An uneven collection, unlikely to create a new audience for Greenman.
More stories from the New Yorker editor and indie-lit notable.
The title story follows a business traveler in the process of abandoning his wife and child, and it’s written in a distinctly alienating—almost mechanical—tone. This work first appeared in a project of Greenman’s called “Correspondences,” which encompassed both a limited-edition book and a forum for reader participation. Whether or not that project was a success is outside the scope of this review, but, in the context of this collection, the story is a dud. A McSweeney’s alum, Greenman is known for his willingness to experiment with form and style, and this is not the first time he has repurposed his own material (2003’s Superworse was a revised version of 2001’s Superbad). But too many of the stories here feel like exercises. “Barn,” for example, seems to exist so that Greenman can mimic the voice of a Nebraska farmwife in 1962, and it has an ending, seemingly fraught with meaning and pathos, that’s inconsequential. Some of the pieces merit the exuberant praise he has enjoyed in the past. “Against Samantha,” the tale of a young man who might leave his fiancée if he wasn’t so enamored of her mother, is a deep delight. It’s set in 1928, and Greenman achieves an authentically upper-crust, vintage tone, and the anxiety his protagonist experiences provides a bracing dose of weirdness that keeps the proceedings from becoming precious.
An uneven collection, unlikely to create a new audience for Greenman.Pub Date: June 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-06-198740-3
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Perennial/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 3, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2010
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An entertaining and occasionally dazzling first collection from Kincaid, the Florida-born author of the novel Crossing Blood (1992). With a single exception, these eight stories focus on girls or women who can't make sense out of their relationships with men or with their own addled and demanding emotions. And even that exception, ``Why Richard Can't,'' looks sympathetically at a middle-aged English professor's unwillingness to change or to leave the wife he's comfortable with for the woman student whose mind and body alike excite his interest. Too many of Kincaid's characters, in fact, talk away at us from conditions of frustrating stasis: the girl who can't make her inattentive, straying father notice her (in ``Pretty Please''), or the twice-married woman who knows she'll fail again if she takes the lover she's considering (in the smartly titled ``Total Recoil''). The good news is that Kincaid's women are expert nonstop talkers, vernacular virtuosi who can make you howl with a deftly placed one-liner (``I don't have anything against boys from reform school''), or sit bolt upright upon hearing a forthright woman's description of the guilt felt by an unfaithful husband (``like his penis was the arrow on a compass and he suddenly remembered it was always supposed to be pointing north''). And two of the stories are flat-out wonderful. ``Just Because They've Got Papers Doesn't Mean They Aren't Still Dogs'' traces with wry compassion the education in female solidarity and self- knowledge that expands the horizons and strengthens the character of a childless small-town football coach's wife. And the moving title piece portrays, without a shred of sentimentality, the sexual and intellectual awakening of a young wife and mother who learns she's dying of cancer, and scorns to go gently into anybody's good night. Good, gritty work from a vigorous talent. Kincaid may well blossom into one of the better storytellers around.
Pub Date: Oct. 17, 1997
ISBN: 1-56512-177-5
Page Count: 252
Publisher: Algonquin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1997
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
This grouping of stories, most of which were published previously, confirms Indian novelist and short-story writer Narayan (Under the Banyan Tree and Other Stories, 1985, etc.) as a writer who views narrative as an infinitely superior form of intelligence to mere reason. Says the Talkative Man, the narrator of a story called ``Judge,'' to his dubious audience: ``You demand an explanation! Do you? You won't get it. I will only quote my friend Falstaff in Shakespeare's play. He was asked to explain how or why of certain episodes. His reply was a No sir. `If reasons were as plentiful as blackberries, I would give no man a reason upon compulsion'!'' Narayan, a Talkative Man himself, writes out of a love of the sound of human voices trying to make sense of the world.
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-670-85220-1
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1994
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
