Emma Deplores ŷ Censorship
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Books:
short-story-collections
(77)
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| 1627793798
| 9781627793797
| 1627793798
| 3.62
| 667
| May 31, 2016
| May 31, 2016
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really liked it
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3.5 stars An eclectic yet cohesive collection of often very short stories, this is a mix of literary fiction focused on marriage and parenthood, with s 3.5 stars An eclectic yet cohesive collection of often very short stories, this is a mix of literary fiction focused on marriage and parenthood, with science fiction and fantasy concepts, sometimes asking “what if?� while at other times using dystopian futures or fantastical ideas to explore truths of everyday life. Some stories are realistic while others are highly speculative, but the best do everything at once. My closest comparison is a less surreal and more concept-driven Ling Ma. However, the 18 stories are uneven; following the principles of good collection design, the best stories are at the beginning and there are also some good ones clustered at the end, while the middle segment is forgettable. No one has commented on each story individually yet, so I guess I should: “The Knowers�: Probably the best in the collection, this story asks what life would be like if you could choose to know the exact date of your death. It’s a thoughtful examination that will make you think and feel. “Some Possible Solutions�: An inventive, over-the-top story about a woman seeking solutions to what initially look like sex and romance problems. In the end though, her real problem is to do with connection and loneliness, and the sex and romance among the possible solutions. “The Doppelgangers�: To describe this as a “what if?� story about doppelgangers seems to miss the point entirely: this one is all about the demands of new motherhood and its effects on one’s identity. Does the chaos of caring for a new baby make you just like everyone else? And how do the companionship and understanding you gain from being just like everyone else balance against loss of individuality? “The Messy Joy of the Last Throes of the Dinner Party�: A weird bit of flash fiction. “Life Care Center�: The first non-speculative story, about a woman visiting her developmentally disabled sister in a nursing home. Feels very real and relatable, though depressing. “The Joined�: I see some others liked this but I didn’t at all. A planet is discovered where everyone has their match, and upon meeting, their bodies will fuse into a single, forever-blissful hermaphrodite. Maybe I just didn’t get the author’s point, but I didn’t believe the government encouraging this nor find it a compelling “what if.� “Flesh and Blood�: A woman starts seeing through everyone’s skin, and is upset and grossed out, but the story doesn’t do much with it. “When the Tsunami Came�: Flash fiction, no comment. “Game�: A confusingly written story about a couple whose marriage appears to be struggling; it’s written in two columns with snippets of disconnected, mundane dialogue occupying the second. I didn’t get it. “One of Us Will be Happy�: A forgettable flash fiction fable, also about the tensions of marriage. “Things We Do�: Maybe it was too many troubled marriage stories in a row but I have forgotten this one already. “R�: This is the first of three (non-consecutive) dystopian stories possibly all set in the same future, where exploitative cities are so disconnected from the natural world that the protagonists are thrilled by but unable to recognize a gust of wind. It’s one of the longer stories and I liked it fairly well, as two sisters who have always been inseparable have to reckon with their own ambitions and their relationship when given the opportunity for a different life. “Children�: A fun story about a woman who believes her children are aliens. (view spoiler)[It turns out she’s right, and completely unfazed by it. (hide spoiler)] “The Worst�: More flash fiction. I think the worst is meant to be that the illusion has fallen away from this couple’s marriage. “How I Began to Bleed Again�: This story is gross, and also I did not get it. “The Beekeeper�: Back in the dystopian world, an employee of a rich family accompanies their teenage daughter to the countryside to protect her. Vibes of Carmen Maria Machado’s “Real Women Have Bodies.� I enjoyed the characters, who have much more definition than in most of these stories. “The Wedding Stairs�: This story only comes together in its final few words, and really it’s more vision than story, a technological take on the River Lethe. “Contamination Generation�: Parenting in a dystopia. Perhaps a little too obvious with its message about joy and meaning being found under any circumstances, but effective nonetheless. At any rate, overall I liked this collection. Fortunately, the stories that did little for me tended to be much shorter than the ones I liked. I happened upon the book entirely by chance, and found Phillips to be a strong writer with a good balance between grounded humanity and fantastical concepts. Would read more of her work. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Jan 23, 2025
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Feb 04, 2025
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Jan 06, 2025
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Hardcover
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| 0803245777
| 9780803245778
| 0803245777
| 3.94
| 208
| Sep 01, 2013
| Sep 01, 2013
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liked it
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I picked up this collection after reading Olsen’s “I Stand Here Ironing� in an anthology and loving it—just a heartbreaking story about a single, work
I picked up this collection after reading Olsen’s “I Stand Here Ironing� in an anthology and loving it—just a heartbreaking story about a single, working-class mother trying to raise her daughter but being unable to keep her from harm. After reading the rest of the pieces in this volume, I understand why “I Stand Here Ironing� is the one that gets anthologized; I didn’t like any of the other pieces nearly as much. In her other stories, Olsen utilizes a much more complex style, which is perhaps more literary but less compelling to me: blending stream-of-consciousness with dialogue and jumping between different points of view. Or perhaps I was just less interested in the contents of those stories. “Hey Sailor, What Ship?� and “O Yes� are fine but unremarkable to me: the first about an alcoholic sailor visiting friends back home, the second about a mother worried to see her young daughter’s interracial friendship fading away. The title story, “Tell Me a Riddle,� is the strongest, though depressing: about an elderly woman whose family consistently ignores her wishes, imposing their own needs and desires on her even as she’s dying and failing to recognize her real interests and commitments. The extra content in this volume I liked even less. “Requa I� I finally gave up on about two-thirds of the way through: the story of a young orphaned boy during the Depression, written in a particularly non-traditional way that I didn’t connect with at all. There are also a handful of short essays about Olsen’s labor rights work in the early 20th century, and while from the biographical material she was clearly a very impressive and progressive lady (fighting for all types of social justice long before it was cool), I was underwhelmed by the actual essays, which are quite bluntly argumentative and lacking in emotional experience and nuance. Overall, a short work worth trying if you’re interested, but nothing came close to the story that made me pick it up to begin with. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Sep 26, 2024
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Sep 29, 2024
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Jun 28, 2024
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Paperback
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| 0593600355
| 9780593600351
| 0593600355
| 4.03
| 4,447
| Sep 17, 2024
| Sep 17, 2024
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really liked it
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As a Novik fan, I was looking forward to this, and it’s a good and enjoyable collection, with some serious range—several of these stories belong to di
As a Novik fan, I was looking forward to this, and it’s a good and enjoyable collection, with some serious range—several of these stories belong to different genres and are written in impressively different styles. The 13 stories are so different that I’ll go straight to the individual comments. “Araminta, Or, The Wreck of the Amphidrake�: What a great opener! This is the perfect fun, plot-driven short story. It’s Regency-style (and Novik absolutely nails the language), involving a rebellious young woman, cross-dressing, and pirates. More involved worldbuilding than some novels—I had to double-check that Novik hadn’t written more in this world—and a perfectly satisfying ending. Loved every minute. “After Hours�: The Scholomance short story. Happily I liked it a lot, though it’s slightly spoilery for the trilogy so best read afterwards. This one features a young Polish forest witch whose assigned roommate is a rich girl from Chicago, which goes exactly as you would expect. Resonates well with the themes of the trilogy despite featuring new characters, got me quickly invested, fleshes out a fun corner of the world, and delivers a satisfying ending. “Vici�: Mark Antony with dragons; or, Temeraire fanfic set in ancient Rome. Quick and snappy but very lightweight. Might have enjoyed it better if I knew more about Mark Antony or had seen the show “Rome,� which apparently inspired it. “Buried Deep�: A Greek myth retelling featuring Ariadne and the Minotaur. Very good, and made me think half the problems with the current Greek retelling trend would be solved if they were all 35 pages long—or perhaps that Novik should write a novel in this vein. The setting, vibes and language are spot on. The end seems a little premature though: (view spoiler)[did Theseus kill Minotaur, or just find his body and claim credit? And what to make of Ariadne’s big moral decision, when (if we take our version of the myths as evidence) the world does learn who was in the labyrinth, but also buys Minos’s reasoning for it? (hide spoiler)] “Spinning Silver�: Turns out, I love this novel too much to want to see an early draft of its beginning. Miryem was so much more complex and interesting in the novel� uh... she was, right?? “Commonplaces�: Sherlock Holmes fanfic featuring Irene Adler. This is a perfectly decent short story, though my lack of familiarity with the source material meant it didn’t do much for me. “Seven�: A sort of fairy tale or morality play, asking questions about the value of a legacy in art vs. family. Potentially interesting but lacks the emotional oomph to really bring it home for me. “Blessings�: A cute short piece about fairy godmothers one-upping each other, that I think I’d have liked better if it either focused exclusively on the fairies or gave us a lot more of the godchild’s story. “Lord Dunsany’s Teapot�: A competent WWI story about a connection between two soldiers in the trenches and the value of imagination. Caused me to read up on Edward, Lord Dunsany (who seems a bit young for his age here) but I’m afraid I don’t understand what the epiphany could’ve been that he didn’t know already. “Seven Years From Home�: Novik does political/anthropological sci-fi! This one is fascinating: a highly imaginative world with some great solarpunk/biotech elements, an ecologically-oriented society that avoids the usual tropes and creates food for thought. It’s smart and creative and I’d definitely like to know more, though Novik falls down a bit on making the narrator’s personal story make sense; I think perhaps she struggles to write a worldview she fundamentally disagrees with. “Dragons and Decorum�: Pride and Prejudice fanfiction in the Temeraire world, in which Elizabeth Bennet is a captain in the draconic air force. Definitely the best P&P retelling I have read! The language is pitch-perfect, which is hard enough to pull off, but Novik also gets the characters right, from Mr. Bennet’s sense of humor to Lizzie’s personality—she realizes what many modern authors miss, which is that Lizzie is a badass and if she has a job, it should be a cool and adventurous one. Anyway, this is great fun. I don’t think it depends too heavily on having read Temeraire, but it’s definitely helpful to be familiar with Pride and Prejudice. “Castle Coeurlieu�: A great medieval story about a young girl and a creepy castle. This one was apparently inspired by the history book A Distant Mirror, and it nails the culture and vibes—far better than George R.R. Martin, who was also apparently inspired by it. I especially enjoyed the incorporation of Christian mythology, including (view spoiler)[the queens personifying death, war, plague and famine, i.e., the four horsemen of the apocalypse! (hide spoiler)]. Now I want to see Novik write a full-length medieval historical fantasy because from this story, she’s definitely up to it. “The Long Way Round�: Sadly for me, this is what Novik is actually working on and it’s by far my least favorite. Caveat that I don’t like fantasy journey/quest stories in general, and hated Novik’s prior seafaring novel, and so a mariner and her brother circumnavigating the globe is a hard sell. But I also found the plot lacking in stakes, the characters dull, the worldbuilding generic (Novik has worked the facts out—geography, history, magic—but culturally and in terms of the characters� actual lives, it feels like every other fantasy world), even the style feels a bit too similar to her other work. It’s flabby at 63 pages and I definitely don’t want more. Overall it’s a good batch of stories, though. I do get the sense, as the protagonists of Novik’s novels tend to be immediately complex and memorable in ways those in her short stories are not, that she perhaps needs more time with a character to make them stand out. But these are still fun and engaging stories with quite a lot of variety, imaginative settings and strong writing. I look forward to Novik’s next work (� other than the Long Way Round)! ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Oct 09, 2024
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Oct 27, 2024
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May 18, 2024
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Hardcover
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| 0593297199
| 9780593297193
| 0593297199
| 3.99
| 2,026
| Nov 01, 2021
| Jul 19, 2022
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really liked it
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Whoever organized this collection definitely knew which stories were strongest: the first and last are amazing, the second through fourth excellent, t
