Famous Fathers and Other Stories

Aug 27, 2007

David rated it

Recommends it for: every girl in the world and their fathers, brothers and lovers.

look. i rarely shop amazon and it takes something to get me into a borders. or barnes & noble, there is something antiseptic about those places. i prefer a dusty used bookstore. well-lit. i was having a hard time finding this. but a neat little proof copy with purple plain cardboard covers sat out on the shelf and i pulled it off. these stories are perfect. i read the first and thought it cant get much better than this. but it did. and it did and it did. these are beautifully precise. and yes th...more

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Jul 16, 2007

Debbie rated it

Shelves: collections, highlyrecommend

I’m a great test market for a book like this, because, well, I don’t have much respect for women who sleep with other women’s husbands, who have no thoughts about the family. I have seen the other side of it, the good woman, loyal, stuck with four children and a man screwing something else that could care less about her and her kids. Call me judgmental. I don’t want to be intimate with these women. I run from them~!

But I was intimate with Pia’s women. There is no way to read Pia Ehr...moreI’m a great test market for a book like this, because, well, I don’t have much respect for women who sleep with other women’s husbands, who have no thoughts about the family. I have seen the other side of it, the good woman, loyal, stuck with four children and a man screwing something else that could care less about her and her kids. Call me judgmental. I don’t want to be intimate with these women. I run from them~!

But I was intimate with Pia’s women. There is no way to read Pia Ehrhardt without being intimate. Pia writes so intimately, so sensually, the reading experience is a metaphor for sex. And I didn’t run.

I liked these women, because I was so involved in their world. Pia simply writes the story, with cool, controlled hand, observant eyes. There are no victims, no excuses. Women suffer intense consequences, and their veneer of coldness towards other women falls away, fast. No one escapes consequences in Pia’s world.Whether they become a sexually narcissistic mother who sends the teen off to school, then spends the day screwing her ex-husband’s brother (in a new room every day. Ha). Or whether they help their mothers with affairs and consider them themselves. Or connect with a man whose wife left him for a lover, not to understand this sad husband, but to understand the runaway wife. Whatever their circumstances, Pia allows them no excuse. She presents their world exactly the way it is. No whining. With subtle comments here and there, witty and profound, that help the reader understand.

They all ache. They are lonely. They ache. This comes out clearly in stories about other women in their lives—the sisters and mother. We love them for this intensity. And when we step into the mess they cause, we ache for them. The mother who has to listen to her daughter’s voice squeak out of the phone because the girl disrespects her mother so much she will only speak to her dad. The woman who gets slugged by the married man she carefully manipulated into an affair. We ache for them. (and yet, well, we don’t want them meeting our husbands! LOL)

“There is a thick black line between a woman who stays and a woman who leaves,” says the husband in “Driveway.” To which she responds (to us) a few pages later, “The difference between a woman who stays and a woman who leaves isn’t geography. You can be in the room and long gone; it’s bolting without a destination.”

An excellent book about intense, lonely women who love recklessly because they ache. They ache to be loved. They ache to love.They are in control, and, well, not in control.
(less)

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Mar 12, 2009

Kevin Fanning rated it

· review of another edition

I don't remember ever reading a collection this stunning and cohesive. Even a book by Lorrie Moore or George Saunders is guaranteed to have a clunker or two in it, right?

The stories in this book all share a common, tightly-focused theme; Pia is an auteur on the subject of women making complicated decisions. I hate to say "bad decisions" because that sounds very judgey. Let's say they're choosing to do things that they know are going to complicate their lives, that they know...more

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Jun 22, 2007

Myfanwy rated it

Recommends it for: all readers

Do not be fooled into thinking the female protagonists in Pia Z. Ehrhardt's knock-out debut, Famous Fathers and Other Stories, are passive. They are not.

This is not the 19th century—there is no awakening. This woman is not about to head into the ocean. She’s already there, already reborn, and she’s taken charge. She’s in control. She’s got her own place and she’s generous with her freedom.

