ISBN 974-87691-9-4
Paperback 5" - 7 3/4"
2000, 281 pages
Chairs is a collection of sixteen original stories. Each Saturday morning, over coffee, the members of Chairs gather to share the latest gossip, scandals, myths, dangers, exploits, and loves that bind together their small community. Sam Kohl, narrator of the main stories, reveals, with perfect timing and ingenious twists, the clash of cultures as expats meet Thais, Chinese, Karen, and Burmese. Chairs is a search for redemption. Along the journey—from the Oriental Hotel to the jungles of Burma—is a vividly created world populated by adventurers, body snatchers, executioners, dreamers, collectors, diplo-mats, mistresses, ghosts, and war veterans.
Available in eBook and print formats:
Praise
—The Nation
“Moore is never very far away from a much older tradition—the one that seems to say, ‘Come inside, stranger, and put your boots up on the fender of the stove and let me tell you a tale.’”
—Ottawa Citizen
“Chairs is well-written and interesting, and shows a side of a city that most will never see, but will find in these pages a powerful and insightful, even Hemingwayesque, clarity.”
—Edmonton Journal
“Chairs is outstanding.”
—Guide of Bangkok
“To his credit, Christopher G. Moore has the sharpest eyes and most discerning mind on these shores, his being an expat notwithstanding. Indeed, a good many locals are unaware of the levels and degrees of subterfuge enmeshing them. To paraphrase Graham Greene, in another context, Moore is our man in Bangkok.”
—Bangkok Post
“Another excellent feature in this book is that although the short narratives are all “stand alone” pieces, they are also inter-related and impinge on each other in unsuspected ways. Moore is much more than just a wordsmith, he is a literary craftsman.”
—Pattaya Mail
“Chairs is rooted in the ancient traditions of storytelling as well as in the new ones of metafiction.”
—The New Brunswick Reader
“Moore manages to treat the stories with enough panche that we don’t feel
that we are outside looking in—you’re already in.”
—Is Magazine (Singapore)