Packer's debut collection of ten stories previously published in the New Yorker, Ploughshares, Prize Stories 1992: The O. Henry Awards, etc., reveals a sharp eye for the myriad ways humans deceive themselves, though her humor can be smothered by her 30- ish, middle-class protagonists' very prosaic lives. In ``Mendocino,'' a single woman visiting her brother and his irritating Northern California girlfriend is forced to confront the end of their shared childhood and the beginning of her sibling's life as a man. ``Nerves'' shows a New Yorker transplanted to San Francisco licking his wounds after his wife abandons him for her boss. In ``Babies,'' an unmarried advertising copywriter's growing case of baby lust overwhelms her professional and personal lives. The narrator of ``Horse'' recalls her attempt the year her father died to transform herself from a brainy, introverted ninth-grader into a popular pompom girl. The characters in these and Packer's other six stories tend toward the earnest and serious, although their attention to routine often blinds them to the subterranean feelings that ultimately redirect their lives. In her strongest pieces—including ``Mendocino,'' ``Horse,'' and ``The Glass House,'' in which a newlywed obsesses over the suicide of her home's previous owner—Packer's clear, steady prose peels back surface layers to reveal the mechanisms behind pain and sadness. Her few weaker tales—``Ninety,'' a chronicle of the traditional outdoor birthday bash thrown for an elderly man by his family; and ``Hightops,'' in which a young drifter witnesses the dissolution of his friends' marriage—never manage to reveal the human emotions underneath inconsequential conversation. Still, often arresting, in spite of the bland surroundings.
Pub Date: July 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-8118-0629-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Chronicle Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1994
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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