But like the levee, the reservoir, the water tower, the bridges—she is contained, ...moreDo not be fooled into thinking the female protagonists in Pia Z. Ehrhardt's knock-out debut, Famous Fathers and Other Stories, are passive. They are not.

This is not the 19th century—there is no awakening. This woman is not about to head into the ocean. She’s already there, already reborn, and she’s taken charge. She’s in control. She’s got her own place and she’s generous with her freedom.

But like the levee, the reservoir, the water tower, the bridges—she is contained, but just barely. And the men who believe they are restraining her, who believe they have the upper hand, aren’t and don’t. Even in the waterless landscape—the desert—she remains in control, because after all she lives. She rises again like Lazarus—and she is her own Jesus (not the fellow who gives her a ride to the hospital. He’s made to seem important, but we know she would have lived whether he came along or not).

Like the levees we are all so familiar with now in the post-Katrina world, if you make the wrong move, if you push her too far, the woman will break free. She will flood her restraints—she will take over your streets, your house. She will send you fleeing from the city you love. But she doesn’t do this in these stories—she keeps herself as much in check as she can stand. And why? Well, for love. Love is the ultimate prize, the gift. She will do just about anything for love—and truthfully she finds getting it from men easy enough.

So what is she seeking then? What is it that drives her? The key is in her relationships with other women—the mothers, daughters, sisters, friends, other wives—living and dead. These are the people who have power over her. These are the relationships that are tricky, that require finesse. These are the relationship which frustrate and devastate and maybe even leave her feeling powerless, though not beaten. She will keep at it, keep trying to understand because that is what will bring some relief to the hurt: empathy.

The famous fathers? Well, they’re really just a way to try to understand the distant mother—the one whose high-heeled footsteps you hear echoing on the floors down below you—walking away, loud on wood, on tile, and muted with carpet. But always—always—with the father following behind, and the daughter left to wonder if she will ever return.

An absolutely smashing collection which will leave you with Ehrhardt’s powerful and confident voice ringing in your ears. If you are anything like me, you’ll find yourself dog earing every other page so that you can go back and read a certain passage again, relish it. These stories will grab onto you and not let go anytime soon—and you won’t want them to.

Read it.(less)

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Jul 19, 2007

Patti rated it

Recommends it for: anyone

Shelves: fiction, shortstorycollections

Beautifully written stories that explore relationships; the difficulty of maintaining them and the quagmires created with a breakup. To some extent we are all messed up and we have all made bad decisions and questionable choices. We've all felt stuck. Ms. Ehrhardt doesn't ask us to pity her characters, most of whom are cheating on their husbands or thinking about cheating, but to understand the complexities of the human heart.

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Apr 13, 2009

Katrina rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: favorites

This is the best kind of book in that I felt I was invited into each of these character's minds and hearts. The people in these stories are brave, messed-up, loving, self-aware, forgiving, and honest even when they're being dishonest. One of the best collections I've read--ever.

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Jul 26, 2007

Chris Coffman rated it

Recommends it for: Anyone

I don't write long reviews of books by living authors, because I don't want to interpose my personal reaction into the evolving relationship between an author and her readers.

So I shall simply echo a character in one of these short stories, a character who expresses herself by quoting famous people. As I neared the end of this outstanding collection, I thought of General Sherman's observation, "It is well that war is so terrible--or men would love it too much." One of the...more

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Jun 29, 2007

Claudia rated it

Shelves: friendsbooks

Note: This is a section of the review on my site, www.claudiaweb.net

This collection gave me the delight of stories with true depth, of characters moving within a fully realized world; these are stories with warp and woof, beautiful after a first reading, gorgeous after a second, and, I'm sure, will only grow more lovely to me with wear.
Short summaries cannot express what these stories say, but I'll try to re-cap a few: In "Running the Room" a daughter goes out...moreNote: This is a section of the review on my site, www.claudiaweb.net

