Birds of America reaffirmed my belief that Lorrie Moore has great abilities as an observer and describer of things, but less talent as a storyteller. Every entry in this collection of short stories feel very…
Posts tagged Short stories
It’s nice not to read the same story over & over again
Hours after finishing “Gravity” one of the stories in John Jodzio’s debut story collection If You Lived Here You’d Be Home Already, I met with my writing group. As we talked about what we were…
The Right Side of Weird
The biggest reason I like T.C. Boyle is that he's just weird enough. Too often, authors concoct characters so strange or extreme they seem just like what they are ? fiction. Wild Child, Boyle's most…
In full, Bloom
DISCLAIMER: I’m not much on short stories, and I’ll admit that I’m using a generalization here, but so many of them are too something. Like contrived edginess for the sake of being edgy. Like a…
Why do fools fall in love?
I remember breathlessly telling my twelve-year-old niece, Jaycie, that if Amy Bloom’s name were on the cover of a phone book I’d read it and enjoy every line. I’m a bit of a Bloom fan,…
What the World Will Look Like When All the Water Leaves Us, a dialog
Laura van den Berg writes beautifully. Her sentences and paragraphs feel like gauzy, ethereal dreams. It’s the kind of writing that seems effortless which means it probably took great amounts of effort. She populates the…
In the Garden of the North American Martyrs
I once read a review of a movie version of Anna Karenina that compared viewing the film to “watching beautiful animals moving behind thickly frosted glass.” At the time I wasn't sure what that meant,…
A really good sigh
The words I want to use to describe Kazuo Ishiguro’s short story collection Nocturnes are only forgivable within the confines of a Jane Austin novel. I’m just going to barf them onto the screen and…
Suffering from The Hold Steady Effect
When I first discovered The Hold Steady it was love at first listen. They were like nothing I’d ever heard before. I fell hard and fast and there was no looking back. But, sadly, as…
‘Both Ways is the Only Way I Want it’ is exactly the way I want my short story collections, awesome
Anyone who has ever read Flannery O’Connor’s short story “A Good Man is Hard to Find” a second (or more) time will remember that chest-tightening tension that happens when you read about the grandmother and…
It’s all good, Jincy
I have an unrequited beef with Jincy Willett that dates back to weeks ago when she wrote in the NYT’s Book Review that Sarah Dunn’s flaming piece of chick lit Secrets to Happiness was not,…
Pieces for the Left Hand
J. Robert Lennon's Pieces for the Left Hand offers the reader one hundred short stories that are inspired by several aspects of life: work, parenting, and small town living to name a few. Ranging in…