Whoever organized this collection definitely knew which stories were strongest: the first and last are amazing, the second through fourth excellent, the fifth through eleventh more of a mixed bag. But overall it is a worthy literary collection, featuring mostly Afghan-Americans in the U.S. and Afghanistan, and with elements of magic realism in about half the stories. Kochai is a very good writer, creating characters who jump off the page even upon a brief acquaintance: very sympathetic and yet fresh, relatably modern while being grounded in a specific cultural identity and community. Some have called this a collection of linked stories, with which I only halfway agree: about half the stories seem to deal with the same family—at any rate particular elements keep recurring—but details are occasionally inconsistent, and these stories don’t follow up on each other’s ambiguous endings or come together to form a greater whole. So perhaps variations on a theme would be a better description. Notes on the individual stories: “Playing Metal Gear Solid�: A fabulous story, taking the portrayal of Afghans in video games in a surprising direction, in which a teenage boy reckons with his father’s past, and with a very authentic second-person voice. “Return to Sender�: A great surreal tale of an Afghan-American couple, both doctors, whose survivors� guilt causes them to offer their services to their homeland. “Enough!�: This story is one long monologue by a grandmother whose children have staged an intervention� which proves increasingly necessary. “Bakhtawara and Miriam�: A lovely story about a young woman marrying to save her family honor, and the friend she’s leaving behind, whose marriage went south in a particularly horrible way. Deals with stereotypical situations through fresh and unique characters who quickly earned my emotional investment. “Hungry Ricky Daddy�: This is where the collection fell off a bit for me. It’s the Palestinian solidarity story, with some sharp political commentary, but perhaps too many characters. The next four—“Saba’s Story,� “Occupational Hazards,� “A Premonition, Recollected� and “Waiting for Gulbuddin”—felt more like standard short stories, all featuring variations on the main family, and not really standing out, though the choice in “Occupational Hazards� to tell a man’s life story in resume format is interesting. “The Parable of the Goats� and “The Tale of Dully’s Reversion� (the latter being by far the longest story in the collection) I suspect are drawing more heavily than the rest on Afghan cultural motifs and would be more rewarding for readers with that background. For me, they are decent but not especially memorable. “Dully’s Reversion� uses magical realist and absurdist elements to tell a story about radicalization, which might have hit harder for this reader from a realistic angle, though it is nevertheless well-written and unique, with some power behind it. “The Haunting of Hajji Hotak�: A great final story, getting the reader emotionally invested in the life of an Afghan-American family through the eyes of someone who is watching them. Most readers seem to take the watcher for a government spy, but I still think there’s an argument for a ghost—especially after we learn in the preceding story that Hajji Hotak is a historical figure from the family’s home province, rather than being the actual name of any character. At any rate, while the whole collection didn’t quite live up to the expectations set by the first few stories, overall it is a good one and worth the read, combining skilled storytelling with insight into the lives of people rarely depicted in English-language fiction. It’s also a quick read, and one I’d recommend to anyone who is interested. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Sep 2024
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Sep 09, 2024
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May 06, 2024
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Hardcover
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| 9781623719357
| 1623719356
| 3.74
| 73
| Oct 15, 2019
| Oct 15, 2019
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liked it
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2.5 stars Prior to this year I’d never liked multi-author anthologies, but this year I’ve suddenly become interested—specifically in prize anthologies, 2.5 stars Prior to this year I’d never liked multi-author anthologies, but this year I’ve suddenly become interested—specifically in prize anthologies, which in theory provide a higher level of quality. A limitation, however, is just how many of these are American-only, so I was excited to find this anthology. It includes the first 20 years of winners of the Caine Prize, a prestigious short-story prize founded in 2000 for English-language stories by authors from (or with a parent from) any African country. Unfortunately, the stories themselves were a bit of a letdown: there’s a handful I liked, but they are overall less polished than I expected from prizewinning stories. Maybe in part this is because I’d just come from reading 100 Years of the Best American Short Stories, each of which is selected from thousands of stories published annually. By contrast, the Caine Prize was new, as are many of the literary journals it pulls from: from news articles, there were only 110 entries in its 7th year and just under 300 by 2023. Kenya, the country with the second-most winners, apparently didn’t have any literary journals Maybe in part the Caine Prize judges have different criteria than I do: in particular, I’d call 2/3 of these “issue� stories, with the most frequent issues being poverty, refugees and street kids. The prize for encouraging writers to present stereotypical depictions of Africa, and perhaps the judges prioritized gravity of subject matter over writing quality at times. Or maybe it’s that the judges prioritize recognizing new writers: of the 20 included here, only 4 had published a novel or collection before their win, only one or two of which got much notice, though several have had breakout successes since. A few other notes on the stories and authors: - Amusingly, the stories start out on the longer end, culminating with the fourth, which is nearly 40 pages long. After that the judges apparently drew a line, because the remaining 16 stories are almost all in the 10-13 page range. - Countries represented: Nigeria (6 times), Kenya (4), South Africa (3), Zimbabwe (2), Sudan (2), and Uganda, Sierra Leone and Zambia once each. However, from what I can find 12 of these writers are immigrants or expats, mostly based in the U.S. and U.K. - There’s a 50/50 split between men and women. Nineteen stories were originally published in English, and one in Arabic. - For those looking for more reviews of the stories, many have their own pages, but the prize foundation also publishes an anthology each year of all five shortlisted stories, plus 12 stories written in a writers� workshop sponsored by the prize. Sadly ŷ does not collect all those anthologies in one place, but those reviews are a great place to get a fuller picture. I was surprised to see how many of the same people keep getting nominated, although there’s never been a repeat winner. - I have to mention how much gross imagery is in these stories, of excrement particularly. Anyway, on to the story reviews! “The Museum� by Leila Aboulela: Focuses on the tentative relationship between a young Sudanese graduate student in Scotland and a local classmate. Probably one of the better stories, though especially as it’s the first, it struck me as a little rough around the edges for a prizewinner. Its themes—the way cultural imperialism complicates personal relationships, and the way Europe views Africa—have been much-explored in literature and popular culture since, but I do think this is a good example, bringing some complexity and stereotype-busting elements to the portrayal of both the Sudanese girl and the Scottish boy. “Love Poems� by Helon Habila: Follows a journalist turned political prisoner as the prison warden asks him to ghostwrite love poems for his girlfriend. This story is structurally ambitious, alternating between the prisoner’s diary entries and the voice of an unknown person who appears to be researching him, but it didn’t quite work for me: the diary entries are written exactly like fiction, and it’s very much an issue story that introduces no complexity to the protagonist outside his victimhood. “Discovering Home� by Binyavanga Wainaina: I agree with the other reviewer that this is the worst in the collection. It’s a sort of fictional travelogue through three countries with a jerky pace, seemingly random scenes, no character development, clunky repetitions, and a weird compulsion to constantly address the reader in an attempt to skewer stereotypes (why is the narrator so preoccupied with how outsiders would view his country?). Well, someone out there apparently liked it. “Weight of Whispers� by Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor: A far more complex and difficult story, as well as the longest. It follows a prince and his family who leave their homeland after the fall of the genocidal regimes in Rwanda and Burundi, and become refugees in Kenya. It does not make concessions to the uninformed reader, so I found this article helpful in parsing it. I appreciated it though: it’s compelling, and it leaves the reader with a lot to think about. Personally I think that (view spoiler)[the prince must have been complicit in the genocide somehow. He seems to been totally untouched by it, after all, and only felt the need to flee the country after the regime fell; for that matter, I’m unconvinced that his comments to his servant were as offhand as he claims (and even if they were, it’s telling that he sat through a whole genocide and this is the first time he’s fulminated against anyone). And even his own associates seem to find the idea of his involvement plausible. (hide spoiler)] It’s an interesting literary use of the refugee story: on the one hand the author using refugees from elsewhere to critique her own country; on the other, presenting a range of levels of sympathy and probable complicity from each of the family members. I felt for the space cadet sister. “Seventh Street Alchemy� by Brian Chikwava: This doesn’t really want to be a written story, I think; it wants to be set to music, and from the auther’s bio it turns out he’s done just that with other writings! The events are banal and the language overwrought and the whole time I was reading it, I envisioned it being read aloud at an open mic night somewhere. It’s probably much better that way. “Monday Morning� by Segun Afolabi: This one I liked better: a snapshot of a refugee family temporarily lodged at a hotel in an unspecified European country. It’s emotionally effective, showing the individuality of each relative, sensitively indicating their trauma by showing how it affects them now, and suggesting hope and resilience without being trite. “Jungfrau� by Mary Watson: A literary story I’m not sure I quite got (sadly there doesn’t seem to be lit crit online for this one). On the surface, it’s about the conflict between a girl’s instinctive admiration for her glamorous, hypocritical aunt and her dutiful love for her civic-minded mother. But by the end there’s the clear implication that (view spoiler)[the girl’s father has been sexually abusing her (hide spoiler)] and I’m not sure how to fit that into the rest of the story. I wasn’t sure how to parse the whale watching either. “Jambula Tree� by Monica Arac de Nyeko: This is discussed as a story of romance between two girls in a homophobic society, but there’s no real substance to either of the girls or their relationship; the strongest element is the depiction of the slum where they live. Framing it as one girl’s monologue addressed to the other raises questions about why so much of it is spent explaining stuff the other girl already knows. “Poison� by Henrietta Rose-Innes: One of my favorites: it reads like an apocalyptic story, though the disaster is local rather than global (which I appreciated). It follows a woman who is trying to get out of Cape Town� or maybe not trying that hard after all. Felt vivid and real and has a great atmosphere, though I would’ve liked to know more about the protagonist, which is a common theme with these stories. “Waiting� by EC Osundu “Stickfighting Days� by Olufemi Terry “Hitting Budapest� by NoViolet Bulawayo I’ll discuss these three together because they all use the same technique, which I hate: where an author writing for adults adopts the first-person, present-tense point-of-view of a child in some extreme circumstances to increase pathos (while also making the voice totally matter-of-fact because the mere fact of their age is supposed to melt you). In “Waiting� the children are in a refugee camp, and it struck me as pandering and gross: why would these kids lack identities of their own and instead assume the names on their donated T-shirts? why do they fight over food like animals when there’s enough to go around? why does the story romanticize international adoption? In “Stickfighting Days� they’re boys living in a dump, who apparently have all the free time in the world to play fight with each other because their food is coming from, uh, somewhere? Less pandering but didn’t feel any more authentic. “Hitting Budapest� is the best of the three, this time about slum-dwelling children. It was expanded to become Bulawayo’s debut novel, We Need New Names, which I decided against when it was big because I don’t like the technique. Well, I didn’t like this story either. “Bombay’s Republic� by Rotimi Babatunde: Thank God, an adult protagonist. This one is interesting and surprisingly funny, though a bit obvious at times, about a man who grew up under colonialism but gets a larger view of the world fighting in WWII. Then he gets home and becomes a sovereign citizen, declaring an abandoned municipal building to be his republic (population: one). In a nice counterpoint to most stories of this type (view spoiler)[his thumbing his nose at colonial authorizes does not result in brutality, because they don’t want to create a martyr. Instead they ignore him and he goes his weird and merry way (hide spoiler)]. Leaves the reader with questions about his answer to colonialism—is Bombay an empowered figure or an irrelevant one? What does it mean that his power depends on his irrelevance? “Miracle� by Tope Folarin: One of the most fun stories to read, this one is about a Nigerian-American boy selected for a faith healing at a revival. As with the last story, this one’s strong enough to have more than one reading: (view spoiler)[the boy comes to understand the importance of faith to his community, but also learns that the faith healing is a fraud. The ending could be read as poking fun, or as pointing to the fact of the existence of glasses as the real miracle here. (hide spoiler)] The shift from first-person plural to singular is interesting, though I’m left thinking this boy couldn’t possibly have understood the other congregants quite that well. “My Father’s Head� by Okwiri Oduor: I liked this more than I didn’t, mostly for its vivid imagery. A nursing home worker tries to conjure her dead father, and succeeds: now what? Someone familiar with Kenyan culture would probably get more out of it than I did. “The Sack� by Namwali Serpell: This one I liked less. It’s deliberately written to be as confusing as possible, featuring Jacob and Joseph from The Old Drift (though this story came out before the novel) many years after the end of that book, but referred to individually as “J.� and “the man� making unclear which is which, and I wasn’t even sure (view spoiler)[who killed whom at the end (hide spoiler)]. I also didn’t much care. “Memories We Lost� by Lidudumalingani: This feels like a stereotypically fearmongering story about a girl identified as having schizophrenia, though given how young she is and the fact that her primary symptom is sudden bouts of violence, her kid sister’s diagnosis seems suspect. The story is told from the perspective of said sister, and gives the ill girl little voice or agency, as instead the sister makes decisions for her. (view spoiler)[Not the most thought through decisions either; I mean, are they going to spend their teen years as roaming beggars? I can’t help thinking they’re in for much worse than the treatment the sister would’ve been subjected to had they stayed. (hide spoiler)] The community’s response to this girl and local treatments offered are lousy, but contrary to the assumptions of some reviewers, on average people with schizophrenia actually do better in less developed countries. “The Story of the Girls Whose Birds Flew Away� by Bushra al-Fadil: A weird story that even admirers describe as a fever dream. This is the one translated story, and I’m impressed by how much rhyme and rhythm the translator managed to get into the language. The story doesn’t make a lot of sense though, and I’m over Sudanese men writing about violence against women in the creepiest ways possible. (view spoiler)[I almost think the narrator committed the murders, given he’s a stalker with a tenuous connection to reality. (hide spoiler)] “Fanta Blackcurrent� by Makena Onjerika: Another street children story for old times� sake, but I liked this one better than the others: it’s told in the first-person plural with strong, distinctive language, and the girls grow up to be young women fast. A sad tale of how their lives turn out. “Skinned� by Lesley Nneka Arimah: This dystopian story is a strong end to the anthology: a world where women are required to go naked from adolescence until they marry, with a lot of commentary on expectations of women’s roles and the dynamics among members of an oppressed group with different levels of wealth and willingness to conform. The end didn’t entirely make sense to me—why does Ejem suddenly want to talk to the servants so much?—but overall I found it to be strong storytelling and a clever take. Arimah’s collection was already on my TBR, but this confirmed it. Overall then, a mixed bag, as with any anthology. Because I only sort of liked about half of them and didn’t love any, it’s hard to recommend this one, but it may be worth a look if you want to see a range of African short stories. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Jun 14, 2024