This collection gave me the delight of stories with true depth, of characters moving within a fully realized world; these are stories with warp and woof, beautiful after a first reading, gorgeous after a second, and, I'm sure, will only grow more lovely to me with wear.
Short summaries cannot express what these stories say, but I'll try to re-cap a few: In "Running the Room" a daughter goes out with her mother and her mother's lover, complicit in an affair that stirs up desires of her own. The mother is a beautiful mystery, even to the end of the story, and yet, the daughter knows how much her mother's daughter she truly is. In "Someone's Flowered Dress" a woman falls into an ersatz marriage of sorts with a pilot who is still haunted by his dead wife; "A Man" is a story that stands out in sharp relief, and the ending is a punch in the stomach. I won't be a spoiler for this one.
In Ehrhardt's worlds, love can seem hard as a diamond one moment, fragile as bird-bones the next. If fact, these bird-bones surface a couple of times in the beloved – a daughter puts her arm around her mother's shoulders and is struck by her fragility; a woman covers her husband's hands with her own and remembers how thin the bones are in his fingers. Objects touched by those desired take on a special significance. Long after finishing "Abita Springs" I kept the image of a sister's brush, tangled with long hairs. The sister has cancer, and those messy hairs become something more when this knowledge is revealed. In "Someone's Flowered Dress" a woman wears the dress of her lover's lost love; she also wears Mardis-Gras beads, cold and heavy around her neck. The beads are hers; the dress, another's. The story is a quiet, complex reflection on desire and death; it's inhabited by ghosts. This collection hums with lust, love, craving, the desire to love and be loved.

Virginia Woolf famously called Middlemarch one of the few English novels written for grown-up people. Well, I recently read what she had to say about George Eliot again and what I have to say about Ehrhardt's writing has little to do with it, but I'm going to steal that line. This is a collection for grown-ups. Ehrhardt is never easy on her characters, or unduly harsh – she watches them with a steady, unsentimental eye. Stories stop in mid-air, in the middle of a bounce, or the end of a betrayal, or the moment of a near-miss. There is a sense in these stories that life is always continuing, that we are sometimes our best selves, sometimes our worst.(less)

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Jul 10, 2007

Danna rated it

Recommends it for: Everyone

Shelves: shortstorycollections

I finished the collection a few days ago and the stories are still with me. Even though these women are strong enough to stand on their own (even if they think they're not), a part of me wants to invite them over to sleep it off, offer them the guest room, plush towels, a warm bath, chocolate later. Even so, with these particular women, I'd keep an eye on my husband: their damaged hearts defy boundary or loyalty. I love them all, especially the woman who is willing to give her ill sister almos...more

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Jun 22, 2007

Myfanwy rated it

· review of another edition

Recommends it for: all readers

Do not be fooled into thinking the female protagonists in Pia Z. Ehrhardt's knock-out debut, Famous Fathers and Other Stories, are passive. They are not.

This is not the 19th century—there is no awakening. This woman is not about to head into the ocean. She’s already there, already reborn, and she’s taken charge. She’s in control. She’s got her own place and she’s generous with her freedom.

But like the levee, the reservoir, the water tower, the bridges—she is contained, ...moreDo not be fooled into thinking the female protagonists in Pia Z. Ehrhardt's knock-out debut, Famous Fathers and Other Stories, are passive. They are not.

This is not the 19th century—there is no awakening. This woman is not about to head into the ocean. She’s already there, already reborn, and she’s taken charge. She’s in control. She’s got her own place and she’s generous with her freedom.

But like the levee, the reservoir, the water tower, the bridges—she is contained, but just barely. And the men who believe they are restraining her, who believe they have the upper hand, aren’t and don’t. Even in the waterless landscape—the desert—she remains in control, because after all she lives. She rises again like Lazarus—and she is her own Jesus (not the fellow who gives her a ride to the hospital. He’s made to seem important, but we know she would have lived whether he came along or not).

