps collects acclaimed and thrilling fiction writer Will Ludwigsen's recent and most heartfelt stories; these are tales that delve into what crime means, alternative history, whether a person could live a different life than the one of the moment, what humanity can do about the big and small evils of the world...as well as inspired serial killers, haunted presidents, cursed lead figurines, and a weird late-night '60s television show that meant much more to the fabric of reality than it let on. These stories are the collision of imaginative and brutal realism.

©2018 Will Ludwigsen (P)2019 Lethe Press

An Unexpected Delight

This was an unexpected delight. It was my first time reading Ludwigsen and I really enjoyed the tone, a little old fashioned and a smidge odd. The idea that ties the whole thing together, the story of a low budget Twilight Zone or Alfred Hitchcock Presents style TV show presented alongside some of its episodes was a nice touch, although the initial story about the show perhaps overshadowed the succeeding stories that were supposedly on the show. The consistency of tone and voice helped to pull this off in a way that I don't think many writers could. Ludwigsen's ability to stick very close to truth make his fabrications completely believable. His portrait of how things would have gone with the Manson family if they had been in the 70's kept making me believe and the use of citations was fabulous. His is a more subtle magic than many genre works and it's all about imagination, the everyday fantasies that get a person through the week. These may not be stories of otherworldly marvels but they will envelope you in a way those larger, more outrageous tales can never do. I even enjoyed the story notes. Readers who prefer novels may find this story collection less jarring than most because the shifting of gears is minimal.

Poignant and haunting

The beauty of Acres of Perhaps lies in Ludwigsen's writing and his ability to distill the magic and terror of times past, on both a societal and personal scale. This anthology brims with the deeply felt emotions of a boy told not to cry with the back of a father's hand. When I finished the audiobook (the narrator, John Fleming, does an excellent job), I immediately wanted to start over, because I didn't want it to end.