An uneven collection of 15 new or recent stories from the midwestern novelist and storywriter (The Gasoline Wars, 1979; Little Face, 1984). The pieces are grouped arbitrarily, under the rubrics “Who We Love,” “Other Lives,” and “Spirits,” though in fact there’s considerable overlapping. Mostly, they feature ordinary people attempting to dream their way out of limiting or depressing lives (in “Heart of Gold,” a woman takes comfort from the warm masculine presences of movie cowboy heroes and of a helpful “garage man,” while “Poor Helen” escapes marital and maternal disappointments by bar hopping). The bored suburbanite of “Fire Dreams” shakes herself alive by dallying with a married fireman; and the “reformed hippie” of “Mother Nature” attempts, under the watchful gaze of her disapproving teenaged daughter, to reconnect with an old friend from her wild youth. Capably written, all of these, intermittently enlivened by wry dialogue, are ever so slightly predictable. A few stories develop from arresting premises, notably “The Lost Child” (which seems to portray a kidnaping in progress) and “Forever,” about a reporter who interviews the family and boyfriend of a murdered girl only to stumble into a sharpened awareness of his own mortality (—He was only one of the dead who were not yet dead—). Thompson’s unpretentious clarity pays off most rewardingly in stories that expose their characters gradually to the unforeseen consequences of their actions. Standouts are “The Amish,” in which the aroused consciousness of an embittered Vietnam vet slowly estranges him from his family, and “The Widower,” its elderly antagonist virtually haunting the house he sells to a younger couple, who find his solitude and misery seeping into, and poisoning, their lives. Honest, competent work from a good writer who’s at her best when she avoids formulaic situations and takes us inside her characters” painstaking explorations of themselves and whomever they love, or think they love.
Pub Date: June 15, 1999
ISBN: 0-15-100416-1
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1999
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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