Like the levees we are all so familiar with now in the post-Katrina world, if you make the wrong move, if you push her too far, the woman will break free. She will flood her restraints—she will take over your streets, your house. She will send you fleeing from the city you love. But she doesn’t do this in these stories—she keeps herself as much in check as she can stand. And why? Well, for love. Love is the ultimate prize, the gift. She will do just about anything for love—and truthfully she finds getting it from men easy enough.

So what is she seeking then? What is it that drives her? The key is in her relationships with other women—the mothers, daughters, sisters, friends, other wives—living and dead. These are the people who have power over her. These are the relationships that are tricky, that require finesse. These are the relationship which frustrate and devastate and maybe even leave her feeling powerless, though not beaten. She will keep at it, keep trying to understand because that is what will bring some relief to the hurt: empathy.

The famous fathers? Well, they’re really just a way to try to understand the distant mother—the one whose high-heeled footsteps you hear echoing on the floors down below you—walking away, loud on wood, on tile, and muted with carpet. But always—always—with the father following behind, and the daughter left to wonder if she will ever return.

An absolutely smashing collection which will leave you with Ehrhardt’s powerful and confident voice ringing in your ears. If you are anything like me, you’ll find yourself dog earing every other page so that you can go back and read a certain passage again, relish it. These stories will grab onto you and not let go anytime soon—and you won’t want them to.

Read it.(less)

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Aug 10, 2007

Gail rated it

Recommends it for: Anyone

As a prelude to her stories, Pia Ehrhardt quotes Robert Lowell, saying, "Yet why not say what happened?" The implication, of course, is that saying what happened is what we avoid. Not so Ehrhardt, whose stories take an unflinching look at heartbreaking moments, situations, relationships and choices that life dishes out. From "A Man," where a maimed rape victim tries to find consolation in her rescuer, to the provocative adolescent sexuality of "Famous Fathers," Ehrh...more

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Dec 11, 2007

Kristina rated it

If you had more time in your life to do what you want to do, what would you do? I'd read this collection over and over. I'd know Gin and Renny and Mike by heart. And Cam and Jilly. And, oh, the mother and Eddie in "Running the Room." And I'd remain in awe of the way these characters are written into real human beings. And I would tell everyone I knew to find a copy of this book and remember what it's like to get so drawn into a story that you end up thinking you, too, are one of Ehrhar...more

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Dec 30, 2008

Jasmine rated it

Shelves: american

This book gets 17.37 stars. Why .37 you ask? Why not? It just feels right.

I want to say first that I don't tend/expect to enjoy books by women. I don't even tend to like female characters in books. At this point I have only one female author at a five star ranking, Ayn Rand and perhaps she doesn't count. Pia made me change my mind.

I have to say I saw one review that said "I am worried about her." This resonated with me, not because I agree but because I unders...more

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Aug 22, 2011

Maia rated it

Shelves: contemporary-fiction, short-stories

Sometimes short stories really do beat novels: they can take you deeper, or fling you wider beyond, or push you past certain boundaries. This is what I felt after I'd finished Pia Z. Ehrhardt's slim, tight, gorgeously clear collection of stories--many which I'd read before, albeit not with the same concentration, in lit mags and web journals. Contemporary short stories, where the voice often counts for more than the narrative, can be unsatisfactory, at times pretentious, other times superfluous....more

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Jul 25, 2007

Pamela rated it

Recommends it for: everyone

Ehrhardt is a master of the first-person voice. The women narrating or featured in these stories are tough and vulnerable, scared and fearless, and fascinatingly full of desire. You'll gobble up this collection, all the while admiring the artful compression that allows Ehrhardt to say so much in so few words.

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Jan 11, 2012

Sonnet rated it

Recommends it for: Read the column Savage Love instead for a far more entertaining take on similar topics.

