Mike Singleton's story collection offers a few interesting premises while shoving a few overly colorful characters down your throat. Largely set in South Carolina, \The Half-Mammals of Dixie "" attempts to tackle racism, Southern stereotypes and marital relations while entertaining the reader with snide hillbilly put-downs and a string of virtually identical narrators.
The stories here may have more to offer individually than as part of a collection. Singleton tries to imbed a southern flair into ""Mammals,"" often pitting caricatures of uneducated hicks against intelligent and racially enlightened narrators. In the first three stories we are given a man who tries to woo a schoolteacher through his son's show-and-tell, a man who drags his 12-year-old son into a silent war with the KKK and then yet another boy's childhood is marred after he stars in a film-strip about head lice.
These are some of the strongest in the collection, particularly the opening story, ""Show-and-Tell."" But Singleton's zany fathers and wacky points of view can only sustain a reader for so many pages and his tone eventually becomes a schtick.
This trend continues as ""Mammals"" progresses into adulthood'the couples grappling with marriage seem to be the same couple over and over again; the man who is vaguely dissatisfied with his life and job is still the same man. The alteration of exact names and situations isn't enough to hold your attention for 300 pages.
Singleton has a few very fine stories (The title story, ""Show-and-Tell"") that truly come to life and move beyond wacky situations. They might be delightful if found alone in an anthology or magazine. Unfortunately in ""Mammals,"" these stories are wedged between pale imitations of themselves.
