Uncommon Type by Tom Hanks: book review

Uncommon Type (2017) is a series of 17 short stories, all set in America.

The story, Three Exhausting Weeks – is fantastic, and the best in the collection. A frenetic A-type girl dates a lazy guy and virtually maps out his schedule of activities for the whole dating period. Written from the boy’s perspective, it’s a witty and comical, and in the end, I just had to love Anna. Atta girl!

I also liked A Special Weekend about 10-year-old Kenny Stahl in the spring of 1970. His father was head cook at the Blue Gum Restaurant until he finds a new job, a new home, and, ‘it turned out, a new family.’ His mother comes to visit, to take Kenny on a special weekend.

But, from that grand opening, the rest of the stories pale into the background. This is the actor’s first book and feels a bit like the early J.D. Salinger experimenting with his collection of short stories (like ‘A Perfect Day for Bananafish’ and ‘Nine Stories’) before he writes Catcher in the Rye (1951). The stories even have a 1950s feel to them: nostalgic and dreamy – and all based around youth and the young.

The short stories are not connected except for a typewriter. The typewriter theme in each story is either strongly revealing or mildly hinted at. Hanks wrote the stories on his typewriter, and not on his computer. There’s something nostalgic and simplistic about that.

The stories focus on friendships and families mostly – like watching the early American family sitcoms – ‘Leave it to Beaver’ and ‘Happy Days.’ Normal, everyday events are expressed in comic or melancholic ways.

It will be interesting to see how Hanks progresses with his writing career.

MARTINA NICOLLSis an international aid and development consultant, and the authorof:- Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom(2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).

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