What do you think?
Rate this book
More of This World or Maybe Another
From the backstreets of New Orleans to the rural Gulf Coast--this is the territory Johnson mines so unforgettably in her debut story collection. Filled with humor and pathos, with the nearness and danger of life on the edge, these stories chart the anxious inner moments of four related characters.
Johnson introduces the teenage Delia in the midst of working up the nerve for a first kiss; and Dooley, who drives a forklift for a living but dreams of a career in music that's been put on ice after a tragic accident. Pudge, an alcoholic who survived a cruel childhood with an abusive father, now hides from his own son, Luis; and Luis, raised without a father, concocts a suitable end for his mother's horrible boyfriend. Determined to save both Pudge and his son from an unhappy end, Johnson's cast of characters huddles together at the local laundromat, scheming.
Johnson's stories are sweet, messy, and heart-rending. As we watch her characters through her wide-angle lens, she makes us believe that life is worth living even when the circumstances say otherwise. Irresistible and perfect, More of This World or Maybe Another introduces an original voice in American fiction.
Johnson introduces the teenage Delia in the midst of working up the nerve for a first kiss; and Dooley, who drives a forklift for a living but dreams of a career in music that's been put on ice after a tragic accident. Pudge, an alcoholic who survived a cruel childhood with an abusive father, now hides from his own son, Luis; and Luis, raised without a father, concocts a suitable end for his mother's horrible boyfriend. Determined to save both Pudge and his son from an unhappy end, Johnson's cast of characters huddles together at the local laundromat, scheming.
Johnson's stories are sweet, messy, and heart-rending. As we watch her characters through her wide-angle lens, she makes us believe that life is worth living even when the circumstances say otherwise. Irresistible and perfect, More of This World or Maybe Another introduces an original voice in American fiction.
188 pages, Paperback
First published September 30, 2009
12 people are currently reading
735 people want to read
About the author
Barb Johnson
14Ìýbooks39ÌýfollowersBarb Johnson's author site:
Barb Johnson worked as a carpenter in New Orleans for more than twenty years before writing More of This World or Maybe Another.
She won Glimmer Train's Short Story Award for New Writers and Washington Square's fiction competition. Her work has appeared in such magazines as Guernica, The Southern Review, 52 Stories, and Oxford American, as well as in a number of anthologies, including Don't Quit Your Day Job: Acclaimed Authors and the Jobs They Quit, Voices Rising II: More Stories from the Katrina Narrative Project, and The Booklover's Guide to New Orleans.
Her debut collection of short stories, More of This World or Maybe Another (HarperPerennial, 2009) was an IndieNext pick, a Discover Great New Writers selection, and earned the second place prize at the Barnes & Noble Discover Awards. The book also won the 2011 American Library Association's Barbara Gittings Literature Award..
She lives and writes in New Orleans
Barb Johnson worked as a carpenter in New Orleans for more than twenty years before writing More of This World or Maybe Another.
She won Glimmer Train's Short Story Award for New Writers and Washington Square's fiction competition. Her work has appeared in such magazines as Guernica, The Southern Review, 52 Stories, and Oxford American, as well as in a number of anthologies, including Don't Quit Your Day Job: Acclaimed Authors and the Jobs They Quit, Voices Rising II: More Stories from the Katrina Narrative Project, and The Booklover's Guide to New Orleans.
Her debut collection of short stories, More of This World or Maybe Another (HarperPerennial, 2009) was an IndieNext pick, a Discover Great New Writers selection, and earned the second place prize at the Barnes & Noble Discover Awards. The book also won the 2011 American Library Association's Barbara Gittings Literature Award..
She lives and writes in New Orleans
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 94 reviews
August 7, 2024
Reread (August 3, 2024):
My review from 2010 below still holds. The only thing I neglected to comment on back then is Johnson's humor amid the darkness. To paraphrase the quote I ended the review with, humor also lights the darkness and brings its own kind of music.
*
In the tradition of Anderson's or Joyce's , (or a more recent example, Elizabeth's Strout's ) this short story collection is linked by setting, character and theme -- all strong elements here.
Two of the stories -- 'If the Holy Spirit Comes For You' and 'Titty Baby' -- are well-nigh perfect, breaking my heart as I read them, so much so that I almost had to look away from the page as I got to each ending. The main character in each is a young boy (you see both in other stories as grown men, adding to the poignancy of what they've gone through and will go through) and the tone and thoughts of each is so right that I am in awe of Johnson's ability to inhabit each character as she does.
