Creative ambitions can sometimes outpace creative output. Not everyone knows when they fall short. For the characters in Adam O’Fallon Price’s debut collection, Objects of Desire, sky-high aspirations are met with lackluster outcomes. Few of these characters recognize their shortcomings. They enter middle age overly confident, Dunning-Krugering their way through careers, seeking shortcuts when they can, and stumbling along the way.
Their desires, as the title alludes to, are abstract. Writers want to publish, athletes want to win, men want to be loved, but few of them have precise measures of success. How many books do they need to publish, how many matches do they have to win? The stories in the collection follow a pattern: the character experiences some initial success, but has been followed by mediocrity. Their dreams derailed, they flail around looking to act out, looking to blame someone, never taking responsibility for their own shortcomings.
These characters are unlikeable. Mark, the plagiarizing college student in “Dancing With Berg Hermly,” would rather play an online video game than do any schoolwork. Steven, the protagonist in “Marrow,” considers refusing to donate bone marrow to save his brother’s life. Fair enough, perhaps, since James, his brother, has married Steven’s ex-wife. The characters are curmudgeons, bullies, cheaters, and generally unpleasant people, but somehow Price convinces us to empathize with them. They are lonely and sad, and yearning for connection.
Mark pines for a boy in his biology class, Ainsley Chelmsford, who also happens to play the game Animal Kingdom. Mark plays obsessively, and sees Ainsely’s interest as another reason to find him attractive. The story represents itself as an examination of how a person becomes a plagiarist. Mark approaches cheating with trepidation, taking the suggestion of his roommate to copy an old paper before quickly applying the process to his other classes. Interwoven through the narrative is the story of someone who is alone and feels that isolated. Mark struggles with accepting his queerness, even as he recognizes that generally the spectrum of sexuality has become wider and more accepted. This cultural shift allows him to postpone any kind of self-reflection, explaining that “while it had once seemed inevitable that he would have to come out of the closet, it no longer felt necessary.” We are expected to despise Mark, to some degree, for his willingness to plagiarize his university work, while Price has found a way to make him sympathetic.
In “Marrow,” both brothers come across as unlikeable. James mistreated Steven in childhood, and marries Steven’s ex-wife Hannah. But Steven is not someone who elicits much sympathy. He’s manipulative, and tries to play head games with Hannah’s emotions. There are no good people in this story. When James needs a bone marrow transplant from Steven, Hannah is the one who asks, likely knowing Steven was still in love with her. And for his part, Steven leverages his bone marrow match for what he wants: proximity to Hannah. The unlikeability of these characters dissolves with Price’s keen sense of comic timing. Hannah’s initial request for help concludes with the reveal that Steven and James are brothers. It’s a wry humor, but one that softens these characters.
The strongest of the stories leave you wondering if the characters are some version of Price himself. In the opening story, “Sandstorm,” Paul Wakeling enjoys a comfortable life in a big house, paid for by his wife. His writing career has plateaued. His time teaching creative writing is spent bullying a student. The story aptly captures the inadequacies a writer and teacher of writing might feel when his creative output is no longer as good as it once was. As a reader, the question lingers: is this an autobiographical account? Similarly, in “Hoboken,” Evan’s struggle with sobriety and his self-destructive spiral feel real. Is he drawing on real experiences, something he has lived through himself? Price has captured an authenticity in his characters, projecting a sense of verisimilitude and making the stories more powerful in the process. It doesn’t matter whether it’s autobiographical or not, only that, as readers, we can be convinced it is.
The stories in this collection are grounded in a sadness induced by mediocrity. They capture the excitement and possibility of youth, a time before everything about a person’s life has already been written. In “A Last Chance in Whitefish,” narrator Eugene picks up a woman and an older man who turns out to be an artist well known in some circles but not entirely famous. Eugene is just starting his life, driving around the west wondering what to do with his future. Zell Jeffers, the artist, is older and has had a somewhat successful career. In this story, Price reveals some of the repetitive themes throughout the collection. Youth has possibility, success is always measured, and rarely are we happy with what we have achieved. But all these characters project disappointment. In youth, we are disappointed that we have not achieved anything, and in maturity, we have failed to achieve as much as we once convinced ourselves was possible. There are no great men in this collection, no true winners. The best we can hope for is mediocrity.
Objects of Desire is a story collection written about the creative process. Price has probed the question from many different perspectives, and not everyone will find his answers satisfactory: what we hope to create is not always what we get in the end. There are obstacles to overcome, for sure, but also we often stand in our own way. Our perceptions of success, or failure, are often the limiting factor.
FICTION
Objects of Desire
By Adam O’Fallon Price
Autumn House Press
Published October 6, 2026
