Hang Time
Brendan Gillen/.406 Press/2025/193pp/IBSN: 9781967135035
The term “hang time” always reminds me of the great Michael Jordan in his athletic prime. Flying across the hardwood in long, graceful strides, like a 6’6” gazelle, he’d launch and soar – somehow staying airborne as long seconds ticked off the clock – then finish with a dazzling one-handed jam. Mesmerizing the crowd with his gravity-defying leaps, MJ gave the term a whole new meaning.
Brendan Gillen’s new short story collection, Hang Time, like MJ, is original, creative and captivating from cover to cover, liftoff to landing. And once you start reading, you won’t want to stop.
Gillen uses sports as a gateway to explore real human experience; life, death, passions, struggles, challenges – people’s stories in all their stark beauty and complexity – in a lean, gritty narrative style. A golfer whose errant swing unearths a mysterious skull buried beneath the fairway. A middle-aged former star pitcher tries to befriend a bear during his lunch break while reflecting on his own life struggles and disappointments. A young couple rekindles a dying romance at a monster truck rally. A little leaguer finds solace in the baseball field, a peaceful refuge from his broken family coping with recent tragedy. A star running back suffers a horrible career-ending leg injury. A seasoned pugilist prepares for a big fight. And other intriguing characters who follow paths riddled with twists and turns, hurdles, sand traps and water hazards. Sometimes comical, sometimes absurd, sometimes heartbreaking, Hang Time is always entertaining.
The short story “Hang Time” (same title as the collection) and longer novella “Man Up” really stood out for me. I actually read both twice and, in my humble opinion, this whole collection is a must-read for these two pieces alone (don’t get me wrong, the rest of the stories are terrific too). In “Hang Time,” a high school hoops star uses a surreal Kafkaesque suspension of time (the game, players and fans literally don’t move) to reflect on his life path, choices, priorities and future without the pressure of the clock ticking away, in a very compelling and original narrative style. In “Man Up,” that same young baller – now a few years older, finishing up his college career as a top NBA prospect – struggles to navigate the obstacles and challenges presented by his basketball career, personal relationships and transition to manhood in the wake of his beloved coach’s death and the painful memory of his late mother, a WNBA star who died young and tragically. Raw, honest and heartfelt to the core, “Man Up” really will make you laugh and cry – and truly feel the story and characters – while flipping pages in a thoroughly engaging read.
Gillen’s masterful use of sharp imagery, prose and wry humor are on full display in the “Man Up” narrator’s recollection of his college recruiting trip visit to a local strip club:
“I always hated strip clubs. The desperation. The sticky floors. The cloying sweetness of the perfume. The glitter that sticks to your clothes even after a wash. The terrible fucking ten songs that never leave the stereo. But that night I rolled with it because what else was I supposed to do? Politely excuse myself? Raise objections to the dead-eyed stares my future teammates fixed on the stage as a young woman our age slapped her ass and licked her lips and whipped her hair around? You do what you need to do to fit in. To not have your manhood questioned. So I shut the fuck up and laughed along and dapped them up after they bought me a lap dance from a woman named Cherry with a shaved head and a tattoo of a knife between her small breasts. I drank the shots of tequila they fed me and fed me, until I blacked out and woke up on the floor of the center’s apartment living room. And then I signed the letter of intent a week later, committing to play there.”
This passage is spot-on in every way, and Hang Time is full of these brilliantly-written scenes.
So, to borrow another basketball term reminiscent of the great Michael Jordan, Hang Time is a Slam Dunk!