In two other stories dealing with different children, there is a startling element in each, gritty and realistic without being exploitative. The last line of the last story is perfect. Barb Johnson's people are survivors.
A quote from 'The Invitation' (the only story written in the first person): "There's real trouble in the world. The kind that can't be fixed. The kind we lie awake keeping vigil against. Love is not trouble. It's all we have to light our days, to bring music to the time we've been given."
4 and 1/2 stars
My review from 2010 below still holds. The only thing I neglected to comment on back then is Johnson's humor amid the darkness. To paraphrase the quote I ended the review with, humor also lights the darkness and brings its own kind of music.
*
In the tradition of Anderson's or Joyce's , (or a more recent example, Elizabeth's Strout's ) this short story collection is linked by setting, character and theme -- all strong elements here.
Two of the stories -- 'If the Holy Spirit Comes For You' and 'Titty Baby' -- are well-nigh perfect, breaking my heart as I read them, so much so that I almost had to look away from the page as I got to each ending. The main character in each is a young boy (you see both in other stories as grown men, adding to the poignancy of what they've gone through and will go through) and the tone and thoughts of each is so right that I am in awe of Johnson's ability to inhabit each character as she does.
In two other stories dealing with different children, there is a startling element in each, gritty and realistic without being exploitative. The last line of the last story is perfect. Barb Johnson's people are survivors.
A quote from 'The Invitation' (the only story written in the first person): "There's real trouble in the world. The kind that can't be fixed. The kind we lie awake keeping vigil against. Love is not trouble. It's all we have to light our days, to bring music to the time we've been given."
4 and 1/2 stars
December 1, 2024
This collection of related stories offers up some characters that I really ended up caring about…and it was a pleasure getting to know them and spend time with them. The central point of these stories is a laundromat in New Orleans run by Delia, a young gay woman.
November 3, 2024
This is an excellent book of inter-connected short stories. We run into these characters at different times in their lives. As confused children, unhappy teens, and adults who can't quite figure out how to move on, how to make things happen. The vision is in their heads with no way to implement it. Delia and Dooley are siblings, Pudge is a friend, and their stories are first and foremost. This is not a New Orleans of fun, food and music (although there is a party chapter containing all three), but a New Orleans full of hopelessness and pain. These people are survivors, but to what purpose? As the title says, more of this world or maybe another.
My four stars instead of 5 is indicative of my mood while reading this book, because I wanted the best for these characters and they just couldn't get there. It brought me down. Maybe 10 year old Luis in the last chapter had a ray of hope, he took matters into his own hands at last.
My four stars instead of 5 is indicative of my mood while reading this book, because I wanted the best for these characters and they just couldn't get there. It brought me down. Maybe 10 year old Luis in the last chapter had a ray of hope, he took matters into his own hands at last.
November 4, 2024
Reading this short story collection, with its linked stories, was like reading a great novel featuring characters that are flawed, but characters that one cannot resist caring about. In fact, it is one of the best short story collections that I have ever read.
As I was reading these stories I was reminded of Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio. However, Johnson’s stories differ from Anderson’s in that, as I recall, Anderson’s stories featured only one character that linked the stories. In Johnson’s collection, set in and around New Orleans, there are several recurring characters.
It is true that one character, Delia, is the glue that unifies the stories, but she is not the primary character in all of them. She’s always there but in a few of them she makes only a brief appearance or is merely mentioned by name. The collection, however, is, in some ways, her coming-of-age story.
We first meet her as a high school student, but then as an adult she owns a Laundromat that becomes a gathering place for a group of outsiders who have their own stories to tell, and at the end Delia is approaching middle age.
There is violence and tragedy in some of the stories, but there is also humor. That is a dangerous tight wire to walk for any writer, but Johnson is able to avoid its pitfalls.
Published in 2009, this was Johnsons� debut book and it received critical praise and was the recipient of several prestigious awards. Since then she has published a few more short stories and has written some nonfiction pieces that have been published, but there hasn’t been another book.
*
Donald Ray Pollock, the author of Knockemstif, and other books, said this about More of This World or Maybe Another:
“Barb Johnson’s beautiful and touching stories stirred up emotions in me that few books ever have �. I hate to admit it, [but] I actually cried over a pig in one of the stories, and I used to work in a meatpacking plant.�
As usual, I read these stories with my friend, Teresa. She wrote a wonderfully insightful review of the book and I recommend that you read it here:
/review/show...