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Jun 29, 2024
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May 03, 2024
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Paperback
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| 0307477479
| 9780307477477
| 0307477479
| 3.70
| 241,070
| Jun 08, 2010
| Mar 22, 2011
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really liked it
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Mixed feelings, in the end, so 3.5 stars. These days mosaic novels, or linked short story collections, are probably my preferred form of literary fict
Mixed feelings, in the end, so 3.5 stars. These days mosaic novels, or linked short story collections, are probably my preferred form of literary fiction, and I did like this—definitely literary fiction, mostly focused on the troubled lives of New Yorkers and Californians connected to the music industry. It’s well-written, with a deep and relatable understanding of its characters� inner lives, which are more the focus than the music stuff. Most of the chapters were previously published as independent short stories, and they are solid stories in their own right, but also connect to each other, fleshing out side characters or providing new perspectives on people we’d previously met—I especially liked how two stories late in the book add a lot to our understanding of Sasha, who’s only a viewpoint character in the first chapter. Returning to that chapter, it feels written with all the later backstory in mind. There are also some really good side stories: the chapter about a man who has not succeeded in life, and his rationalizations, and then his encounter with a childhood friend who did make it, is exceptionally done and brings home the emotion of that encounter in an authentic way. A note that many of the characters are fairly terrible: the men are often awful to women, from cheating on their spouses and ogling their employees to grooming and sexual assault. And there are other assorted empathy challenges as well, like Sasha’s kleptomania and Ted’s exploiting his sister’s fear for her missing daughter to get himself a free vacation. At least these characters are interesting and well-rendered, and the viewpoint characters are generally sympathetic in some way even when some of their actions are inexcusable. Unfortunately, not all the pieces fit together well: “Selling the General� is quite a good story about a down-on-her-luck publicist and fallen movie star who combine forces to rehabilitate a foreign military man they know to be responsible for genocide, and there’s some strong word choice in that closing sentence that brings home the thematic exploration of how privileged Americans are profiting off other people’s suffering—a theme that feels rather out-of-sync with the collection overall. Speaking of which, the unnamed-countries thing feels lazy (or perhaps cowardly) in this context: there’s plenty of specificity when the characters are in the U.S. or Europe, which is noticeably lacking elsewhere. Finally, the last couple of chapters brought down my opinion of the book overall. The PowerPoint chapter feels like a gimmick, your standard “novelist writes a character’s diary as if it were a novel� except for reasons, this middle school kid is doing her novelistic diary in PowerPoint. Eh, whatever. But then the last chapter is really cringeworthy, very much a boomer in the late 00s imagining what the 2020s might look like—near futures date themselves quickly in any case, and her predicting Gen Z would have no morals is particularly unfortunate. The near-future part being so much worse than the rest has me doubting whether I want to read The Candy House after all. Overall though, a pretty good book. Sometimes it resonated with me, sometimes it didn’t particularly and felt like award bait, but it’s bold and different and well-written enough that it is worth a read. ...more |
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Jul 09, 2024
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Jul 14, 2024
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Apr 23, 2024
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Paperback
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| 0593470591
| 9780593470596
| 0593470591
| 3.69
| 577
| Sep 12, 2023
| Sep 12, 2023
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really liked it
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My first O. Henry Prize anthology, after reading a few volumes of Best American Short Stories. I’m not sure why I didn’t start with the O. Henry serie
My first O. Henry Prize anthology, after reading a few volumes of Best American Short Stories. I’m not sure why I didn’t start with the O. Henry series instead: unlike BASS, it isn’t limited to American writers and even includes stories in translation; also, ordering the stories artistically rather than alphabetically makes for a more pleasing composition. And then, despite mixed responses to Groff’s own stories elsewhere, I loved everything about her introduction, from her love of short stories and recognition of their many facets (introduction writers who justify each story with a phrase really do flatten them too much), to her tiring of the endless run of first-person stories (“I began to feel at the center of a sucking collective whirlpool of anxious solipsism�). Though first-person lovers shouldn’t worry: it’s so ubiquitous in today’s stories to still account for 8 of the 20. At any rate, I loved the first 5 stories and considered that this might be my first 5-star anthology, though several subsequent stories lost me and it became more of a regular anthology from there, with hits and misses. It begins with some strongly fantastical or surrealist tales, though ultimately only 5 of the 20 stories have this as a major factor, and has all the experimentation with form that I was missing from this year’s BASS. In terms of demographics, there’s a 50/50 gender split, and about half are authors of color. Most stories were first published in the U.S., but three are translated (two from Spanish and one from Danish) and two first published in English in other countries (one Irish author and one Zambian). Notes on the individual stories: “Office Hours� by Ling Ma: A whammy of a beginning: lots of layers and interpretations, excellent writing. An isolated film studies professor discovers a unique way of handling the impossibility of the demands placed on her. I was left with so many questions: (view spoiler)[did Marie do this on purpose? What will her life look like from here? What will she do about the obnoxious colleague? (hide spoiler)] Part of Ma’s collection (which I really need to read) for those seeking more. Arguably the best of the whole anthology. “Man Mountain� by Catherine Lacey: This story is so bonkers I laughed aloud on finishing it. The author’s note is very helpful—it has serious themes, such as the stifling patriarchy that has the protagonist identifying as a “human spider� rather than a woman—but it’s also gleefully weird. “Me, Rory and Aurora� by Jonas Eika: The first translated story, and I seem to be in the minority for loving it: it’s strange, almost dreamlike, yet compelling, about a down-and-out young person becoming part of a threesome with a married couple. It has a thematic and emotional resonance I can’t quite explain. “The Complete� by Gabriel Smith: Very experimental and meta, and did less for me than the first three, but I found it intriguing and funny and appreciated its boldness. The author’s note is useful here also. “The Haunting of Hajji Hotak� by Jamil Jan Kochai: A great, emotionally resonant story of the life of a Muslim-American family, from the perspective of someone spying on them. I at first assumed (view spoiler)[the second-person narrator was a ghost, but in the end I think they’re supposed to be a government spy—though their level of omniscience seems beyond anything a real spy could achieve. (hide spoiler)] It’s an affecting portrayal of a family, with a great mix of sympathy and realism. “Wisconsin� by Lisa Taddeo: Ironically—or maybe not, given its content—this story about a love affair is where my love for the anthology began to cool. It’s a dead-mom story that might’ve fit well into this year’s BASS (though the frankness about sex pushes the limits a bit), and the protagonist (view spoiler)[taking revenge via sex on a guy she found out after the fact had broken her mom’s heart before she was even born (hide spoiler)] didn’t quite compute for me. “Ira & the Whale� by Rachel B. Glaser: This is a well-written story about the approach of death under truly bizarre and fantastical circumstances, which just isn’t a subject I enjoy. I do think it does a good job with the lives of gay men, and it is resonant and succeeds at the effect it’s trying to achieve. “The Commander’s Teeth� by Naomi Shuyama-Gómez: The first story I thought just not very good. It’s a common short-story subject: an encounter between two people who would never ordinarily meet, in this case a new-minted dentist in 90s Colombia and a rebel commander. But nothing really changes as a result, and I didn’t understand the decision to intersperse that situation with boring scenes from the dentist’s sex life, rather than digging deeper into either her history with FARC or her sexuality. Both topics seemed potentially interesting but we didn’t see enough to make me care about either. “The Mad People of Paris� by Rodrigo Blanco Calderón: Another least favorite. Maybe I just don’t know enough French history to get much out of this (other than that the narrator himself is definitely mad), but this didn’t make a lick of sense to me. “Snake & Submarine� by Shelby Kinney-Lang: A complex story about a writer following the blog of a former classmate dying from cancer, and writing a story with a much happier ending, featuring a character based in part on the classmate and in part on another woman he once dated. I’m not sure I fully understand the connections or why this is all so important to the narrator, but it was well-written enough that I would like to read some commentary. “The Mother� by Jacob M’hango: Another reviewer called this a folktale with pieces missing and that seems exactly right to me. It’s very elliptical, skips out on most of the actual events and keeps the reader distant from the characters. I read the end as a twist (view spoiler)[the sister was a witch after all! (hide spoiler)] and was somewhat surprised by the author’s note suggesting the story is about environmentalism, which is only briefly mentioned. “The Hollow� by ‘Pemi Aguda: Invites comparison to the previous, as both are African stories about violence against women. This one is much stronger, exploring trauma through the lives of a couple of characters and a magical house. It didn’t do much for me emotionally but I can see it working for others. “Dream Man� by Cristina Rivera Garza: This translated story is long, almost 50 pages, and I’m on the fence about whether it was worth it. It certainly leaves the reader with a lot to figure out: (view spoiler)[are Irena and Mariana sirens, and if so, are they inevitably killing Alvaro and possibly his family? Is Alvaro a figment of Irena’s imagination, let loose in the world and picked up by Fuensanta? Is everyone a figment of everyone else’s imagination because we all project our ideas of people onto them? (hide spoiler)] I also wonder about the title: (view spoiler)[at first glance Alvaro doesn’t seem superlative enough to be a dream man, but perhaps for Irena he is, because he makes himself available when she wants him and scarce when she doesn’t, all without reproach. Fuensanta seems like a man’s dream woman, but at the end Alvaro thinks she’s really more of a man? (hide spoiler)] Presumably this is here because it’s so mind-bending. “The Locksmith� by Gray Wolfe LaJoie: A short but effective tale of the inner and outer lives of someone overlooked by society, but far more complex, intelligent and kind than people might assume. Completely believable and not saccharine. See a good full-length review . “After Hours at the Acacia Park Pool� by Kirstin Valdez Quade: Vivid storytelling, but I liked this less than other stories from this author. The coming-of-age story feels very standard. I was pissed at the way the mom exploited her daughter’s labor and then gaslit her about her outrage: for all her sanctimony about sacrificing to help others, the mom sure didn’t do so herself. (view spoiler)[Of course Laura is a minor so her mom would’ve been within her rights to just order her to babysit the neighbor’s kids for free, but instead she tricks and manipulates her while being hypocritically self-righteous. The mother impliedly doesn’t work herself so could’ve pitched in, and the parents also have the money to pay Laura themselves if they think the neighbor can’t afford it, rather than forcing all the sacrifice on her. (hide spoiler)] How to Raise your Daughter to Undervalue her Work 101. “Happy is a Doing Word� by Arinze Ifeakandu: A well-written story about the lives of two friends as they grow from boys to young men. A good exploration of how homophobia can deform someone’s psyche and their life, and I tend to like stories that successfully encapsulate so much time in so few pages. Not sure I understand the title, though. “Elision� by David Ryan: A brief story juxtaposing geological and interpersonal upheaval. Its ambiguity and not striking a particular emotional chord with me meant I did not get much out of it. “Xífù� by K-Ming Chang: A great monologue by a Taiwanese-American mother to her daughter, on the perfidies of mothers-in-law. Really a pitch-perfect, earthy, very believable voice. “Temporary Housing� by Kathleen Alcott: My second Alcott story, and they seem to do much less for me than for others. The writing is good but for me the many disparate elements never came together, and little observations clearly meant to be insightful just confused me. It’s a story of a woman looking back on a less successful high school friend, with the implication that (view spoiler)[the narrator overdoses at the end, just as her friend did. (hide spoiler)] “The Blackhills� by Eamon McGuinness: This is really good, a strong end to the anthology. It’s a sort of matter-of-fact minimalism that leaves the reader figuring it out as you go. Suspenseful and best read without prior information. (view spoiler)[The great twist only a third of the way through left me expecting another, but thankfully no, that was all. The rest of the story shows us the protagonist’s life as a family man, helping us infer why he’d go to such lengths to protect his niece. (hide spoiler)] It’s fun to end the collection with a late-night story about a man taking out the trash, though after Groff’s discussion at the beginning of anthology-wide themes, I wondered about so much writing about violence against women ending in a story where (view spoiler)[the victim is never seen or heard—even if we are satisfied that the perpetrator found his just desserts. (hide spoiler)] In the end there are probably still elements I’m missing about this anthology as a composition. Someone suggested doubles as a theme, which I agree with; I’d say gendered violence in its various forms is another, though it’s much more of a literary than an issues-based collection. While the whole book didn’t live up to the expectations set by the first five stories, I’m glad to have read it and appreciate Groff’s taste in stories. For those deciding between BASS 2023 and this anthology, I’d say this one contains much more experimentation with style, fantastical elements, sexuality, and queerness. BASS focuses on more straightforward and traditional literary stories, though both volumes are quite diverse. Overall I was pleased with both. ...more |
