A fine farewell.
A 15th anniversary, best-of edition of the erotica series (The Best American Erotica, 2007, etc.)—founding editor Bright’s final installment.
The 23 stories display a panoply of sex play, and, now and again, literary star turns: Among the latter are Haddayr Copley-Woods’s “The Desires of Houses,” in which the components of a woman’s housekeeping drudgery—the linoleum floor, the laundry, the ceiling fan—transform into sexual rivals vying for her touch, and “End-of-the-World Sex” by Tsaurah Litzky, in which a post-9/11 New Yorker begins to dream about hermaphrodites. Most of the stories are porn-inspired humdingers, like Rowan Elizabeth’s “Halves,” which features twins who share everything, and Martha Garvey’s “The Manicure,” wherein a client gets more than her nails polished when she goes in for a manicure. In keeping with Bright’s the-more-sex-the-merrier editorial policy, there is a tranny-love story ( “Tennessee” by Patrice Suncircle); a tranny-noir story (“Up for a Nickel” by Thomas Roche); an S&M story (“Blue Light” by Steven Saylor, writing as Aaron Travis); and a sci-fi sex story (“The Program” by G. Bonhomme). There are also a healthy number of comical sex stories, including “The Letters” by Eric Albert, “Three Obscene Telephone Calls” by Marian Phillips and, most notably, “The Year of Fucking Badly” by Susannah Indigo, in which a woman sets out to understand what the phrase “bad sex” means. At the end of each story its author provides commentary on how he or she came to write it. Bright ends the collection with a true-life piece, “Story of O Birthday Party,” which she goes on to describe as “a love story about dykes in San Francisco, and a time when we thought anything was possible.”
A fine farewell.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-7432-8963-4
Page Count: 368
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2007
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A newcomer to watch: fresh, funny, and tough.
Seven stories, including a couple of prizewinners, from an exuberantly talented young Thai-American writer.
In the poignant title story, a young man accompanies his mother to Kok Lukmak, the last in the chain of Andaman Islands—where the two can behave like “farangs,” or foreigners, for once. It’s his last summer before college, her last before losing her eyesight. As he adjusts to his unsentimental mother’s acceptance of her fate, they make tentative steps toward the future. “Farangs,” included in Best New American Voices 2005 (p. 711), is about a flirtation between a Thai teenager who keeps a pet pig named Clint Eastwood and an American girl who wanders around in a bikini. His mother, who runs a motel after having been deserted by the boy’s American father, warns him about “bonking” one of the guests. “Draft Day” concerns a relieved but guilty young man whose father has bribed him out of the draft, and in “Don’t Let Me Die in This Place,” a bitter grandfather has moved from the States to Bangkok to live with his son, his Thai daughter-in-law, and two grandchildren. The grandfather’s grudging adjustment to the move and to his loss of autonomy (from a stroke) is accelerated by a visit to a carnival, where he urges the whole family into a game of bumper cars. The longest story, “Cockfighter,” is an astonishing coming-of-ager about feisty Ladda, 15, who watches as her father, once the best cockfighter in town, loses his status, money, and dignity to Little Jui, 16, a meth addict whose father is the local crime boss. Even Ladda is in danger, as Little Jui’s bodyguards try to abduct her. Her mother tells Ladda a family secret about her father’s failure of courage in fighting Big Jui to save his own sister’s honor. By the time Little Jui has had her father beaten and his ear cut off, Ladda has begun to realize how she must fend for herself.
A newcomer to watch: fresh, funny, and tough.Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-8021-1788-0
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Grove
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2004
In the contest of Most Winning Combination, it would be hard to beat grumpy Ove and his hidden, generous heart.
Originally published in Sweden, this charming debut novel by Backman should find a ready audience with English-language readers.
The book opens helpfully with the following characterizations about its protagonist: “Ove is fifty-nine. He drives a Saab. He’s the kind of man who points at people he doesn’t like the look of, as if they were burglars and his forefinger a policeman’s torch.” What the book takes its time revealing is that this dyed-in-the-wool curmudgeon has a heart of solid gold. Readers will see the basic setup coming a mile away, but Backman does a crafty job revealing the full vein of precious metal beneath Ove’s ribs, glint by glint. Ove’s history trickles out in alternating chapters—a bleak set of circumstances that smacks an honorable, hardworking boy around time and again, proving that, even by early adulthood, he comes by his grumpy nature honestly. It’s a woman who turns his life around the first time: sweet and lively Sonja, who becomes his wife and balances his pessimism with optimism and warmth. By 59, he's in a place of despair yet again, and it’s a woman who turns him around a second time: spirited, knowing Parvaneh, who moves with her husband and children into the terraced house next door and forces Ove to engage with the world. The back story chapters have a simple, fablelike quality, while the current-day chapters are episodic and, at times, hysterically funny. In both instances, the narration can veer toward the preachy or overly pat, but wry descriptions, excellent pacing and the juxtaposition of Ove’s attitude with his deeds add plenty of punch to balance out any pathos.
In the contest of Most Winning Combination, it would be hard to beat grumpy Ove and his hidden, generous heart.Pub Date: July 15, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4767-3801-7
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: June 28, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2014
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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