As I was reading these stories I was reminded of Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio. However, Johnson’s stories differ from Anderson’s in that, as I recall, Anderson’s stories featured only one character that linked the stories. In Johnson’s collection, set in and around New Orleans, there are several recurring characters.
It is true that one character, Delia, is the glue that unifies the stories, but she is not the primary character in all of them. She’s always there but in a few of them she makes only a brief appearance or is merely mentioned by name. The collection, however, is, in some ways, her coming-of-age story.
We first meet her as a high school student, but then as an adult she owns a Laundromat that becomes a gathering place for a group of outsiders who have their own stories to tell, and at the end Delia is approaching middle age.
There is violence and tragedy in some of the stories, but there is also humor. That is a dangerous tight wire to walk for any writer, but Johnson is able to avoid its pitfalls.
Published in 2009, this was Johnsons� debut book and it received critical praise and was the recipient of several prestigious awards. Since then she has published a few more short stories and has written some nonfiction pieces that have been published, but there hasn’t been another book.
*
Donald Ray Pollock, the author of Knockemstif, and other books, said this about More of This World or Maybe Another:
“Barb Johnson’s beautiful and touching stories stirred up emotions in me that few books ever have �. I hate to admit it, [but] I actually cried over a pig in one of the stories, and I used to work in a meatpacking plant.�
As usual, I read these stories with my friend, Teresa. She wrote a wonderfully insightful review of the book and I recommend that you read it here:
/review/show...
November 2, 2024
"More of This World or Maybe Another" is Barb Johnson's superb debut collection of interconnected short stories. The stories are set in Louisiana where siblings Delia and Dooley are raised in a small town where the tanks of a natural gas refinery overlook the area. The characters move on to New Orleans around Palmyra Street (where the author herself had a carpentry shop where she specialized in cabinetmaking for Victorian houses). Delia buys a laundromat which serves as a hub for the social interactions. We meet some of the characters as children or teens, and run into them again as adults in other stories.
The flawed characters have difficult childhoods with problems of poverty, poor parenting, questions about their sexuality, and dealing with bullies. Drugs and alcohol are readily available. Fortunately, neighbors often step in to help when the parents are not functioning. People are trying to do the best they can, even when they face challenges.
The author has a dry sense of humor, and writes beautifully. She conveys the loyalty and affection that these neighbors share, especially in the stories about Luis. The boy often sleeps in an abandoned car instead of going home to an abusive stepfather. Author Barb Johnson will break your heart and make you smile--and every story ends on just the right note.
Thanks to Howard and Teresa for their recommendations.
The flawed characters have difficult childhoods with problems of poverty, poor parenting, questions about their sexuality, and dealing with bullies. Drugs and alcohol are readily available. Fortunately, neighbors often step in to help when the parents are not functioning. People are trying to do the best they can, even when they face challenges.
The author has a dry sense of humor, and writes beautifully. She conveys the loyalty and affection that these neighbors share, especially in the stories about Luis. The boy often sleeps in an abandoned car instead of going home to an abusive stepfather. Author Barb Johnson will break your heart and make you smile--and every story ends on just the right note.
Thanks to Howard and Teresa for their recommendations.
December 4, 2024
Barb Johnson has written some fine stories of life in New Orleans in More of This World or Maybe Another. But she doesn’t write of the city that tourists visit or that typically appears in films or tv. This is the grittier, edgier city where people, and her characters, often live on the edge or are trying desperately to save ones they care about. The stories here are all interconnected, with four primary characters. Three are shown in their teens and as adults.
To be continued�.
To be continued�.
Read
July 25, 2011"Love is not trouble. It is all we have to light our days, to bring music to the time we've been given."
So says Delia Delahoussaye, one of the main characters in Barb Johnson's somewhat bleak but beautifully written story collection, More of This World or Maybe Another. Spanning more than 20 years, following the lives of four friends and relatives in New Orleans, the interconnected stories in this collection are about the sometimes redemptive and sometimes destructive power of love, of the chances we take that sometimes succeed and sometimes fail. In "Keeping Her Difficult Balance," Delia struggles between living the life she is supposed to and the one she wants. "Killer Heart" follows Delia's brother, Dooley, as his life changes with just one split-second decision. In "What Was Left," Delia's friend, Pudge, who survived a traumatic childhood, is trying to find his way to rebuilding his life, and in "St. Luis of Palmyra," Pudge's son, Luis, invents his own saint as a way of escaping the life around him.