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Jul 03, 2024
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Jul 22, 2024
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Apr 20, 2024
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Paperback
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| 0156031876
| 9780156031875
| 0156031876
| 3.80
| 10,063
| Jul 01, 2005
| Sep 05, 2006
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Read the first 2 stories (58 pages) and they are well written but just struck no chord with me at all; I read them with a constant eye on how many pag
Read the first 2 stories (58 pages) and they are well written but just struck no chord with me at all; I read them with a constant eye on how many pages remained (so many). Perhaps one day, in a different mood, I’ll return with an interest in more Kelly Link but for now, two stories were enough. “The Faery Handbag�: This seems to be a common favorite from the collection and does a good job with a slow reveal and peeling back the layers of what’s going on. I didn’t read it as a fantastical story at all: I interpreted the narrator and her grandmother as telling fairy tales about their lives to make harsh truths more bearable. Sadly, I never felt anything for anyone in it. “The Hortlak�: A fever-dream story about a young man who lives and works in a 24-hour convenience store with a bizarre pajama-clad boss who wants to abolish money, zombies regularly appearing from a nearby trench to mime buying things, and a crush on an angry animal-shelter worker who gives joyrides to dogs before euthanizing them. I have no idea what the purpose of this was; it was bizarre and different and come on, did not need to be 32 pages long. Anyway I was spending time on my phone rather than reading on, so back to the library with it. ...more |
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Dec 26, 2024
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Dec 27, 2024
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Mar 16, 2024
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| 0060167408
| 9780060167400
| 0060167408
| 3.77
| 1,245
| 1991
| Jan 01, 1991
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really liked it
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I find this difficult to rate in comparison to Le Guin’s other work, having also read two of her science fiction collections this year. This one is pu
I find this difficult to rate in comparison to Le Guin’s other work, having also read two of her science fiction collections this year. This one is pure literary fiction, about people (mostly women) in a small town on the Oregon coast, and while the sci-fi collections had high highs and low lows, this one had no big misses but also no big hits. It’s good literary fiction, and it’s impressive that a prolific genre author could write good literary fiction, which no doubt is what made her such an excellent genre author. But this feels a little safe, unambitious, competent without being memorable. But then perhaps that is too harsh. They are good stories, and if they don’t quite equal the stories of, say, Elizabeth Strout (whose small-town collections this reminds me of) perhaps that’s not a fair expectation, as the authors have different areas of genius. Of course it’s also important to note that this collection was published in 1991, and Le Guin was on the right side of history. So elements that might have pushed boundaries at the time—the story about violence against women and child sexual abuse; the story about a woman grieving her female partner; the two stories each following several generations of women, and rejecting patriarchal notions of who defines a family—feel safe and obvious today. At the time, they probably were not. All that said, it is a good collection! I read it more quickly than most—at times several stories in a day—due to a combination of enjoyment and not needing much time to digest (of course, the stories being linked makes them easier to read in quick succession as well). There are several sensitive portraits of lonely people, usually middle-aged and older, who rarely get much play in fiction. There’s a lot of meditation on women’s roles in society, without becoming didactic or too obvious. “Sleepwalkers� has five narrators in just ten pages and yet manages to make them all distinct, which most authors can’t do with a full novel. (And it is clever, too, peeling back the layers on the protagonist only through the eyes of other people.) “Hand, Cup, Shell� is perhaps my favorite: a story of three generations of a family visiting the beach; the grandmother, mother and daughter are all compelling and sympathetic characters in their own right, well-drawn in their individual and generational differences. But really, the stories are so consistent that it’s hard to pick a favorite, or a least favorite. I’m not sure I entirely understand the novella, “Hernes�: it follows four generations over almost a century with a fairly complex structure, but mostly confused me in its symbolism and mythological references. I have seen it referred to as an exemplar of Taoism and so perhaps it’s my unfamiliarity that leaves some of the deeper meanings obscure. At any rate, worth picking up if you think this might interest you. It’s a strongly written collection about people who feel real, and it’s fascinating to see a lesser-known work from a great writer working out of her usual genre. ...more |
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Dec 12, 2024
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Dec 16, 2024
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Mar 11, 2024
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| 9780063315747
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| 3.71
| 719
| Oct 17, 2023
| Oct 17, 2023
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liked it
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After reading a couple years of Best American Short Stories and criticizing this year’s collection for including no speculative or experimental work,
After reading a couple years of Best American Short Stories and criticizing this year’s collection for including no speculative or experimental work, I decided to check out this anthology—all speculative, of course, and this batch highly experimental in form and structure. To the extent guest editor Kuang chose the stories (series editor Adams picks 80 by reading widely in magazines, collections and anthologies; the guest editor narrows it to 20), her introduction makes her philosophy clear: her primary criterion was “commitment to the bit,� with a strong preference for gonzo, bonkers, and sometimes political stories. They are concept-heavy, giving me new appreciation for the character-driven stories in BASS 2023. It is an interesting and diverse batch of stories—in topic and structure as well as author and character identity—but I only liked about 8 out of 20, and loved none, even the couple from authors whose work I’ve loved before. Notes on the individual stories: “Readings in the Slantwise Sciences� by Sofia Samatar: I love Samatar’s work—seriously, go check out her collection—but this is a wild choice to begin the anthology because it isn’t even a story, it’s a writing exercise. Samatar was going stir crazy during lockdown and rewrote three National Geographic articles to be surreal and fantastical. The articles have no connection to each other and while I rather liked the use of fairies as a metaphor for insect die-off, the piece overall is a strange choice. “Air to Shape Lungs� by Shingai Njeri Kagunda: Another strange choice for a first impression. The author comes up with a fantasy concept to symbolize opposition to borders and racism, writes a 3-page description of said concept and stops there, without actual plot or characters. “Beginnings� by Kristina Ten: The first one I sort of liked, a poignant little suburban fairy tale that kept me guessing about where we were and what was really going on. Not sure why the author thinks all fairy tales end happily, though. “Sparrows� by Susan Palwick: A favorite. While the world is falling apart, a lonely college student holes up in her dorm to finish her Shakespeare paper, and it’s a resonant exploration of meaning in life, what we do when death is imminent, and where the world might be headed. I’m excited to see this author has written novels (better yet, not about the apocalypse)—my biggest find of the anthology. “The Six Deaths of the Saint� by Alix Harrow: The most popular of the anthology, and I see why and mostly agree. An exciting tale of love and war with twists that pack a punch, and emotional and thematic resonance. I didn’t entirely love the ending: (view spoiler)[it felt like a “everything you needed, you had all along� message, which given that they were starving orphans, was not true. (hide spoiler)] But overall I probably liked this better than the novel I’ve read from Harrow and see why people love her short fiction. “Termination Stories for the Cyberpunk Dystopia Protagonist� by Isabel J. Kim: I’ve heard great things about this author, but this is a very meta takedown of a subgenre I don’t read, which did very little for me. “Men, Women and Chainsaws� by Stephen Graham Jones: A twist on horror tropes, which will likely work better for people who like horror. I admired the rare realistic depiction of average small-town young adults—not bookish, or solitary and eccentric, the way authors tend to prefer their leads; the protagonist works at a car dealership but wishes she was a hair stylist, lives in a trailer with roommates and parties hard at bonfires on the weekend—but didn’t otherwise enjoy it. The ending felt particularly off: (view spoiler)[the protagonist is basically a psychopath, murdering her ex for breaking up with her, but the story doesn’t embrace that and even vindicates her at the end. (hide spoiler)] “Rabbit Test� by Samantha Mills: Part dystopian tale, part historical review, all op-ed about reproductive rights in America. It’s effective—I can see it being read at conferences in years to come, and if you’re feeling outraged about recent Supreme Court decisions and want validation, this story is a great choice. I would have liked a little more from the characters. “There are No Monsters at Rancho Buenavista� by Isabel Cañas: A flash fiction monster story. It’s fine but not helped by putting the author’s note up front—I’m not convinced this is the subversion she thinks it is. “Murder by Pixel� by S.L. Huang: This reads like a feature in a news magazine—impressively so; fiction authors rarely mimic the style of anything so well. What happens when chatbot AIs are set loose to contact people? The story gives us a scenario, inventing only the people involved, and giving us even (presumably fictional) interviews with professionals and the (real) history of AI. A strong work, to be engaged with as a thinkpiece more so than a story. “White Water, Blue Ocean� by Linda Raquel Nieves Perez: The worst-written story in the collection, featuring a Puerto Rican(?) family under a curse (or perhaps a poorly-thought-out blessing from a clueless spirit). Full of abrupt emotional shifts and awkward exposition, and with a narrator who believes the entire world revolves around their gender identity. “The CRISPR Cookbook� by MKRNYILGLD: Formatted as an instruction manual for the science-inclined who need to cook up their own abortions in an oppressive world. Suffers from being Abortion Story #2 and less effective than Abortion Story #1; I’d have rather read the actual story of a scientist doing this than the manual she refers to. “Three Mothers Mountain� by Nathan Ballingrud: A well-written story if you’re interested in Appalachian fairy tales blended with horror. I don’t like horror and found it gross and sad. The kids should’ve talked to their teachers. “The Odyssey Problem� by Chris Willrich: A spacefaring riff on “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas,� in which several completely opposed—but all sensible by their own terms—systems of morality run into each other in what feels like escalating moral oneupmanship. I see why some people love this, and it’s certainly confident, blazing ahead and demanding readers keep up. But my biggest takeaway was “never assume you’ve reached the apex of moral progress,� which is pretty obvious, and its characters are no more than props. Why make a rescued Omelas child your narrator if you refuse to do pathos? Plus, Willrich ignores Le Guin’s points about the long-term effects—intellectual, linguistic, physical—that such a childhood would have. “Pellargonia� by Theodora Goss: Three teens with a worldbuilding hobby accidentally create a country, and the story is in the form of a letter to the relevant journal asking for help. Maybe I’m a curmudgeon for disliking it, as most readers found it charming, but the constant interjections interrupt the flow and it is not believable as a letter to an academic journal (nor did it make me believe these kids could’ve successfully passed off their prior work). Also, it felt like it was hiding the fact that this is a story about clueless Americans screwing things up for everyone by messing with countries they don’t understand behind the tired “every kid in the friend group has a different diversity point� trope. Maybe it’s subtly making the point that identity politics don’t absolve you of responsibility for your actions, or maybe that’s giving it too much credit. “Pre-Simulation Consultation� by Kim Fu: Happily, I liked this one: a story in the form of a transcript between a customer and employee, negotiating a virtual reality experience. We learn a fair bit indirectly about both of the characters, it’s a fun but thoughtful look at corporate and legal handling of new technologies, and the end is strong. “In the Beginning of Me, I Was a Bird� by Maria Dong: Ugh. A vibes story I definitely didn’t vibe with. A depressing premise (all life is dying off, and humans are making it worse by their spirits parasitically invading other species and killing them off even faster), that’s apparently supposed to be counterbalanced by the mystical connection between two souls, but those souls are parasites and we’re given no reason to care about them, and no hope. Also, the protagonist didn’t begin as a bird. “The Difference Between Love and Time� by Catherynne Valente: A bonkers story about a woman’s turbulent lifelong romantic relationship with the space-time continuum, which is always appearing in different forms. I can see why people like it but this one was just too out there for me, not surprising since Valente’s recent novels have been too. My buddy read partner, who liked it, describes it as “a story of metaphysics and madness.� “Folk Hero Motifs in Tales Told by the Dead� by KT Bryski: A good one. In a sort of purgatory, this story alternates between the poignant story of the dead narrator, and trickster stories recognizable in inspiration but twisted to feature the dead. Clever and meaningful and strange. “Cumulative Ethical Guidelines for Mid-Range Interstellar Storytellers� by Malka Older: I can see why others would find this unremarkable, but for me it was the perfect end to the anthology. It reads like a crowdsourced Google Doc put together by and for storytellers working on spaceships. It sneaks in a lot of worldbuilding while sounding like the kinds of comments people actually write, and I found it fun and sweet. Overall, then, lots of ups and downs, a few new authors discovered. Worth the read for me but hard to recommend. I might try another volume in a different year to see whether it’s the guest editor’s taste that doesn’t quite agree with me, or the series editor’s. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Mar 02, 2024
