In this haunting debut, Bumas explores the defining of relationships and how the quality of human intimacy reveals much about the places we call home. All eight stories in this collection lend an ethereal element to situations that at first glance seem familiar, depicting men and women attracted and confused by friends and lovers and who find themselves equally lost in their given time and place. As the characters struggle with conflicts that range from forbidden sexual attraction to making a new best friend to unplanned pregnancy to expressing solidarity with Chinese students shortly before the uprising at Tiananmen Square, the question of where and how we live in Manhattan's East Village, a provincial Chinese city, and a conservative college campus become inextricably linked. Sometimes a story revolves around the importance of human relationship and demonstrates that without it, any possible connection to society at large, the psyche of the population, even culture and history and hope for the future, is thwarted. For example, a young Western scientist studying water quality in canals in Hangzhou, China, likes to think of this small city as a home she has come to know well; but when a Chinese co-worker she feels especially close to gets relocated for suspected sexual involvement with her, the customs, food, and the purposefulness of her work become inconceivably foreign (``Head in Fog on Water''). At other times, it is the success of a human relationship that makes an environment bearable: A gay man poses as his lesbian friend's fiancÇ to get her through a sticky family gathering (``Your Cordially Requested Presence''). Bumas woos with strong characters, wry tones, political complexity, and a unique voice. This collection doesn't bowl you over—it gets under your skin.
Pub Date: Dec. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-87023-930-9
Page Count: 208
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1994
Categories: SHORT STORIES
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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
Categories: SHORT STORIES
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Visionary speculative stories that will change the way readers see themselves and the world around them: This book delivers...
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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. 17, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2019
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