Johnson is a magnificent writer. She truly loves these characters, which makes you feel the same way about them. While I didn't love every story in the collection, and at least one was gratuitously cruel (I just skimmed that story), I'm still thinking about this book and wondering what will happen to the characters next. I believe Johnson hit her mark with her first book; I eagerly await what will come next for her.
So says Delia Delahoussaye, one of the main characters in Barb Johnson's somewhat bleak but beautifully written story collection, More of This World or Maybe Another. Spanning more than 20 years, following the lives of four friends and relatives in New Orleans, the interconnected stories in this collection are about the sometimes redemptive and sometimes destructive power of love, of the chances we take that sometimes succeed and sometimes fail. In "Keeping Her Difficult Balance," Delia struggles between living the life she is supposed to and the one she wants. "Killer Heart" follows Delia's brother, Dooley, as his life changes with just one split-second decision. In "What Was Left," Delia's friend, Pudge, who survived a traumatic childhood, is trying to find his way to rebuilding his life, and in "St. Luis of Palmyra," Pudge's son, Luis, invents his own saint as a way of escaping the life around him.
Johnson is a magnificent writer. She truly loves these characters, which makes you feel the same way about them. While I didn't love every story in the collection, and at least one was gratuitously cruel (I just skimmed that story), I'm still thinking about this book and wondering what will happen to the characters next. I believe Johnson hit her mark with her first book; I eagerly await what will come next for her.
February 12, 2010
Reading Barb Johnson's debut collection is like catching up on old friends after high school, then after college, then when you're in your late 30s. Within the 9 stories that is what we get as we follow four friends in the back streets of New Orleans as they try to deal with life and its discontents.
When readers of short fiction think of the working class and their struggles, they are apt to think of Raymond Carver, whose tales of poverty pinched at the back of your brain with an utter sadness and grittiness. While Johnson's stories does follow the disenfranchised and forgotten, the difference is that her stories teeter on hope. All of her characters are in the space between giving up, yet not quite. The title of the collection captures it all: More of This World Or Maybe Another; or more of what we have now or maybe it might change. Her characters are hopeful in that way, seeing towards the future while living lives of drug addicts, lovers with hearts broken, and guilty consciousness of not being able to provide. Johnson's stories are about survivors not after the fact, but during the tumultuous events of their lives: we are seeing survivors surviving with sparkles of hope in their eyes. Johnson's worldview presented here is refreshing.
Her language is also remarkably her own as she skillfully maneuvers with different people and different personalities: like Delia, who struggles with grasping a foothold in this world that she is never quite used to, but was always there in front of her; there's Pudge, haunted by days of ridiculed in childhood, events which follows him attacking his manhood; there's Dooley who can't really seem to understand the world around him. All these characters and more tell stories that are heartbreaking, yet at the same time very hopeful.
Again, refreshing.
Indeed, More of This World or Maybe Another, is a very refreshing collection of interconnecting stories that reads more like a novel-in-stories than simply a story collection. To read this is to see the characters grow fully in a world gorgeously painted in all of his beauty and ugliness. Barb Johnson is surely a writer to keep an eye on. With already several wins in the literary world, Johnson is indeed someone we expect to hear from for quite a while.
When readers of short fiction think of the working class and their struggles, they are apt to think of Raymond Carver, whose tales of poverty pinched at the back of your brain with an utter sadness and grittiness. While Johnson's stories does follow the disenfranchised and forgotten, the difference is that her stories teeter on hope. All of her characters are in the space between giving up, yet not quite. The title of the collection captures it all: More of This World Or Maybe Another; or more of what we have now or maybe it might change. Her characters are hopeful in that way, seeing towards the future while living lives of drug addicts, lovers with hearts broken, and guilty consciousness of not being able to provide. Johnson's stories are about survivors not after the fact, but during the tumultuous events of their lives: we are seeing survivors surviving with sparkles of hope in their eyes. Johnson's worldview presented here is refreshing.
Her language is also remarkably her own as she skillfully maneuvers with different people and different personalities: like Delia, who struggles with grasping a foothold in this world that she is never quite used to, but was always there in front of her; there's Pudge, haunted by days of ridiculed in childhood, events which follows him attacking his manhood; there's Dooley who can't really seem to understand the world around him. All these characters and more tell stories that are heartbreaking, yet at the same time very hopeful.
