Beattie's fifth collection of stories, 12 in all, continues to chart the course of fractured love and family in modern, restless times. Marriage bonds are broken, new alliances formed, children and parents struggle with their feelings. In "Honey," couples eye one another on the sophisticated suburban party circuit, subtly testing the waters of infidelity, while family tensions lurk just below the surface. In "The Longest Day of the Year," "Home to Marie," and "Windy Day at the Reservoir," marriages disintegrate. However, all is not forlorn: A divorced couple vacations together in "In Amalfi." In "Imagine a Day at the End of a Life," a husband walks in the woods, ruminates on his 40 years of marriage and the different ways his five grown children have turned out, and calmly reflects on the next milestone in his life. And in the title story, one of the collection's best, a boy is raised by his unhappy mother and his "uncle" Herb (his widowed mother's lover). Years later, when both are dead, the boy, now a man, receives a legacy from Herb—some Billie Holiday sheet music, a drawing of a cocktail cherry on a placemat, love letters to Herb from his mother, and an envelope with two pictures of the boy's father—seemingly meager leavings that summon up the caring of an unsung mentor. Deftly crafted, particularly in the child-parent quandary, these stories nonetheless leave surprisingly little impact on the reader when taken as a whole, save perhaps for the sense of disquiet and aimless search these characters are destined to go through.
Pub Date: May 1, 1991
ISBN: 0679739033
Page Count: -
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1991
It's being called a novel, but it is more a hybrid: short-stories/essays/confessions about the Vietnam War—the subject that O'Brien reasonably comes back to with every book. Some of these stories/memoirs are very good in their starkness and factualness: the title piece, about what a foot soldier actually has on him (weights included) at any given time, lends a palpability that makes the emotional freight (fear, horror, guilt) correspond superbly. Maybe the most moving piece here is "On The Rainy River," about a draftee's ambivalence about going, and how he decided to go: "I would go to war—I would kill and maybe die—because I was embarrassed not to." But so much else is so structurally coy that real effects are muted and disadvantaged: O'Brien is writing a book more about earnestness than about war, and the peekaboos of this isn't really me but of course it truly is serve no true purpose. They make this an annoyingly arty book, hiding more than not behind Hemingwayesque time-signatures and puerile repetitions about war (and memory and everything else, for that matter) being hell and heaven both. A disappointment.
Pub Date: March 28, 1990
ISBN: 0618706410
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: Oct. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1990
SEEN & HEARD
IN THE NEWS
SEEN & HEARD
Visionary speculative stories that will change the way readers see themselves and the world around them: This book delivers...
Exploring humankind's place in the universe and the nature of humanity, many of the stories in this stellar collection focus on how technological advances can impact humanity’s evolutionary journey.
Chiang's (Stories of Your Life and Others, 2002) second collection begins with an instant classic, “The Merchant and the Alchemist’s Gate,” which won Hugo and Nebula awards for Best Novelette in 2008. A time-travel fantasy set largely in ancient Baghdad, the story follows fabric merchant Fuwaad ibn Abbas after he meets an alchemist who has crafted what is essentially a time portal. After hearing life-changing stories about others who have used the portal, he decides to go back in time to try to right a terrible wrong—and realizes, too late, that nothing can erase the past. Other standout selections include “The Lifecycle of Software Objects,” a story about a software tester who, over the course of a decade, struggles to keep a sentient digital entity alive; “The Great Silence,” which brilliantly questions the theory that humankind is the only intelligent race in the universe; and “Dacey’s Patent Automatic Nanny,” which chronicles the consequences of machines raising human children. But arguably the most profound story is "Exhalation" (which won the 2009 Hugo Award for Best Short Story), a heart-rending message and warning from a scientist of a highly advanced, but now extinct, race of mechanical beings from another universe. Although the being theorizes that all life will die when the universes reach “equilibrium,” its parting advice will resonate with everyone: “Contemplate the marvel that is existence, and rejoice that you are able to do so.”
Visionary speculative stories that will change the way readers see themselves and the world around them: This book delivers in a big way.Pub Date: May 8, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-101-94788-3
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
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