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By Sean Clark, on February 23rd, 2011 Author: Vanessa Libertad Garcia
2009, Fiat Libertad
Filed Under: Short Stories, Poetry, Short-Run
| C4 Ratings.....out of |
10 |
| Language..... |
7 |
| Entertainment..... |
6 |
| Depth..... |
7 |
The subtitle of this book, Despicable Embarrassing Repulsive, presumably refers to the types of characters that occupy its pages. That’s not altogether inaccurate, depending on whose perspective we’re looking from, but I didn’t find Garcia’s characters to belong to those descriptions. That is how they see themselves. Her ability to convey this is Voting Booth‘s greatest strength.
Through shifting narrative focus the book tells the story of a few California youths (a group of homosexual Latinos) during the 2008 election. Voting Booth is delivered through a blend of prose vignette and poem. Most scenes are 1-3 pages long (the whole book weighs in at a slim 70 pages). The story of the youths juxtaposes the somewhat disconnected world of addiction-fueling indulgence with the inflated patriotism and sense of civic responsibility that arrives with the build-up to an election and fizzles by the time the new president is inaugurated. …
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By Sean Clark, on February 11th, 2011 Author: Joseph McElroy
2011, Dalkey Archive Press
Filed Under: Short Stories, Literary
| C4 Ratings.....out of |
10 |
| Language..... |
9 |
| Entertainment..... |
4 |
| Depth..... |
8 |
This is one of the more difficult reviews I’ve had to write in a while. McElroy is an excellent writer, and this is a very good book. Here’s the thing though: I can’t really recommend Night Soul for most readers.
McElroy writes some of the densest stories I can think of. Often they start in one rather small, specific place–like two girls playing dress up in a closet in “The Unknown Kid”–then expand to encompass fairly huge ideas and lengths of time, as well as a number of settings. Eventually the story comes back, and any reader who manages to remain oriented for the ride will come back pretty enriched. In this way a McElroy story takes a shape like that of a balloon being blown up almost to its bursting point before the air is slowly re-inhaled and the balloon deflated. The problem is, I often found myself left behind for the return trip, grasping for a lifeline. …
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By Sean Clark, on February 7th, 2011 Author: Yoshihiro Tatsumi
2008, Drawn & Quarterly
Filed Under: Graphic Novels, Short Stories.
| C4 Ratings.....out of |
10 |
| Language..... |
5 |
| Entertainment..... |
7 |
| Depth..... |
9 |
| Art Style... |
6 |
This is a collection of nine short stories told in a pre-pop-manga comic format. Penned (but not occurring) in the early 70s, these vignettes are serious, dark, and downright sad. The first things that probably come to mind to most Americans when they hear Japanese comic are probably giant robots, or cyber-ninjas, or cat-eared girls, or tentacle-rape hentai. According to the brief introduction at the beginning of this volume, those are probably closer than the themes of Tatsumi’s work to the modern Japanese reader’s consciousness as well.
Instead, these stories paint a serious and fairly grim picture of a society in flux, of a generation of postwar Japanese tethered to two different Japans, yet belonging to neither. Most of the characters in this book are aging men, survivors of World War II trying to maintain a sense of identity while navigating newfound luxuries and freedoms and simultaneously trying to adhere to traditional Japanese expectations and mores, especially those concerning gender roles. …
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By Sean Clark, on February 3rd, 2011 Author: George Saunders
1997, Riverhead
Filed Under: Short Stories, Literary, Humor
| C4 Ratings.....out of |
10 |
| Language..... |
8 |
| Entertainment..... |
9 |
| Depth..... |
8 |
George Saunders has one of the most recognizable writing styles today: zany, staccato, silly-serious. He is a well-known contemporary author, a regular with The New Yorker and a recipient of the MacArthur genius grant. There are some really great stories in here, emblematic of his work as a writer, and it’s awesomely entertaining to boot.
On the surface, Saunders’s stories seem downright wacky. In this collection you’ll find a 440-lb man picked on by his boss at a raccoon-disposal service, a historical reenactment village stalked by a murderous caretaker, and a post-apocalyptic picaresque novella. It would be easy to confuse the bizarre scenarios with allegory, and indeed, his stories are highly satirical. But rather than attempt to convey a lesson about obesity, corporate responsibility, or civil rights (respectively), etc., as could be easily inferred, the stories poke fun at us (Americans, mostly) through the tone and delivery. …
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By Mike Beeman, on January 19th, 2011 Author: Karen Joy Fowler
Small Beer Press, 2010
Filed Under: Short Stories, Literary, Historical, Horror
| C4 Ratings.....out of |
10 |
| Language..... |
7 |
| Entertainment..... |
8 |
| Depth..... |
8 |
Readers familiar with Karen Joy Fowler most likely know her through her best selling novels, The Jane Austen Book Club, Wit’s End, and Sister Noon. But Fowler began her career as a writer of wildly imaginative short stories. Her newest collection is sure to add to this. What I Didn’t See is one of her strongest yet.