Again, refreshing.
Indeed, More of This World or Maybe Another, is a very refreshing collection of interconnecting stories that reads more like a novel-in-stories than simply a story collection. To read this is to see the characters grow fully in a world gorgeously painted in all of his beauty and ugliness. Barb Johnson is surely a writer to keep an eye on. With already several wins in the literary world, Johnson is indeed someone we expect to hear from for quite a while.
November 8, 2021
There was something about this book that reminded me of Fannie Flagg in the sense that the stories mingled around a community of characters from the south, some queer, some not. Some stories just dripped with heartbreak. Of the nine stories, only two fell flat. As a writer, Barb Johnson writes lines that often jump off the page. When she talks about growing up in a stifling small town: “Everyone knew everyone, and it already had been decided three generations ago which people you'd invite to your house and which people you'd never get to know.� Or, when she talks about love: “There is real trouble in the world. The kind that can’t be fixed. The kind we lie awake keeping vigil against. Love is not trouble. It is all we have to light our days, to bring music to the time we've been given.�
August 17, 2012
This is a very intimate and loving collection of short stories centered around the families that live near Bubbles Laundromat in Gremilion, Louisiana, a suburb of New Orleans. Major themes of weather, water, and racism take a backseat in these tales and Barb Johnson reveals the inner lives of her characters with spare and at the same time lyrical language. Matriarchs of the community, Big Luce and Aunt Alma, who own the laundromat, hover in the background in these tales while the younger generations, male and female, struggle to find their way among the minefields of alcoholism, crime and drug addiction, mental illness, sexual abuse, and family tragedies. At the calm center are Delia, from the neighborhood, and Maggie, a bohemian transplant, who run the laundromat and create a family with one another and whose love is a sustaining force in the neighborhood.
December 14, 2011
Highly recommend this collection of stories. Olive Kitteridge won the Pulitzer but this book does what Olive Kitteridge tried to do TEN times better. The writing is beautiful, the stories fluid and the tone is exceptional. This is truly an amazing work.
November 9, 2024
Interconnected short stories about living in the New Orleans area and trying to find your way through love, making ends meet, and the challenges of life. I enjoyed it.
June 24, 2014
Growing up in New Orleans, Delia is fighting to better her life amidst poverty, violence, and questioning her own sexuality. She lusts for her boyfriend’s sister who, although never mentioned, is hinted to be a lesbian. Johnson uses quiet humor, informal but muscular language, metaphor, and wisdom in several linked short stories. I read a review that dubbed this novel “lesbian fiction for grownups,� but—and maybe I’m dense because I’m neither a woman nor homosexual—although Delia’s main conflict is dealing with suppressed feelings of homosexual and sexual desire, I never thought of the novel as lesbian fiction. I read the story about a beautiful and believable character who happens to be gay, which helps steer her life’s decisions. Perhaps Johnson intentionally commentated on homophobia, showing her readers that her character is as human as anyone else despite her sexual orientation. Or maybe she was actually writing “lesbian fiction for grownups.� Either way, reading Johnson’s work makes my Muse salivate, envious, want to throw things at the wall in a jealous rage. My Muse wants to write simplistic, elegant lines like this: “In the other direction, night rolled out as far as Delia could see. There’s a swamp out there, she knows, and the Gulf of Mexico. Beyond that, there could be anything. More of this world or maybe another� (17). I want to tell everyone and no one about this book of short stories. I feel like it’s something I can treasure. An almost unknown author that is mine. But at the same time I need to share this book. I’ve always defined great writing with something (language, ideas, etc.) that I’m envious of, something I wish I had written; whether a sentence or a chapter. In Barb Johnson’s debut book of short stories, there was not one sentence that I did not wish I had written.
June 14, 2012
There is something breathless and impressive about this book. It seems natural to say that reading a book by Cather or McCullers or a series of short stories by Welty is the "best I ever read," but this newer book is one of the best I've ever read....the chapter If the Spirit Comes for you is perhaps the most moving passage I've ever read....it is like the ringing in your ears before a faint, it is like the smell of rain before the storm, it is like the static in the air when heat lightning streaks across the sky never touching ground...if nothing else, a reader should read this chapter....I'm from the south and everything about this book brought me home, as if I was visiting it and all its raw heat and attitudes like a phantom. I keep checking to see if Johnson has published again, and place her up there with E. Annie Proulx in my favorite modern authors list.