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Mar 28, 2024
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Feb 05, 2024
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Paperback
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| 0547485859
| 9780547485850
| 0547485859
| 4.13
| 1,202
| Oct 06, 2015
| Oct 06, 2015
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liked it
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Whew—two months and I’ve finally finished this anthology! Reviews below (note that most of these stories have individual ŷ pages as well). But
Whew—two months and I’ve finally finished this anthology! Reviews below (note that most of these stories have individual ŷ pages as well). But first, some overall commentary. This was a worthwhile endeavor: literary speed dating, featuring acclaimed authors and stories. I would have preferred an anthology that just aimed to represent the best stories of the century, not limited to those selected for Best American Short Stories in their year (sadly, I haven’t found any such anthology). This volume has the further limitation that a prior pair of editors took their own pass 15 years earlier, in the harder-to-find The Best American Short Stories of the Century, and this book’s editors decided on no overlap, so all the pre-2000 stories here are in theory second-best. In practice, some are fabulous, some decent, some duds. There’s a tilt toward more recent stories: though they span a full century, 21 of 40 represent the final 35 years (1980 onwards). Demographically, the tilt toward male authors remains consistent throughout, at 6 of every 10 stories, while the 10 authors of color are almost all clustered toward the end. The most surprising statistic to me is just how young these authors were, with most of the stories being published by people in their 30s and even 20s! In fact, only 5 stories were written by someone aged 50+. Sadly, most of the sections written by the editors feel bizarrely off-base and banal, though reading a bit about the history of the series was interesting; I could’ve used less imaginary short story writers on book tours and more explanation of why these stories were chosen, or deeper observations on the 2,000 stories featured over the century. There’s so much railing against the horrors of plot (even stuck into someone’s mini-bio) that I just wound up curious about what an overly plot-driven short story even looks like. Also noteworthy is BASS’s awkward relationship with genre: while a few stories here have speculative elements, there’s only one I’d call a genre story, which is almost worse than none. Unlike her predecessors, the current series editor seems open to sci-fi and fantasy, but without actually reading the associated magazines (she picks up the occasional story that makes it into someplace like the New Yorker), which seems to me an unhappy compromise. Either narrow your mission (and title) to realistic literary fiction, or actually read the places where great speculative stories are published so you can represent them properly. As is, we get bizarre choices like Ursula Le Guin having being published in BASS three times—but only for realistic stories few readers will even have heard of. Anyway, the stories: 1910s: “The Gay Old Dog� by Edna Ferber: This is a great time capsule story that puts me in mind of Edith Wharton: a Chicago family gradually losing its money, a brother who loses his opportunity to marry because he has to get his sisters settled first. I was entertained by the author’s holding forth on social issues of the day (“Death-bed promises should be broken as lightly as they are seriously made. The dead have no right to lay their clammy fingers upon the living.�), and for every dated gendered assumption that made me roll my eyes (the career-oriented sister’s unattractiveness: why would a 30-something who works indoors have “leathery� skin?) there was another that charmed me (a young man’s God-given right to fancy waistcoats and colorful socks, and the assumption that he’ll love preening in the mirror). While the story is compelling, the ending likewise feels foreign today: (view spoiler)[meeting a former fiancée while watching her son march off as a WWI volunteer makes the protagonist wish he’d married this poorly-behaved woman and had his own son to send to the trenches. (hide spoiler)] 1920s: “Brothers� by Sherwood Anderson “My Old Man� by Ernest Hemingway “Haircut� by Ring Lardner The 1920s must have been a rough decade for short stories if these are the best. Fortunately, they’re relatively short. All three feature first-person male narrators observing other men in their communities, all involving crime and some fairly obvious things the reader is meant to see through. The triptych improves slightly as it goes: I can’t fathom why “Brothers� is here and have nothing to say about it beyond that it’s a chiasmus. “My Old Man� is probably most notable for the story about the story, namely that its pity publication in BASS launched Hemingway’s career. “Haircut� gives us an entertainingly clueless narrator to see through but is otherwise a bit broad. 1930s: “Babylon Revisited� by F. Scott Fitzgerald: More engaging reading than the 1920s set, but my sympathies didn’t go where the author intended. A tale of American expats in Europe, and a formerly alcoholic father trying to convince his deceased wife’s sister to return custody of his 9-year-old daughter. This guy is such a stereotype: uninvolved but plies the kid with gifts, has been sober for ten minutes and is outraged by his sister-in-law’s doubts, wants his kid back to satisfy his own emotional needs but doesn’t seem to have considered what being uprooted would mean for her. I sympathized with the “evil� sister-in-law, who struck me as someone with anxiety being expected to do something she’s not comfortable with. “The Cracked Looking-Glass� by Katherine Anne Porter: The first story that made me want to seek out more from the author. This is the story of a marriage between Irish-American immigrants, a middle-aged woman and an elderly man, with vivid characters and a glimpse into lives that feel very real. “That Will Be Fine� by William Faulkner: A throwback to the 1920s stories, narrated by a young boy observing his no-good uncle without understanding what he’s up to. I liked it a bit better than the 1920s stories, perhaps just because the more challenging prose made reading it feel like an accomplishment, but didn’t ultimately buy the child narrator’s cluelessness: at 7 he’s developmentally old enough to understand mysteries (Boxcar Children are aimed at ages 6-8 and were available when Faulkner was writing!) yet bizarrely overlooks obviously sinister behavior. (view spoiler)[He encounters a man violently restraining a woman and preventing her from speaking, who gives the boy a message “from her� to his uncle to come inside, and just passes this on with no commentary whatsoever. (hide spoiler)] 1940s: “Those Are as Brothers� by Nancy Hale: Interesting mostly as a time capsule of how Americans in 1941 thought about the Holocaust. A woman who has escaped an abusive marriage feels kinship and empathy for a Jewish man who has escaped a concentration camp. Today’s readers would look askance at comparing one’s relationship, however awful, to a Nazi camp (some even complain about comparing other genocides and mass internments, thus ensuring that these atrocities will continue), but this was written before the Holocaust was enshrined as the worst thing to ever happen and the purpose of the comparison is increasing empathy for the refugees, which is interesting to see. “The Whole World Knows� by Eudora Welty: The most challenging story so far. I have read it twice, I have sought out academic commentary, and I’m still not sure I fully get it, let alone catch all the literary allusions. A structurally complicated story about a young man separated from his wife, in which his fantasies blend into reality. I think in the end that (view spoiler)[he rapes the teenage girl he’s been seeing, who then shoots herself with his father’s pistol. (hide spoiler)] I have no idea what the button sewing was about. “The Enormous Radio� by John Cheever: The first perfect story. A New York couple acquires a radio that allows them to hear into the lives of their neighbors, with troubling results. I’m still trying to figure out why the ending happened: (view spoiler)[did the radio itself poison their marriage? Did it exacerbate the cracks, by making the wife more conscious of others� judgment even in her own home, while making the husband feel he too had the right to let loose when others aren’t so perfect either? Or was this there all along? (hide spoiler)] 1950s: “I Stand Here Ironing� by Tillie Olsen: A hilariously stereotypical title for a 1950s story, but actually this one is heartbreaking. A mother looks back on her eldest daughter’s life, and how a lack of stability and emotional safety—mostly caused by their precarious economic situation—caused the daughter untold suffering with potential lifelong effects. Succinct, devastating and ahead of its time, and I’m still pondering the mother’s final conclusion: (view spoiler)[I can’t help suspecting her decision to remain quiet is mostly about not wanting to be judged herself. (hide spoiler)] “Sonny’s Blues� by James Baldwin: A beautiful and powerful story about the relationship between two adult brothers—the older one stepping into the role of father before he really has the wisdom to do so—and the younger brother’s life-sustaining connection to music. I finished it feeling I’d read an entire novel about these people and I mean that as a compliment. “The Conversion of the Jews� by Philip Roth: A boy with religious questions finds himself backed into extreme measures. I found this one weird, tasteless and rather poorly written. 1960s: “Everything That Rises Must Converge� by Flannery O’Connor: This is a good story, in a technical sense, though everyone in it behaves terribly and the end is miserable. The first story that’s squarely about race relations (though implicit in “Sonny’s Blues�), this one could be read as racist, or as a clear-eyed deconstruction of white attitudes: the patronizingly racist mother, the angry son whose performative antiracism mostly seems to be a rebellion against her. I fail to see the Catholic angle, unless you are already inclined to interpret human failings as a need for grace. “Pigeon Feathers� by John Updike: An adolescent boy confronts fear of death and questions about religion—a relatable phase and a well-written story, but one that didn’t do much for me. The boy ultimately reaches a narcissistic, if comforting, conclusion. “Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?� by Raymond Carver: An overlong story about a guy who finds out his wife cheated on him a couple years ago, and which then chronicles every blessed thing he does for the next 12 hours, mostly wandering about feeling sorry for himself. Please. “By the River� by Joyce Carol Oates: Well, that’s certainly a Joyce Carol Oates story. Very Biblical, boring until it’s horrifying, though she does a good job of subtly building the tension such that I was expecting something like that. 1970s: “The School� by Donald Barthelme: Surrealist flash fiction, with a life-affirming message in the midst of death. I didn’t have a strong reaction to it but am curious about what else this author wrote. “The Conventional Wisdom� by Stanley Elkin: That was an unexpected twist. (view spoiler)[I think the story is parodying the conventional wisdom about heaven and hell, especially given the author is Jewish, but his “sinners in the hands of an angry god� portrayal is nevertheless powerful enough to give even a committed atheist a chill! (hide spoiler)] Bold and different. 