An unconventional protagonist and vivid style are the distinguishing features of this nevertheless uneven second collection of 11 interrelated stories from Houston (Cowboys Are My Weakness, 1992). The central character and narrator here is thirtysomething Lucy O’Rourke, a landscape photographer with a penchant for physically challenging adventure (white-water canoeing, hanging with “glider pilots”) and a history of romantic indecision and folly (“I always pick the wrong man . . . I’m kind of famous for it”). For example, her relationship with one promising male (Josh) is defined by finding who is the superior “river runner.” Ergo: Lucy’s encounters with men occur in such contexts as a storm off the coast of Bimini or a narrow escape, on an Ecuador river, from a vicious “grand cayman.” Much of this is presented with impressive vigor—Houston is a fine descriptive writer and has a keen ear for crisp, give-and-take dialogue—and Lucy’s present confusions are efficiently interwoven with complex memories of her uneasy detente with her “difficult” parents (the title story, about their indulgent love for a pet cat, is a beauty).Still, the volume feels undeveloped—as if Houston were only hastily jotting down random observations about Lucy’s tumultuous life and loves. The impression of uncertainty is deepened by a curious strain of faux-mysticism that threads weirdly through these stories: sonorous advice, for instance, offered by a Pakistani cabdriver in Manhattan; a chance meeting, at a California airport, with Carlos Castaneda (which “tells” Lucy she must accept the Colorado ranch left her by her grandmother’s will); and, in a tenuous “Epilogue,” her inexplicable bonding with an agelessly wise (and utterly unbelievable) seven-year-old girl. There are gorgeous, arresting flashes of insight, color, and drama aplenty, but there isn’t a book here. Houston remains a gifted writer who needs a subject.
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-393-02749-X
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1998
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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