I love this book. It moves between dry humor, brutal truthfulness and passion, and brings the keenness of Atwood's eye to them all. She describes both the elusive and the everyday with a transforming grace. You start reading for the mystery and continue for the human, achingly honest narrator. A masterpiece.
A "slim volume," Kate Wilhelm calls this in the introduction, but you could have fooled me. Its 195 pages are packed with stories that range from touching to unsettling, haunting to quirky; seventeen stories that keep you not only entertained, but thinking. What's narratives drive ahead, make you continue to read and guess. They are disturbing, funny, and very very brave.
This is a collection of microfictions, prose poems, and other oddities. In it Atwood ventriloquizes mythical beings, tells the other sides of stories, spins vast symbolic tales of ruin, and even seems to directly address the reader.
Basically, it's 155 pages of really good random stuff by Margaret Atwood. As if Atwood had a blog. And be honest. If Atwood had a blog, wouldn't you read it?
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Any novel in the form of short stories about the life of a small American town probably invites comparison to _Winesburg, Ohio_. In _Stygo_'s case, the comparison is not all that apt: Stygo is not a sleepy town full of quiet desperation, but a desperate town. No main character emerges from the novel or leaves at the end (in fact, the only young man we know to have struck out from town is a spree-killer.) It's its own book.
What I enjoyed most about the book was the way it spiraled outward, each story bringing the reader farther into the margins of town, farther from the apparent heart of the community. By the time the chapters come back to the center, back to the bar and Willa Moon, it's clear that neither a place nor a person is the center of this community, but rather an unanswered need, a void.
Carlson has a gift for the eccentric and evocative. His stories vary pleasantly, but many seem to inhabit the contradictions of human lives, the cozy opposites in which we live and are puzzled. He excels at being touching without being sentimental, funny without being glib.
Felicity has commented on (10) products.
The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood
Felicity, September 26, 2008
I love this book. It moves between dry humor, brutal truthfulness and passion, and brings the keenness of Atwood's eye to them all. She describes both the elusive and the everyday with a transforming grace. You start reading for the mystery and continue for the human, achingly honest narrator. A masterpiece.Crazy Love by Leslie What
Felicity, August 23, 2008
A "slim volume," Kate Wilhelm calls this in the introduction, but you could have fooled me. Its 195 pages are packed with stories that range from touching to unsettling, haunting to quirky; seventeen stories that keep you not only entertained, but thinking. What's narratives drive ahead, make you continue to read and guess. They are disturbing, funny, and very very brave.The Tent by Margaret Atwood
Felicity, May 16, 2008
This is a collection of microfictions, prose poems, and other oddities. In it Atwood ventriloquizes mythical beings, tells the other sides of stories, spins vast symbolic tales of ruin, and even seems to directly address the reader.Basically, it's 155 pages of really good random stuff by Margaret Atwood. As if Atwood had a blog. And be honest. If Atwood had a blog, wouldn't you read it?
(1 of 1 readers found this comment helpful)
Stygo by Laurie Hendrie
Felicity, May 5, 2008
Any novel in the form of short stories about the life of a small American town probably invites comparison to _Winesburg, Ohio_. In _Stygo_'s case, the comparison is not all that apt: Stygo is not a sleepy town full of quiet desperation, but a desperate town. No main character emerges from the novel or leaves at the end (in fact, the only young man we know to have struck out from town is a spree-killer.) It's its own book.What I enjoyed most about the book was the way it spiraled outward, each story bringing the reader farther into the margins of town, farther from the apparent heart of the community. By the time the chapters come back to the center, back to the bar and Willa Moon, it's clear that neither a place nor a person is the center of this community, but rather an unanswered need, a void.
At the Jim Bridger: Stories by Ron Carlson
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1-5 of 10 nextFelicity, January 27, 2008
Carlson has a gift for the eccentric and evocative. His stories vary pleasantly, but many seem to inhabit the contradictions of human lives, the cozy opposites in which we live and are puzzled. He excels at being touching without being sentimental, funny without being glib.