Fine stories, well rounded and grounded. Six of the eleven have appeared in The New Yorker.
Eleven old-fashioned stories that take their time but are riveting, muscular, and real.
The ever-capable Barnes (Love, Etc., 2001; the nonfiction Something to Declare, 2002, etc., etc.) is able to write knowingly on an extraordinary range of subjects—from, say, an aristocratic tale of 19th-century French stoicism and sexuality (“Bark”) to the story of a married British military pensioner who falls in love—depending on how you define that—with the London prostitute he sees once a year (“Hygiene”). The approaching death of a great modern composer—on personal terms with Stravinsky and Ralph Vaughn Williams—is every bit as incisive, observant, and moving in its way (“The Silence”) as is the tale of long-ago Sweden and a 23-year love affair that goes unconsummated, unrecognized, and, in the end, pathetically misunderstood (“The Story of Mats Israelson”). Stories that might be merely topical or trendy in lesser hands bear real fruit in Barnes’s, as witness “Appetite,” a tale about the ravages of Alzheimer’s that never comes even close to the dread magazine-article tone that so often haunts and diminishes such efforts; or “The Fruit Cage,” the genuinely compelling story of an aging woman (her grown son narrates) who may indeed actually be a physical abuser of her husband. Even prospectively lesser material can grow authoritative and large with Barnes’s treatment—like his look at hair-cutting then and now (“A Short History of Hairdressing”), or his one-act-playlike portrayal of two widows, each thinking she has the goods on the other (“The Things You Know”). Most moving of all may be “Knowing French,” made up of letters written by an octogenarian to “Mr. Novelist Barnes.” The writer is living in an old folks’ home (an “Old Folkery”), but she demonstrates such brio, pizzazz, introspection, and natural learnedness—all as she’s about to die—that no reader can help but love her.
Fine stories, well rounded and grounded. Six of the eleven have appeared in The New Yorker.Pub Date: July 9, 2004
ISBN: 1-4000-4214-3
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2004
For all the portentous metaphors (keys and locks appear in every story) and all the convoluted and fabulist narrations,...
These nine casually interlocking stories, set in a familiar yet surreal contemporary world, overflow with the cerebral humor and fantastical plots that readers have come to expect from Oyeyemi (Boy Snow Bird, 2014).
The opener, "Books and Roses," sets the tone: stories within stories and a fittingly cockeyed view of Gaudi’s architecture as two women in Barcelona share their experiences in abandonment while searching for the loved ones who left them behind. Most of the volume takes place in England, with nods toward Eastern Europe. In " 'Sorry' Doesn’t Sweeten Her Tea," weight-loss clinician Anton becomes increasingly involved in raising his boyfriend’s two adolescent daughters, Aisha and Dayang, while fishsitting for a traveling friend. The story seems straightforward until Anton’s friend falls in long-distance love with a mystery woman who's entered his locked house without a key and Anton’s co-worker Tyche helps Aisha recover from a crisis in disillusionment by casting a spell from the Greek goddess Hecate. Tyche returns as a student puppeteer in "Is Your Blood as Red as This?," which layers creepy echoes of Pinocchio onto realistically genuine adolescent sexual confusion. Readers realize Tyche’s fellow students Radha and Myrna have ended up sexually happy-ever-after when they pop up in "Presence" to lend their shared apartment to a psychologist so she and her grief-counselor husband can carry out the ironically eponymous science-fiction experiment that forces the psychologist to accept the absences in her life. While Aisha appears as a filmmaker employing puppets in "Freddy Barrandov Checks…In?," Dayang stars as ingénue in "A Brief History of the Homely Wench Society," a post-feminist romantic comedy about warring men's and women’s societies at Cambridge. Several stories are pure fairy tale, like "Dornicka and the St. Martin’s Day Goose," a twisted take on "Little Red Riding Hood,” and "Drownings," in which good intentions defeat a murderous tyrant.
For all the portentous metaphors (keys and locks appear in every story) and all the convoluted and fabulist narrations, Oyeyemi’s stories are often cheerfully sentimental.Pub Date: March 8, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-59463-463-5
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Riverhead
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2016
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
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