April 20, 2010
From Barb on beginning to write: "At first, I tried to write about the world I had read about, what I considered to be the real world—stories about well-educated people crippled by ennui. Then I enrolled in an MFA program, where I finally returned to the subjects I know best: gay girls and oil refineries, fatherless boys stuck in the maze, alienated people living off the grid, and folks who sit in abandoned cars to do their serious thinking."
Amen.
Amen.
Read
August 16, 2020Super depressing with all the child abuse, but lovely writing. I liked how the stories were interlinked and referenced each other, but could have done with less repeated information. Wish there had been more of a wrap up in the end.
August 1, 2017
One of the best books I've read all year. Two of the best stories I've ever read.
September 17, 2012
Excellent book of short stories. Well-written, with complex characters. The only reason I didn't give it more stars is because it was painful to read. It ultimately ends on a somewhat uplifting note, but I was fairly tortured during parts of the book. Once upon a time, that would have been practically a prerequisite for me to enjoy a book, but I have become a softie with age, and being witness to the suffering some of these characters went through was too much at times (there was one story I only was able to skim the last couple pages of, due to the involvement of an animal).
Having said all that, I still highly recommend this book, especially if you haven't morphed into a lit wienie like I have.
Having said all that, I still highly recommend this book, especially if you haven't morphed into a lit wienie like I have.
December 10, 2009
Gorgeous language! This is a killer collection from writer who infuses wisdom into her stunning prose, and manages, somehow, to create characters who break into our hearts and remind us of the need for generosity in an all too cold world. There are so many riches in the writing and in these stories that I had to set the book on my lap from time to time just to catch my breath and soak it all in! From Pudge's homemade valentine heart, Delia's gift shoes, Luis' catechism book, Chuck's "black-black" eyes and the lines on the back of Maggie's neck: Barb Johnson's 'people' and the sweet sadness of the things they bring with them will stay with me for a long time to come.
October 30, 2009
Every story in this collection is highly enjoyable, even when it's depressing. About halfway through the stories, I started to think: I really love being here, in this big, bad, beautiful New Orleans. This feels like the most complete cycle of linked stories that I've read in a long time. Each character is fully developed and (barring one) deeply sympathetic, even when they make dreadful choices. These are people--and stories--that you find yourself rooting for. I'm hoping this is the start of a long career for Miss Johnson.
September 14, 2014
Just a great collection of linked stories. It always follows the right character at the right moment of their interwoven lives, and I really enjoyed reading one story per sitting over a few days.
"Titty Baby" is a killer short story. Oh Pudge.
It also feels pretty true to New Orleans, without being That New Orleans collection. It was interesting to read in the afterword of my edition that the author did a lot of this writing from a flooded porch post-Katrina--that without mentioning the storm in these stories, she used them to help her survive it. (But the stories are great, anyway.)
"Titty Baby" is a killer short story. Oh Pudge.
It also feels pretty true to New Orleans, without being That New Orleans collection. It was interesting to read in the afterword of my edition that the author did a lot of this writing from a flooded porch post-Katrina--that without mentioning the storm in these stories, she used them to help her survive it. (But the stories are great, anyway.)
November 26, 2009
I'm not usually fond of short stories, but this collection held my attention. Partially because they deal with the same or interconnected characters throughout, and partly because of the vividness and depth of each and every character. The central theme is being trapped--by circumstance, economics, history, addiction, education, emotion, etc. The stories cover a 20 or so year span of time, and the evolution, or lack thereof, of the characters is brilliantly told.
September 23, 2009
New stories by a writer from Louisiana. Linked stories about a group of people in New Orleans, part coming of age, part living the adult life. Each story crystalizes around a moment of choosing or living with the choice that's made. Painful and beautiful.
March 10, 2010
I love the characters in these stories and the way Barb Johnson renders them with a tender, honest compassion. This book sets you down into a New Orleans where people live, not just visit. I couldn't put it down.
December 25, 2011
Barb is a teacher of mine at UNO, and this collection was her MFA thesis. I love the overlapping characters from story to story as a common thread, and my favorite story is definitely "The Invitation," which wraps up a love story between two characters. Really well done.