1980s: “Friends� by Grace Paley: A group of middle-aged women travel to visit a friend who is dying of cancer. I can see why this story isn’t a standout for most people, but it intrigued me with its textured portrayal of the women’s lives. And what exactly did classmates see wrong with the daughter who died young? This story also contains perhaps the saddest line in the anthology so far, when (view spoiler)[the dying woman asks her friends to leave as she doesn’t have much time and wants to think about her lost daughter. (hide spoiler)] “The Harmony of the World� by Charles Baxter: On the surface this is the story of a failed musician failing at love, and I’m wrestling to understand it beyond the surface level (not too surprising since music and music-focused stories are not my forte). Is the narrator, who does indeed seem very emotionally restrained until he reams out his girlfriend for her failures as a singer, actually fatally lacking in passion? Or perhaps his problem wasn’t with his playing, but that he didn’t care enough to work on it and instead quit at the first discouragement? He and the composer of the eponymous symphony both produce apparently passionless works before their hidden reservoirs of emotion emerge in destructive ways—what does it all mean? “Lawns� by Mona Simpson: The standout of the 80s stories, this one turns out to be sickening in content but deals with an important topic in a nuanced and powerful way: (view spoiler)[it’s about a college student who’s been sexually abused by her father since childhood, finally breaking away and wrestling with her understanding of what happened. It does not pull punches in the descriptions. (hide spoiler)] Simpson’s introducing the character with her problematic behavior before revealing her trauma is artful and recreates the way one is likely to encounter sufferers in real life. I’m concerned for the character at the end: (view spoiler)[who else besides her father is likely to have written her that letter? Will loneliness keep her from making a final break? (hide spoiler)] “Communist� by Richard Ford: Another boy-shooting-birds story that impressed me even less than Updike’s, with more diffuse themes. Or maybe I just didn’t care enough to search for them. “Helping� by Robert Stone: A long story about a day in the life of a troubled veteran turned social worker, who gets triggered by a client, throws away his sobriety and is an ass to everyone around him. Reasonably well-written but the protagonist reminds me a little too much of my own asshole neighbor, the mutual contempt in this marriage is exhausting and it all builds up to nothing much. Surely there must have been better Vietnam vet stories available. “Displacement� by David Wong Louie: There are definitely better immigrant stories—this one is pretty weak—but I suppose there was less competition in the 80s. 1990s: “Friend of My Youth� by Alice Munro: This one left me with a lot to think about. On the surface, it’s a story of a farm woman in rural Canada in the early 20th century, and the choices she makes under difficult circumstances. But it’s told third- and fourth-hand, by a narrator who never met the protagonist and for whom the story is bound up with her youthful resentment and adult guilt about her treatment of her sick mother. In the end, everyone’s interpretation of Flora mostly tells us about themselves: the mother is straightforward and affectionate and, as she gets ill, wishes she had a caretaker like that; the narrator resents expectations of self-sacrifice, and so wants to knock Flora off her pedestal. I saw Flora as a woman with limited choices making the best of a bad situation, which probably tells you something about me. “The Girl on the Plane� by Mary Gaitskill: So timely that if not for the descriptions of plane travel, you could mistake it for a 2020s story. A man meets a woman who reminds him of a college friend, and finally is forced to acknowledge his own complicity in a sexual assault. “Xuela� by Jamaica Kincaid: Impressive writing on a technical level, but in content, this struck me as the first chapter in a run-of-the-mill post-colonial Caribbean novel—one that neither feels complete on its own, nor made me want to read on (for those who do, see The Autobiography of My Mother). “If You Sing Like That For Me� by Akhil Sharma: Meh. “Fiesta, 1980� by Junot Diaz: A Dominican immigrant family attends an extended family party, but all is not well at home, as seen through the eyes of a boy in his early teens(?). A common subject but I liked the story and found it well-written, fresh and raw. 2000s: “The Third and Final Continent� by Jhumpa Lahiri: A disappointment given the author’s literary stature. It feels like this story took the immigrant protagonist’s relationship with an elderly, ailing white landlady from “Displacement,� the Indian couple’s arranged marriage from “If You Sing,� which the groom has only entered to check off a life milestone, and made the whole thing saccharine instead of dismal, but with no greater depth. Clearly I have different taste in immigrant stories from the editors. “Brownies� by ZZ Packer: I’d read this before and found it a little too on-the-nose, a story about a young girl learning that oppressed people too can hunger for and abuse power. This time I appreciated more the author’s keen eye for people, places and social dynamics. I also noticed the narrator’s passivity and near-absence from the story, and am on the fence about whether to read it as an observation of someone who can draw moral conclusions but not act on them, or simply unsatisfying. “What You Pawn I Will Redeem� by Sherman Alexie: I enjoyed this story a lot, and in fact read it twice—it’s heavy on dialogue that feels very real; it’s often funny, though always mixed with loss; and it has a satisfying ending. At the same time, I feel unqualified to review it. It’s the only Native American story in the book and hammers Indianness hard, which is also present in the whole structure of the story: a man who wants to acquire something but continuously resists accumulating money, instead immediately sharing everything he gains. But then this seems not only cultural, but also a result of the short-term thinking brought on by financial stress. There’s also a gaping, unnamed sense of loss throughout the story, and I’m told its level of despair is considered passé among Native American readers today. “Old Boys, Old Girls� by Edward P. Jones: Oddly, I liked this one much better when I read it a few years ago in Jones’s collection. Out of that context, this level of violence and misery feels almost like trolling, like Jones pulled elements from over-the-top TV shows and is laughing at what white people will believe if written by someone with the right skin color. Of course, people in prison often do have over-the-top terrible lives, and it is well-written. But I was unsatisfied by the unanswered questions, particularly around the protagonist’s backstory (at first I assumed he ran away due to poverty or abuse at home, but by the end it appears not?). Of all Jones’s stories, this is definitely a choice. Final 6 reviews in the comments due to length restrictions! ...more |
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| 9781555977887
| 155597788X
| 3.82
| 100,363
| Oct 03, 2017
| Oct 03, 2017
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really liked it
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A very well-written, thematically strong, genre-bending collection that should appeal to those who enjoy literary fiction, and also includes fantastic
A very well-written, thematically strong, genre-bending collection that should appeal to those who enjoy literary fiction, and also includes fantastical, science fictional and horror elements. I perhaps liked the first half a bit more than the second, but overall it has excellent writing, blending the unique and surreal with the down-to-earth and emotional. I’m kicking myself for having put it off as long as I did—possibly for the horror billing, but it’s more feminist horror than anything spooky or gruesome. Comments on the individual stories: “The Husband Stitch�: The collection starts with a striking story, mixing the unnamed narrator’s story of her marriage with her memories of other tales, often involving manipulation or gaslighting, and increasingly unhinged recommendations “if you’re reading this story aloud.� Well-written, thematically resonant, leaves a lot of unanswered questions to ponder. “Inventory�: The next is shorter and more experimental: the tale of a woman’s life through her list of sexual partners, as a virus wipes out the human population. I was impressed with how much Machado is able to show this way. “Mothers�: Perhaps the most difficult of the bunch to understand, about a woman given a baby by her ex, who claims the narrator fathered it. My read is that the whole story is the narrator’s psychotic break following the end of her abusive relationship, but possibly I just want that to be true because this woman is terrifyingly clueless about how to care for a baby. “Especially Heinous�: The first of two novellas, this one formatted as episode descriptions for 12 seasons of Law & Order: SVU, but telling its own bizarre and supernatural story. I’ve never watched SVU, but though this goes on long, I enjoyed it: the poetic flash-fiction style is fun, as is the way Machado weaves all these bonkers plotlines together. And it was nice to have a break from all the unnamed first-person narrators and get something truly different. Also the funniest of the collection. “Real Women Have Bodies�: An epidemic of women fading away, as seen through the eyes of an underemployed retail worker in a fashion store. Definitely a downer, but effective—this one gave me AIDS crisis vibes, perhaps due to the narrator’s relationship with another woman who is fading away and realistically terrified and furious about it. “Eight Bites�: A woman gets weight-loss surgery, supported by her sisters who have done the same, but exacerbating tensions with her daughter. I liked this one: we can start to see the narrator’s unreliability when we actually hear from the daughter, and the creature in her home is up for interpretation. (view spoiler)[I saw it as her love that she was rejecting, for her daughter and possibly also for herself. Interestingly, of the four sisters, she seems to be the only one to have an unhealthy relationship with her creature, though are they reliable narrators of their own experiences? (hide spoiler)] It also asks some questions about weight and eating disorders, and doesn’t give easy answers. (view spoiler)[The narrator’s mother only eating eight bites of anything indicates she probably had an eating disorder, but I didn’t think the narrator had an unrealistic view of her own weight; from her envious descriptions of her doctor as “sweetly plump� and “round and unthreatening as a panda,� this doesn’t sound like a supermodel-or-bust kind of woman. (hide spoiler)] “The Resident�: The second novella, and sadly, I actively disliked this one. It’s really long, and nothing happens: the narrator goes to an artists� retreat and experiences some scattered, mildly unsettling incidents and encounters with the other artists, and remembers Girl Scout camp, and that’s pretty much it. I want to take it as a satire of residency programs and neurotic people who write boring novels about themselves, but the whole time it teases the reader with being potentially autobiographical. Also, I too was in Brownies and while the origin of the name was a bit of an “aha� moment, I found it oversold (at no point we were told we were supposed to be house elves, and anyway telling a kid to do their own chores is not the worst thing in the world). “Difficult at Parties�: The collection ends with the story of a woman struggling to recover from an unspecified trauma. From the context clues, I guessed (view spoiler)[she had been beaten and raped by a stranger in or near her home (hide spoiler)]. I think this one is probably technically good, and the narrator’s focus on reviving her sexuality is a daring and worthy choice. It didn’t do a lot for me, though; I maybe wanted to know more about her, or maybe was just in the wrong mood. Overall, a very strong collection and I am interested in reading more from this author. ...more |
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| 3.73
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| Oct 17, 2023
| Oct 17, 2023
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really liked it
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Reviews of the individual stories below, but first some commentary on the anthology as a whole. This is my second time reading one of these volumes (th Reviews of the individual stories below, but first some commentary on the anthology as a whole. This is my second time reading one of these volumes (the first was 2019), and it’s interesting to compare them, giving a sense of the guest editor’s tastes. Here’s what stands out about this one: - Short means short: the average story has 14 pages, with a few at just 6-8. - First person: a full 15 out of 20 stories, which was a lot for me. Only one story does anything interesting with perspective or structure; the others (first and third person alike) are straightforward single points-of-view with at most some unreliability from the narrator. - Female-dominated, racial diversity: This is generally true of these anthologies, and perhaps the current market overall, but especially so here: 15 of the stories are by women and over half by authors of color, with a lot of diversity of background all around. - Contemporary realism only: On the other hand, while the 2019 collection included three historical stories and three dystopian or fantastical stories, the 2023 features only modern, realistic settings (a few include hallucinations, but that happens in real life too). Disappointingly narrow for an anthology claiming to represent the best regardless of genre. - But not domestic realism: Only a handful of stories deal much with marriage or parenting. Far more focus on cultural issues, on friendships, on community, on searches for identity and meaning. While I’d personally have preferred a reduction of the first-person onslaught, and a bit more risk-taking and genre variation, the anthology did ultimately win me over—it helped that I liked the second half, overall, much better than those in the first. Below are notes on the individual stories (what I always want from reviews of collections): Tender by Cherline Bazile: An immigrant high school student struggles in her relationship with her best friend, mostly because she has declared herself the only one with a right to a bad home life. Unfortunately the anthology started out with a bit of a dud for me; this one is structurally plain, has too many characters in too few pages, and we never actually see this awful home life, either. Do You Belong to Anybody? by Maya Binyam: Happily, I loved the second story, my favorite of the anthology. A man returns to his native Ethiopia after many years away, for initially unclear reasons, and it’s this absurdist tragicomedy, relayed in a voice I can best describe as “Murderbot with amnesia”—except the narrator doesn’t have amnesia, he just doesn’t feel like sharing. And is maybe neurodivergent, but certainly traumatized. I spent the whole story trying to figure out what was going on and then read it all over again once I did, which is exactly what I want from a short story. Turns out the author expanded it into a novel, which I plan to read. His Finest Moment by Tom Bissell: A famous novelist and serial sexual harasser attempts to warn his teenage daughter before the story of his bad behavior breaks. I appreciate this story for its convincing development of a perspective from which I wouldn’t want to read a whole novel, but showing that perspective is basically all it does. Almost more snapshot than story. Camp Emeline by Taryn Bowe: A family who lost their youngest child sets up a camp for disabled kids, as seen through the eyes of the teenage sister, who is struggling. Said sister gets involved with a 24-year-old camp employee, who’s also had a rough life, and this helps, I guess? As with the first story, I was underwhelmed—it’s structurally ordinary and didn’t make me feel. Treasure Island Alley by Da-Lin: After the last two stories, the sheer ambition of this one was a breath of fresh air. It’s about the meaning of death, through both science and religion, and covers the entire long life of a Taiwanese-American woman through the prism of a single day when she was five. I’m not sure it entirely succeeds—perhaps because it’s only 13 pages long; when Ted Chiang did it he took four times that—but it’s certainly interesting. The Master Mourner by Benjamin Ehrlich: Is this even a story? I’m afraid I don’t get it at all. Seven pages consisting mostly of descriptions of a couple of eccentric adults in an Orthodox Jewish boy’s community, followed by an out-of-nowhere epiphany and a deliberately vague ending. (view spoiler)[The father died, I guess? (hide spoiler)] The Company of Others by Sara Freeman: Each year, it seems, there’s one particular story that stands out for its combination of great writing and no imagination. While her husband and young daughter are away, a woman contemplates her ambivalence about parenting and her relationship with her own dead mother, and wonders if maybe she never should have married her husband at all. I wondered if maybe something would ever happen, but it didn’t. Annunciation by Lauren Groff: Another young woman seeking her path, and things definitely happen in this one, as our narrator gets to know a couple of overlooked, eccentric women in her community—her elderly German immigrant landlady, and a coworker who is an evangelical van-dweller fleeing domestic violence. There is tragedy, and the narrator comes to understand her own mother better. Some strong character sketches, and it depicts the Bay Area with a vivid sense of place. It never quite popped for me though: the narrator and her story aren’t quite strong enough as the linchpin that must hold it all together, and the ending felt a bit weak and conventional. The Mine by Nathan Harris: A South African man has risen to manage a mine, but there’s a tragedy and he feels haunted by visions locally understood to represent a guilty conscience. Unfortunately, this story just felt inauthentic to me. There’s no sense of place (and indeed, the author is American, with no mention of even visiting South Africa), everyone including the miners speaks formal American English, and the first-person voice likewise sounds like a college-educated American, whereas the narrator is supposed to have apprenticed in a mine from boyhood. Bebo by Jared Jackson: All right, now this one brings the voice, as well as the sense of place. It’s a boys-in-the-hood story featuring young teens in the inner city, in which the narrator must confront his failings as a friend to a boy worse off than himself. I found this one very strong, though tragic and sometimes gross. At first it felt like the story was being a little hard on the narrator—the whole world has failed Bebo; what is another kid supposed to do about it?