Here’s where the Ender saga got tough to get through. Granted Jane (the first artificially intelligent being) is cool and can do a lot, but the Chinese OCD people are a lot annoying and there is too much family drama for my taste. Still it’s Ender and he kicks ass, but this was much more difficult to get through.
Oh Susanna Clarke and your dry and academic, magical British fairytales. I cannot get enough. These short stories, issued in collection by a fictional Australian professor of sidhe studies is short, often whimsical re-tellings of the most classic stories of the fairy.
She needs to just keep writing.
No one.
Short stories are eloquent, but they can also be humorous and heartfelt. I really like Miranda July, and I really like her short stories. She has the new voice, she highlights the absurd and the uniquely beautiful, and so you should all just read this book because it is short and complete and complicated and simple and true.
Then Sue suddenly stepped out of the bathroom holding her robe in one hand, naked. She had discovered she couldn’t put it on because it wasn’t really a robe, it was nothing.
No one belongs here more than you.
Oh Ian McEwan. You will forever be known as the author who gave the February edition of the book group, the book so commonly referred to as “The Child Rape Book”, which I still maintain is a bit of a misnomer since only three of the eight stories deal with children being raped.
Sure, you might say in most collections of short stories rarely would even a single story broach the topic of raping children – but no, not here. (Many a childs’ first love is clearly rape.)
Anyway, I surely enjoyed this book, as did most of the group, even if it was a bit … sick, twisted, haunting, what have you.
I still have not read Toibin’s The Master, his epic portraying Henry James, but after reading his new collection of short stories I have even more motivation to read more of this Irish master’s work. Each of these stories deals with (sometimes loosely) the relationship between a mother and her son(s). Each feels real and true and they are very classically told stories – nothing experimental really, just as if you were listening to him tell the story, as a master would.
I read “Zoanthropy” the third short story in this collection, in the Best American Non-Required Reading … 2004, and I loved it. I think it remains my favorite in this collection though others come very close. Many of the stories are funny and the human aspects feel real.
Many people say that “The Devil Comes To Orekhovo” is the best – and I will say it is good, but not the best. Read “Zoanthropy”, “When the Nines Roll Over”, and “Merde For Luck”.