Shelves: chucked-out-with-a-rude-gesture

I've been building ebook hold and wish lists at my library for two weeks, with not one of those books available to check out. So I was very excited last night when I discovered that Famous Fathers and Other Stories, a book of short stories with great reviews, was available immediately. I was cautiously optimistic after the first story, had misgivings by the end of the second, and ready to do something else halfway through the third. Ehrhardt's style is technically pleasing, but it wasn't compell...more

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Dec 24, 2007

Jill marked it as to-read

There is a lot of pressure on this one. I haven't read a good book in 3 months. Short stories make me happy, so I'm gonna dive in.

The book is trapped in my car, however. We are experiencing a blizzard at the moment. I may have to put on my boots and dig it out.

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Feb 09, 2008

Cardee rated it

Recommends it for: those who like shorts

Her stories are short and pack a punch. I think she's pretty great. I prefer reading longer stories and novels. Mrs. Pia has a novel coming out soon though, and I have a feeling that I might spend a year sleeping with it under my pillow, dreaming I can write as well as her.

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Mar 13, 2009

Alan rated it

Shelves: short-stories, read-in-2009

read most of this yesterday on a commute to London for a friend's book launch. Have about three stories to go. Excellent, sharp stories mostly of adultery, usually from the adulterous woman's p.o.v, but they're all at it. Some disturbing elements as the title suggests of father-daughter incest or too close relationships. Daughters manipulating fathers, underage sex, enough to worry this father of teenage daughters. Also a very powerful story about abduction and rape and mutilation that had me ga...more

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Jul 24, 2007

Amy rated it

Recommends it for: everyone

I'd read most of these stunning stories before, but last night read the collection straight through. The arrangement's elegant, as are each of the individual pieces. The characters and their moments are heartbreakingly vivid.

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Oct 13, 2007

Avital Gad-Cykman rated it

Shelves: friendsbooks

It's exquisite!
It's almost odd how Pia makes me look at women in a different way: as if I am an outsider inlooking at an admirable, scary if needy, exquisite type of human being.

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Feb 14, 2009

Cindy rated it

rich yet stark. heartfelt and shocking at the same time. in form and content, very true to life. endings both unresolved and abrupt. loved these stories.

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Jun 24, 2007

Kevin rated it

Recommends it for: adult trouble makers

One of the best collections of stories in recent years, Pia's stories are littered with adulterers and troubled soul searchers. Dark but wonderful stuff.

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May 05, 2008

Kathy rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: rereading

This is a brilliant collection. Pia's stories are searingly honest, and full of tenderness, wit and intelligence. A very powerful and important work.

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Jul 31, 2007

Sarah rated it

Recommends it for: Anyone

A beautiful book with the lives of real people unfolding, folding, twisting and developing with one another and with themselves. Read it today!

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Jul 24, 2007

Terry rated it

Recommends it for: humans

Shelves: books-by-friends, not-just-loved-but-adored

So far all I have to say is "yummy." And I've said that before. Deeply deeply moving. And surprising. And touching. And full of life and living.

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Jun 27, 2007

J. Neil rated it

· review of another edition

Recommends it for: Short Story Lovers

Read review here:

[http://www.venuszine.com/stories/arts_reads/4173]

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Oct 29, 2007

susan rated it

Recommends it for: everyone

I have been recommending this book to strangers in coffee shops

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Nov 12, 2007

John rated it

Recommends it for: readers of lit/fiction

Shelves: mylibrary

Deft, unsparing, and filled with laughter.

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Aug 12, 2011

Kaycie Hall rated it

These stories are all heartbreaking and I kind of wonder why all of these women are so unfaithful and out of love with their lives (and husbands), but whatever her reasoning for writing such sad stories about mothers and daughters and fathers and husbands, Ehrhardt's writing style is quite good.

The sadness in these stories was simple and honest. These women accept their infidelities as if that's just the way that things have to be, no buts about it. I liked that.

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