—but on reflection, isn’t that the purpose of friendship, to be there for someone even if you can’t make it better? The Muddle by Sana Krasikov: This time the friends are two Ukrainian women in their 60s: one Jewish, a nonconformist, an immigrant to the U.S.; the other more of a follower, remaining in Ukraine with her Russian husband. When Russia invades, the U.S.-based woman tries to convince her friend to get out, and must ultimately confront the limits on what we can do about how those around us live their lives and what they choose to believe. A solid and timely story, and the conversations feel very realistic, though it’s missing that extra something for me, the characters a bit lacking in depth and the sense of lives lived. My Brother William by Danica Li: This story has all the depth and feeling I was missing from the last one, following the relationship of an adult brother and sister over several decades of their lives. A beautiful, poignant story, that I think will touch anyone who has a sibling they don’t see often, and that really brings the leads to life despite being only 14 pages long. The real vs. virtual world musings didn’t add much for me, but I still thought it was great. Peking Duck by Ling Ma: The one story in the collection to play with perspective, to use structure to illustrate its themes—this is a very artsy story, in other words, yet seems to be the most popular of the bunch. Featuring a Chinese-American writer who mines her immigrant mother’s experiences in her fiction, it asks questions about who really knows a story, who has the right to tell it. And it’s fascinatingly recursive: (view spoiler)[of course I wanted the final section to be from the perspective of the actual mother; it feels so authentic! But it can’t be, because it’s autofiction; Ling Ma herself is the daughter. (hide spoiler)] I think I liked it, in a complicated way; in any case, while some of the others feel chosen at random, this one clearly belongs in a best-of collection. Compromisos by Manuel Muñoz: A gay Mexican-American father tries to reconcile with his family when his relationship with a man proves to have no future. This is� fine? Like several of the stories in this collection, it’s so restrained that its emotional impact was blunted for me. We never even meet the young daughter who seems to be the father’s primary reason to return. A visually vivid story, and an interesting perspective, but not memorable for me. Grand Mal by Joanna Pearson: A literary crime story with an unreliable narrator: this one is good, and had me going back through it for clues once I’d finished. It’s also been turned into a novel, which I don’t plan to read because I don’t like murder mysteries, but I did like the story. Trash by Souvankham Thammavongsa: A 6-page anecdote narrated by a naïve and sloppy 32-year-old grocery store cashier, about meeting her ambitious lawyer mother-in-law, who of course disapproves. From the contributor’s note, the author is impressed with her own story, but I can’t say the same; it all felt obvious, with some weird moments (who would wait 2 hours in a parking lot for someone’s shift to end rather than going elsewhere or coming in? Why does the narrator think she’s “worked her way up� at the grocery store when she’s still a cashier?). Supernova by Kosiso Ugwueze: A depressed and recently suicidal young woman is kidnapped from a bus in Nigeria and held for ransom. I liked this one, particularly the Nigerian English and Isioma’s inability to muster the level of respect and fear her captors expect, all while still behaving believably. The growing rapport with the captors is interesting too. (view spoiler)[The ending elevates it I think, forcing the reader to ask the same questions I think Isioma has been asking herself all along: does anyone care about her? (hide spoiler)] Of the stories that haven’t yet been turned into novels, this is the one I’d most like to see. This Isn’t the Actual Sea by Corinna Vallianatos: A surprisingly good story about a friendship between two middle-aged artists, a writer and a filmmaker. I’m not sure I entirely understood it, but prefer a bit of artsiness over obviousness in a short story, and the portrayal of the friendship between the two women and the filmmaker’s relationship to her art felt very real. It Is What It Is by Azareen Van Der Vliet Oloomi: A slightly bonkers story about two Iranian expat women—roommates, grad students—in Chicago, who both seem to be losing their minds. It’s the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, and there’s a series of tragedies or near-misses affecting their homeland (see for a timeline). I liked it more than I didn’t. It really isn’t about the cat. Moon by Esther Yi: An uptight young woman attends a K-pop concert and becomes completely obsessed with a member of the boy band. I didn’t really connect with this one, and thought it ended too soon: we’re still within days of the concert, too early to know whether this will actually change the narrator’s life forever or if it’s just a weird blip. The novel it turned into would no doubt answer the question but I’m not that interested. At any rate, I’m glad I read the anthology in the end; the stories are well-written (though I had a chuckle at the “‘Coincidence,� she emitted tersely� in the penultimate story!) with some variation in subject matter if not in genre, and it introduced me to a bunch of new authors. EDIT: Well, I found out where all the experimental and genre-bending literary stories went this year! Check out The Best Short Stories 2023: The O. Henry Prize Winners. ...more |
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| 006076029X
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| 4.20
| 4,670
| Jan 01, 1994
| Dec 14, 2004
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really liked it
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A fabulous book, though at times also a frustrating one. I actually read the more recent Five Ways to Forgiveness, with an additional novella added; y
A fabulous book, though at times also a frustrating one. I actually read the more recent Five Ways to Forgiveness, with an additional novella added; you can find the whole collection on ebook, or do as I did and get it in hard copy in Hainish Novels & Stories, Vol. 2. The collection, or “story suite� as Le Guin called it, consists of a novelette and four novellas, following the disintegration of a slave-based society on two planets. By far my favorite story was the first one, “Betrayals,� which is absolutely perfect. It follows an older woman in retirement in a remote village, and it is beautiful and poignant and strangely devastating for a story that, in the end, has a lot of hope. It is vivid in its sense of place and culture, the characters come powerfully to life as unique and believable people who would rarely get a leading role in fiction, it is wise and generous and, as I said, perfectly crafted. This set an extremely high bar. The next story, “Forgiveness Day,� doesn’t quite measure up, but it’s still excellent. It follows a young diplomat—a woman of looser habits than the patriarchal slaveholding society in which she’s posted is comfortable with—and her rigid ex-military bodyguard, and what happens when a complex political situation explodes into violence. Le Guin does a masterful job of crafting these characters and their viewpoints and the way they bounce off each other, the story is exciting and we see more of the wider world. Then comes “A Man of the People,� which was the nadir of the collection for me. It also features a diplomat, and half the novella follows his life story on his home planet before he even arrives, and when he does show up and become an ally to the women’s movement on the post-liberation slave planet, his remains the least interesting perspective from which this story could be told. Perhaps because the story rushes through so much material in so little time, I didn’t get a strong sense of anyone in it as people, either. This is followed by “A Woman’s Liberation”—these two novellas being much more closely linked than anything else in the collection—in which a former slave turned activist writes a first-person account of her life story. There’s something dutifully virtuous about its trudge through all the abuse the protagonist receives, all the abused and dead women around her, and little sense of personality to any of them. The story is also very invested in her coming back around to sex and getting into a long-term relationship, when I would’ve been more interested in seeing her other relationships explored. Some strong moments, but left me much colder than it should have. The collection ends with “Old Music and the Slave Women� (Le Guin had an idea for a sixth story, but it never came to fruition), in which an aging intelligence officer is held hostage first by one side, then the other, in what seem to be the final weeks of a war for liberation. This one is good—the smaller scope serves it well, the messiness of war and politics and the clash between ideals and reality all well-drawn—though it never fully gripped me. Overall, there’s a lot to love about this collection. The settings are complex and richly-drawn. I didn’t really need the worldbuilding notes at the end, and only skimmed them, as what we need to know is woven into the text, but it’s clear a lot of thought and knowledge of the world went into this. It was simultaneously frustrating and amazing to have moments (and this happened multiple times) where I felt I didn’t fully understand character reactions due to my lack of familiarity with their cultures and religions—well, of course I shouldn’t, foreign cultures are far more complex than can be fully grasped in a novel, and the usual over-simplification of invented societies in fiction is what makes most of them feel so artificial. These feel real. I loved everything about the use of language, the different speech patterns, the existence of multiple languages in the setting, the way vocabulary and grammatical structure at times became relevant to the story. The politics, likewise, feel genuinely realistic and complex—Le Guin is clearly someone familiar with real-world politics and history, and also wears that knowledge lightly, unlike the typical author of speculative fiction who invents amateur nonsense and expects us to be impressed. She understands both humans and human systems and that is a rare and amazing thing in the genre. So, I wish I’d loved the collection as a whole a little more. I wish half of it hadn’t been told from the perspective of diplomats from elsewhere, when I wanted to dig deep into this world rather than reflecting on the role of the outsider and ally, no matter how meritorious those reflections may be. I wish there had indeed been five ways to forgiveness rather than sex and romance being repeated so much! (I say this only half-seriously, these are complex stories and so there is a lot more to them than that, but nevertheless every woman’s story ends with her pairing off.) I could have done without some very over-the-top instances of violence against women in “A Man of the People� and “A Woman’s Liberation�: even by the standards of this type of milieu, several of these are really extreme and beyond what I thought necessary to make the point (this being the one thing—other than outdated tech which is in no way the point of the book anyway—that I think might be different had the stories been written in the 2020s and not the 1990s). And I found the time-travel aspects of space travel disturbing (as was likely intended) and not fully explored in the lives of the off-worlders. Nevertheless, it is such a well-written collection overall that its virtues outweigh its faults, in the end. I am definitely planning to read more Le Guin. ...more |
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1
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Jan 15, 2024
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Jan 22, 2024
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Nov 24, 2023
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Paperback
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| 067976657X
| 9780679766575
| 067976657X
| 4.16
| 9,412
| Apr 01, 1996
| Apr 02, 1996
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liked it
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3.5 stars A short story collection focused on Haitian (and, toward the end, Haitian-American) women. It leaves you a lot to ponder in a literary sense� 3.5 stars A short story collection focused on Haitian (and, toward the end, Haitian-American) women. It leaves you a lot to ponder in a literary sense—it would make for great classroom discussion in terms of themes, symbolism, etc.—although I would have liked a bit more from the characters and the writing style. It baffles me that so many people are calling it beautiful when it’s just standard, professional literary writing; nothing wrong with it, but nothing to write home about either. Meanwhile, the arrangement of stories seems to have hooked many readers, though it almost caused me to abandon the collection: they’re ordered by how depressing and atrocity-heavy they are, beginning with the most dire and hopeless. The first couple stories didn’t really work for me: they felt like awareness-raising pieces about terrible things happening in Haiti, without enough character depth or stylistic pizzazz to do much beyond that. However, as I read on I wound up actually liking the last four; by “The Missing Peace� the atrocities are a backdrop rather than happening directly to the protagonist, and then the final, long story, “Caroline’s Wedding,� is a sweet one about a mother and two adult daughters living in New York. Overall, I don’t know that I’d return to this author, but it’s an interesting collection that will teach you a bit about 20th century Haitian history. Worth a read if you are interested in Haitian lit or the literature of horror. ...more |
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1
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Jan 04, 2025
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Jan 10, 2025
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Jun 14, 2023
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Paperback
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| 1982159529
| 9781982159528
| 1982159529
| 3.88
| 1,643
| Jan 24, 2023
| Jan 24, 2023
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really liked it