For some authors, a short story collections is like a science lab. The stories in this collection, published over a span of nearly two decades, show Fowler experimenting with many different styles and forms distinct from her novels. But no matter the genre or subject, the author retains what makes her full-length books so successful: an attention to detail, an ear for language, and compassion for her characters. For those who have found Fowler through her novels, these stories offer a chance to encounter an imaginative storyteller as she moves from subject to subject. …
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By Sean Clark, on January 5th, 2011  Editors: Holly Black and Justine Larbalestier
2010, Margaret K. McElderry
Filed Under: Short Stories, Fantasy, Young Adult
| C4 Ratings.....out of |
10 |
| Language..... |
5 |
| Entertainment..... |
7 |
| Depth..... |
3 |
This collection isn’t quite what it sounds like: it’s not a bunch of stories about zombies and unicorns in battle. That would have been awesome. Instead it’s a collection of stories, some about zombies, some about unicorns. Each is preceded by a short dialogue between editors, each of which helms one of the two camps. The whole debate is pretty juvenile, even for a YA book, but that is, of course, to be expected to a degree considering the subjects at hand.
So does it work? Sort of. This collection is what it is. It boasts a number of recognizable young adult authors, and a few stories (such as “Inoculata” by Scott Westerfeld) are fairly good. The rest, not really so much. …
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By Sean Clark, on November 18th, 2010 [This collection of bizarre stories is a C4 Great Read.]
Author: Amelia Gray
 2010, FC2
Filed Under: Literary, Short Stories
| C4 Ratings.....out of |
10 |
| Language..... |
9 |
| Entertainment..... |
9 |
| Depth..... |
6 |
This is one of the best short story collections I’ve read in a while. Gray writes exactly the kind of story I like: sometimes non sequitur, often grotesque, always flirting with the surreal. There’s a talking armadillo, a woman who has babies everyday for a week, hipster cannibals, a plague of vultures, a man wedded to a bag of frozen tilapia. But despite the bizarreness, they all take place in what is recognizably our world.
The weirdness is the books draw, but strange story topics is not enough to sustain a book. Luckily, Amelia Gray turns out to be pretty damn good with words. Occasionally she turnes a great phrase or two, like this part I marked in “Thoughts While Strolling”:
The sun is trying in vain to peep between the heavy clouds.
One understands the feeling, thinking back with some shame to a dress heavy like soaking wet lead, like a velvet bag full of bullets. Everything you touch turns to fire.
The most notable aspect about her writing isn’t pretty sentences though. Her syntax and word choice is very precise and controlled. This book doesn’t have stray words. The stories are all short (the longest is about 18 pages with lots of line breaks, most run 3-5 pages) and, like the sentences they are built of, succinct and focused. The shortness of the stories keep the individual curiosities of each story from overstaying their welcome, and the reader’s attention is constantly being pulled in a new direction. …
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By Eric Markowsky, on September 1st, 2010  Author: Thom Jones
1995, Little, Brown, & Company
Filed under: Literary, Short Stories
| C4 Ratings.....out of |
10 |
| Language..... |
6 |
| Entertainment..... |
7 |
| Depth..... |
6 |
I loved Thom Jones’s debut collection, The Pugilist at Rest, so I was thrilled to find parallels to his previous work everywhere when I started Cold Snap. His protagonists are still hyped up on life and drugs, desperate, terminally ill, caught in extreme situations or else throwing themselves into disaster. His prose still manages the precision of surgery with the pacing of a car chase. Ad Magic, the amnesiac hero of one of my favorite stories from the previous collection, even makes an appearance.
So if you liked Pugilist at Rest, then there’s a lot to like in Cold Snap. Unfortunately, there’s not much else. For me, these stories were a confirmation of Jones’s talent and a strange disappointment. No single story disappointed me completely, but neither did any deliver with the same force as the best stories in Pugilist, and most of the stories here offered only echoes of Jones’s earlier work. …
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By Eric Markowsky, on August 19th, 2010  Author: Ludmilla Petrushevskaya, translated from the Russian by Keith Gessen and Anna Summers
2009, Penguin Books
Filed Under: Literary, Fantasy, Horror, Short Stories
| C4 Ratings.....out of |
10 |
| Language..... |
7 |
| Entertainment..... |
8 |
| Depth..... |
8 |
Here’s one thing not to do with these stories. Don’t leave them on your bedside table so you can read one each night before going to sleep. They aren’t the scariest stories you’ll ever read, but they are warped little tales that will send your dreams off in strange directions over barren, unmarked terrain.
Ludmilla Petrushevskaya is one of the best-known Russian authors writing today, and this collection offers English-speaking readers an introduction to the supernatural side of her work. These stories range from classic ghost stories to apocalyptic allegories, with a few lighter touches in between. They all bring the straightforward manner of a fairy tale to a contemporary Russian landscape, where there are asylums and hospitals instead of dungeons, and where destiny can take the form of true love or mandatory government service. …
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By Eric Markowsky, on August 10th, 2010 [This collection of short stories is a C4 Great Read.]
Author: Bruno Schulz
1977, Viking Penguin
Filed Under: Literary, Short Stories
| C4 Ratings.....out of |
10 |
| Language..... |
9 |
| Entertainment..... |
8 |
| Depth..... |
10 |
Originally written for an audience of one, Bruno Schulz composed the first draft of The Street of Crocodiles in a series of letters to a friend. After editing, publishing, republishing, and translation, these stories still retain the intimacy of personal correspondence. Each one invites you into the narrator’s life, his city, home, and family, and insists that you stay, not just for supper, not just for the night, but as a guest in one of the extra rooms at the top of the stairs.
It’s neither a novel nor a conventional story collection. While characters and conflicts reappear throughout, there’s no continuous narrative arc, and though each piece has its own peculiar preoccupations, the setting and the narrator remain constant from one to the next. It reads like both a childhood memoir and a work of mythology, at once willfully domestic and larger than life. …
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