April 14, 2014
The first three stories about the character Delia were pretty good. The first Pudge and Dooley stories were good too. Rest of the stories were not so much. In any case, writer has a lot of talent, and I would like to read more from her.
Read
February 7, 2022This is a placeholder to remind me to sit down and write something in-depth about this book when I actually have time to Do Things On Here, because this book was absolutely amazing. So painful, so beautiful, written with such perfect deliberation and restraint.
February 17, 2010
This book is great, I highly recommend it. (It is by my stepsister who is an amazing and award-winning writer.)
March 30, 2025
“At best, a short story is some small little punch in somewhere soft.� � Barb Johnson
‘More of This World or Maybe Another� is an impressive debut collection of interconnected stories. Set in New Orleans, the nine stories feature a handful of individuals who have had a difficult childhood and are trying to get by.
The key characters are Delia and her partner, Maggie; Dooley (Delia’s brother) grieving unimaginable loss; Pudge, an injured war veteran unable to protect his son, Luis. The stories move back and forth in time and offer insight into the dire circumstances that led to dysfunction twenty years later. It is not hard to see the life traps that imprison the characters from one generation to the next. Pudge, known as the fat kid with drunk parents, grows up to become a drunkard and a reluctantly absent parent.
My favorite story is the one ironically titled ‘St Luis of Palmyra.� Luis, a sixth grader, attends catechism classes and wishes to be confirmed in the Catholic faith. I laughed when I read the essay he wrote about his favorite saint. Luis loves his meth-addicted mother, but he is no saint. I was no longer laughing when the story ended.
The stories are powerfully told. They leave me squirming in discomfort with a growing sense of unease in anticipation of what is to come. Yet, there is no exaggeration but a stunning dose of realism. There is sympathy, compassion, and humor in these incredibly sad and touching stories. They did pack "some small little punch in somewhere soft." Five stars. Highly recommended.
‘More of This World or Maybe Another� is an impressive debut collection of interconnected stories. Set in New Orleans, the nine stories feature a handful of individuals who have had a difficult childhood and are trying to get by.
The key characters are Delia and her partner, Maggie; Dooley (Delia’s brother) grieving unimaginable loss; Pudge, an injured war veteran unable to protect his son, Luis. The stories move back and forth in time and offer insight into the dire circumstances that led to dysfunction twenty years later. It is not hard to see the life traps that imprison the characters from one generation to the next. Pudge, known as the fat kid with drunk parents, grows up to become a drunkard and a reluctantly absent parent.
My favorite story is the one ironically titled ‘St Luis of Palmyra.� Luis, a sixth grader, attends catechism classes and wishes to be confirmed in the Catholic faith. I laughed when I read the essay he wrote about his favorite saint. Luis loves his meth-addicted mother, but he is no saint. I was no longer laughing when the story ended.
The stories are powerfully told. They leave me squirming in discomfort with a growing sense of unease in anticipation of what is to come. Yet, there is no exaggeration but a stunning dose of realism. There is sympathy, compassion, and humor in these incredibly sad and touching stories. They did pack "some small little punch in somewhere soft." Five stars. Highly recommended.
June 16, 2023
In this collection, readers are treated to a rich tapestry of vibrant characters, each with their own unique story to tell. Delia, the teen protagonist, is a bundle of contradictions, her youthful longing and vulnerability juxtaposed with a strong will that allows her to navigate the complex world around her. Her story is as captivating as it is emotionally charged, and her relationship with Chuck adds an intriguing layer of depth to her character. Equally compelling is the character of Dooley, Delia's brother, whose moral complexity and heartfelt deeds make for a captivating narrative.
Adding to this rich tableau of characters is Pudge, a child thrust into the role of protector at a tender age. His journey from childhood to fatherhood, and the transformation of his moral compass in the process, provides a fascinating exploration of character development. The author's ability to create such varied, nuanced characters who are as real as they are flawed, is truly commendable. The depth and complexity of these characters not only makes them relatable but also provides a profound exploration of human nature and resilience.
Adding to this rich tableau of characters is Pudge, a child thrust into the role of protector at a tender age. His journey from childhood to fatherhood, and the transformation of his moral compass in the process, provides a fascinating exploration of character development. The author's ability to create such varied, nuanced characters who are as real as they are flawed, is truly commendable. The depth and complexity of these characters not only makes them relatable but also provides a profound exploration of human nature and resilience.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 94 reviews
Can't find what you're looking for?
Get help and learn more about the design.