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A strong literary short story collection set in Colombia and Cuba and among immigrants in the U.S. I was really blown away by the first two stories. �
A strong literary short story collection set in Colombia and Cuba and among immigrants in the U.S. I was really blown away by the first two stories. “Aida� is dark and creepy, told from the point-of-view of a middle-class girl whose twin has disappeared—not something I’d normally want to read, but exceptionally told. “Fausto,� narrated by a naïve, devoted young Catholic woman in Miami whose boyfriend gets them into transporting drugs for extra cash, is also exceptional, a marked change of voice from the first story but equally well done. As for the rest of the collection, it is good but didn’t hit those same high notes for me. “The Book of Saints,� featuring dual points-of-view from an American man who seeks a wife internationally after multiple divorces, and a Colombian woman advertising on a marital site to move on from the teacher who groomed her, stands out. The three Cuba stories—“Campoamor,� “La Ruta� and “The Bones of Cristóbal Colón”—all focus on infidelity in various forms; they present a strong sense of place, a feeling for living on the island in the modern day. Engel is Colombian-American, but from choosing Cuba as her only other setting and one she returns to repeatedly, I’m guessing she has some experience of the country. In these stories� vivid and specific detail, they certainly feel written from knowledge. “Ramiro� is an intriguing story of two troubled teens intersecting in Colombia—a gang member from the slums on his way to reform, and a somewhat more privileged high school dropout seemingly on her way down. The remaining three stories, “Guapa,� “Libélula� and “Aguacero,� set among Colombian immigrants in the U.S., were probably my least favorites. “Guapa� just seems like an unmitigated chronicle of body issues, relationship blindness and truly terrible luck, with a complete downer ending. I did appreciate the point-of-view of a live-in maid in “Libélula,� but the format may have become over-familiar to me by this point, with two people intersecting, going their separate ways, and then the narrator getting a final follow-up at the end. And “Aguacero� seems to have been a favorite for many but just felt contrived to me. I would have liked to see a few stories in the third person (as is all are in first); while the difference in voice between the first two is impressive, it isn’t a level of distinction Engel is quite able to maintain throughout. Overall though, strong writing and insight into character, while the plots are compelling and the settings come to life. An excellent choice for those who enjoy literary collections and/or Hispanic lit. ...more |
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1
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Feb 06, 2023
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Feb 13, 2023
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Dec 27, 2022
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Hardcover
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| Ma, Ling
*
| 0374293511
| 9780374293512
| 0374293511
| 3.90
| 23,180
| Sep 13, 2022
| Sep 13, 2022
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really liked it
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I think I’m inclined to underrate this collection a little, because I’d already read two of the best stories, “Office Hours� and “Peking Duck,� in two
I think I’m inclined to underrate this collection a little, because I’d already read two of the best stories, “Office Hours� and “Peking Duck,� in two different prize anthologies, in each of which the Ling Ma story was among the best. There are two others here I found excellent: “G,� a story about two young Asian-American women in a competitive friendship, taking a drug that makes them invisible, and with a real whammy of an ending; and “Returning,� which I discuss below because I’m still trying to figure that one out. The other four stories are less remarkable to me. Three of them—“Los Angeles,� “Oranges,� and “Yeti Lovemaking”—are perfectly fine stories about relationship baggage and particularly dealing with past abuse, that just didn’t do much for me. (Also, has someone named Adam hurt the author, or is the recurrence of this name for the abuser meant symbolically to say something about misogynistic patriarchy as humanity’s real original sin?) The final story, “Tomorrow,� is somewhere in the middle: it’s engaging and creepy and I’m intrigued by the way the ending has strangers standing in for the feelings of the protagonist, but it wasn’t a knockout. That said, four knockouts in a collection of eight stories is impressive! Ma specializes in twisty, surreal, literary stories that leave you wondering what happened and what it all means, with at times metafictional elements. “Peking Duck� is a great, non-fantastical story asking questions about who has rights to a story, while “Returning,� the longest in the collection, I’m still not sure I understand. It’s a complex story involving a married couple and an affair partner, all three of whom are writers of their own weird fiction, and interspersing stories from each. (view spoiler)[The husband’s story shows he’s wrestling with his idealization of the past—which I think tells us that at the end, his wish was to forget, hence seeming not to recognize his wife: along with nostalgia and blame and the heavy weight of responsibility to the past, he’s potentially given up everything else, too. The affair partner’s story seems to literalize the type of alienation he feels in his ordinary life, while the narrator’s story suggests an ambivalence about marriage that seems to be born out in her choices. At least, that’s the best I’ve got! (hide spoiler)] I think what holds this collection back a bit for me, aside from being underwhelmed by the first couple of stories, is probably the run of first-person narrators who all have the same voice and a lot of emotional distance. Perhaps Ling Ma stories are best read not all in a row, but happened upon in a magazine or an anthology, where they can best blow you away with their originality. In any case, I’d definitely read more from her in the future� but not too soon! ...more |
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1
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Aug 17, 2024
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Aug 29, 2024
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Dec 22, 2022
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Hardcover
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| 1594487332
| 9781594487330
| 1594487332
| 4.17
| 35,506
| Nov 10, 2020
| Nov 10, 2020
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liked it
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3.5 stars I previously gave this author’s debut collection 3.5 stars, and she’s clearly grown as a writer in the interim, so I can’t give less here, th 3.5 stars I previously gave this author’s debut collection 3.5 stars, and she’s clearly grown as a writer in the interim, so I can’t give less here, though I found the collection uneven. The only real standouts for me were “Boys Go to Jupiter� and “Alcatraz,� though I did like the titular novella all right. The remaining four stories I did not particularly like or get. Nevertheless, Evans is certainly a good writer; the stories are both thoughtful and quick reads. My biggest global complaint about her first collection was characterization via summary of quirky facts and she’s now past that. There’s also a maturity to the collection’s themes, largely focused on loss and grief. It’s often described as being about race, but four of the stories have little to nothing to do with race (oddly, those are the four I liked least). Anyway, notes on the individual stories: “Happily Ever After�: What a strange choice to be first; there are striking elements to this story (a music video set in a Titanic replica!), but I can’t figure out what it’s about. Just a bunch of stuff that happened. “ROYGBIV�: This is definitely about something—the story of a wedding gone wrong, from the perspective of a guest with her own messy history—but the protagonist felt like a drag on the story and I didn’t believe the bride’s extraordinary tolerance for her behavior. “Boys Go to Jupiter�: My favorite of the collection, and not the polemic I expected from a story involving a Confederate flag bikini. It turns out to be a tale of the story behind the scandal, of grief and the outrage machine, how suffering and the internet both serve to isolate people from one another and turn missteps into scandals. “Alcatraz�: My next favorite, a poignant story about an extended family reconnecting after a rift caused by racism. A bit quiet in the present, with the protagonist’s mother and late grandfather being more compelling characters than she herself is, but still strong. “Why Won’t Women Just Say What They Want�: The shortest in the collection, this is an experimental #MeToo piece that didn’t do much for me. “Anything Could Disappear�: A strange tale of a young woman who keeps a toddler abandoned on a bus. This one seems to be quite popular with readers overall, but I never understood the protagonist’s motives for doing such a thing. It doesn’t help that the child feels more prop than character; the story puts in remarkably little effort to inspire the reader to love him as the protagonist does. “The Office of Historical Corrections�: A novella about a historian working for a fictional government agency, sent to investigate a long-ago hate crime. I’d read through the rest of the book wondering why reviews made it sound like a racial polemic when it isn’t� turns out, that’s all here. The answers are intriguing though, as is the central relationship between the narrator and her ex-coworker/lifelong frenemy, always more privileged but now struggling in life and channeling her discontent into racial activism. If I’d realized this was a female friendship story I’d have guessed the end immediately, as these stories have a typical structure and this one follows it to a T: (view spoiler)[the POV is always the less interesting friend; they’re forced together by circumstances, become friends, later break it off, and finally reconcile only for the non-POV friend to die. Well, Genevieve’s death is not confirmed but it’s certainly implied. (hide spoiler)] I do think this is a fine version of that. I also would’ve been happy to dispense with the narrator and just read about Genevieve. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Dec 13, 2023
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Dec 23, 2023
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Nov 13, 2022
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Hardcover
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| 0593330021
| 9780593330029
| 0593330021
| 3.81
| 2,984
| Mar 01, 2022
| Mar 15, 2022
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liked it
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3.5 stars A vibrant, distinctive, unusual book. I agree with those who say it’s more short story collection than novel—or rather, contemporary Lagos is 3.5 stars A vibrant, distinctive, unusual book. I agree with those who say it’s more short story collection than novel—or rather, contemporary Lagos is the real protagonist, while human characters dip in and out. Osunde is an excellent prose stylist, and the book is full of Nigerian lingo, of color and spice and mess and style; the writing brings the place to life in a way that feels real and vibrant and lived-in rather than leeched to beige to feel familiar to foreign readers, and I love it for that. I didn’t need to understand every word. This book has panache. The first half I found very skillful if often heavy: these stories focus on the big questions of life and death and meaning, and on serious social problems: poverty, corruption, inequality. Supernatural elements are woven skillfully into the text—sometimes taking center stage, other times a back seat to realism. The stories can be quite grim—as in one about a man who quite literally gives up his voice for a lucrative job as chauffeur for a rich man dealing in human organs, and ultimately comes to a tragic end. But I love some colorful social commentary that isn’t about the same old places, and it’s very well-written. The speculative elements are also well-done, imaginative, many seemingly drawn from mythology while others are perfect illustrations of the book’s themes (the body suits allowing the powerful to take on new identities; the women who literally disappear; the mixing of the living and dead). The second half is basically a love letter to queer (mostly lesbian) Nigerians, and I think the closer to home this is for you, the more likely you are to like it. To me it often seemed to sacrifice plot, but for those hungry for this representation it could be a lifeline. The author is pretty transparent about what she’s doing—in one story, a lesbian couple worry about whether they could possibly last when they know so few others who have, and there’s a sense in the subsequent stories of Osunde trying to fill that imaginative gap. One longer story is entirely about showing us that two ladies the clients drool over in the lesbian sex club have a blissfully domestic life together at home; another includes ten anecdotes of a few pages each, snapshots in the lives of gay and lesbian couples. There’s one story about a trans woman that’s just 8 pages of showing us that she’s trans, her mom is fiercely supportive, and she’s hit hard by anti-LGBT legislation as it makes her worry about her safety—that’s the entire story. These stories are still well and vibrantly written, and for some readers they’ll mean a lot, but they’re very tightly focused on queerness as their primary subject and I wanted a bit more happening in them. In a sense this is protest literature about anti-LGBT legislation in an already often hostile society, and in that sense it is an important voice, but it sacrifices a bit in the literary sense when it becomes more of an op-ed. Overall though, I think this is definitely worth a try for those interested in a look into modern Lagos, or who like interconnected short story collections and just want to read something different. And if you especially want to read about queer Nigerians being queer Nigerians, then you are absolutely in for a treat. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Feb 27, 2023
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Mar 04, 2023
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Sep 27, 2022
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Hardcover
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| 039303853X
| 9780393038538
| 039303853X
| 4.04
| 4,267
| Jan 17, 1996
| Jan 17, 1996
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Read the first two stories, which did absolutely nothing for me. It’s a shame, there aren’t a lot of historical fiction short story collections out th
Read the first two stories, which did absolutely nothing for me. It’s a shame, there aren’t a lot of historical fiction short story collections out there. This book illustrates a potential pitfall in that area that I had not considered: by the time you stuff all your research into so few pages, there’s no room left for the characters.
...more
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Notes are private!
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0
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not set
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not set
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Dec 15, 2021
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Hardcover
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