Drab, elitist victimhood dressed up in glittery prose.
A third collection from Somerset Maugham–winner Simpson (Four Bare Legs in a Bed, 1992, etc.): nine bitter stories, many loosely interconnected, about upper-middle-class British women overburdened by family.
In “Golden Apples,” 17-year-old Jade wanders her suburban London neighborhood, scoffing at its bourgeois trappings and imagining how her life will be different She is particularly critical of her mother, a professional woman everyone else praises as “so amazing, what she managed to pack into twenty-four hours.” Then by chance Jade encounters the author’s first of many overwhelmed, overweight, falling-apart, stay-at-home moms whose intelligence is atrophying under the pressure of husbands and children. Listening to the despair of this unnamed woman, whose child has a bean stuck up her nose, Jade begins to appreciate her own mother’s elegant competence. Jade reappears only fleetingly in other tales, as babysitter or daughter, but her energy and blind hopefulness haunt the remaining pages, in which adult women lack anything resembling hope. Some can’t talk to each other, despite their shared experiences, because they have lost the ability to speak for themselves (“Café Society”); others, like Dorrie in the title piece, are so entirely dedicated to their families that they have no space left for self. The men are nonentities at best, and Simpson’s depiction of the children is even more disturbing. Considering their offsprings’ spoiled, whining, devouring natures, it’s no wonder Simpson’s mothers are miserable. (When Dorrie sees “the gleam in his eyes and teeth,” her son’s hungry, animal quality is apparent.) The several tales about working women offer no joy rides either. Jade’s highly efficient mother, Nicola, muses on her life with forced self-satisfaction during a long business dinner honoring “Burns and the Bankers,” while, in “Wurstigkeit,” two women sneak away from their professional lives for a secret, decadent shopping spree. But real happiness eludes them all.
Drab, elitist victimhood dressed up in glittery prose.Pub Date: June 21, 2001
ISBN: 0-375-41109-7
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2001
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
Old-fashioned short fiction: honest, probing and moving.
One of America’s great novelists (Lost Memory of Skin, 2011, etc.) also writes excellent stories, as his sixth collection reminds readers.
Don’t expect atmospheric mood poems or avant-garde stylistic games in these dozen tales. Banks is a traditionalist, interested in narrative and character development; his simple, flexible prose doesn’t call attention to itself as it serves those aims. The intricate, not necessarily permanent bonds of family are a central concern. The bleak, stoic “Former Marine” depicts an aging father driven to extremes because he’s too proud to admit to his adult sons that he can no longer take care of himself. In the heartbreaking title story, the death of a beloved dog signals the final rupture in a family already rent by divorce. Fraught marriages in all their variety are unsparingly scrutinized in “Christmas Party,” Big Dog” and “The Outer Banks." But as the collection moves along, interactions with strangers begin to occupy center stage. The protagonist of “The Invisible Parrot” transcends the anxieties of his hard-pressed life through an impromptu act of generosity to a junkie. A man waiting in an airport bar is the uneasy recipient of confidences about “Searching for Veronica” from a woman whose truthfulness and motives he begins to suspect, until he flees since “the only safe response is to quarantine yourself.” Lurking menace that erupts into violence features in many Banks novels, and here, it provides jarring climaxes to two otherwise solid stories, “Blue” and “The Green Door.” Yet Banks quietly conveys compassion for even the darkest of his characters. Many of them (like their author) are older, at a point in life where options narrow and the future is uncomfortably close at hand—which is why widowed Isabel’s fearless shucking of her confining past is so exhilarating in “SnowBirds,” albeit counterbalanced by her friend Jane’s bleak acceptance of her own limited prospects.
Old-fashioned short fiction: honest, probing and moving.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-06-185765-2
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Ecco/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Aug. 31, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2013
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