Birds of America: Stories

published	September 23rd 1999 by Picador
binding	Paperback
isbn	0312241224 (isbn13: 9780312241223)
pages	304
literary awards	1998 National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist
description	Lorrie Moore made her debut in 1985 with Self-Help, which proved that she could write about sadness, sex, and the single girl with as much tend...more [close] Lorrie Moore made her debut in 1985 with Self-Help, which proved that she could write about sadness, sex, and the single girl with as much tenderness--and with considerably more wit--than almost any of her contemporaries. She followed this story collection with another, Like Life, as well as two fine novels, Anagrams and Who Will Run the Frog Hospital? Yet Moore's rapid-fire alternation of mirth and deep melancholy is so perfectly suited to the short form that readers will greet Birds of America with an audible sigh of relief--and delight. In "Willing," for example, a second-rate Hollywood starlet retreats into a first-rate depression, taking shelter in a Chicago-area Days Inn. The author's eye for the small comic detail is intact: her juice-bar-loving heroine initially drowns her sorrows in "places called I Love Juicy or Orange-U-Sweet." Yet Moore seldom satisfies herself with mere pop-cultural mockery. She's too interested in the small and large devastations of life, which her actress is experiencing in spades. "Walter leaned her against his parked car," Moore relates. "His mouth was slightly lopsided, paisley-shaped, his lips anneloid and full, and he kissed her hard. There was something numb and on hold in her. There were small dark pits of annihilation she discovered in her heart, in the loosening fist of it, and she threw herself into them, falling." Elsewhere, the author serves up a similar mixture of one-liners and contemporary grief, lamenting the death of a housecat in "Four Calling Birds, Three French Hens" and the death of a marriage in "Which Is More Than I Can Say About That." And her hilarious account of a nuclear family undergoing a meltdown in "Charades" will make you want to avoid parlor games for the rest of your natural life. --James Marcus [close]
date added	12-27-06 edit book

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Alisa rated it:

03/22/08

Read in March, 2008

**update**

I just had a conversation with my sister about a passage in this book and feel the need to share~ because afterwards she said, "That's why we read!"

There's a lady-character in one of these stories whose boyfriend had a very clear type that she was not~ a type that would likely wear a blunt pageboy haircut. So the douchebag boyfriend had an affair with one, after which Olena "learned to learn his lust" and found herself staring at these women, totally fascin...more **update**

I just had a conversation with my sister about a passage in this book and feel the need to share~ because afterwards she said, "That's why we read!"

There's a lady-character in one of these stories whose boyfriend had a very clear type that she was not~ a type that would likely wear a blunt pageboy haircut. So the douchebag boyfriend had an affair with one, after which Olena "learned to learn his lust" and found herself staring at these women, totally fascinated with them....

She had become him: she longed for these women. But she was also herself, and so she despised them. She lusted after them, but she also wanted to beat them up.
A rapist.
She had become a rapist, driving to work in her car.
But for awhile, it was the only way she could be

That's when I thought of Paris Hilton, and the time I googled her, and watched A Simple Life. I did. My name is Alisa, and ....... ahhhhh, confessions!!! Just for you booksters!!!

Like any normal person, I was baffled by her fame. I was teaching ESL to college students at the time and my European students somehow managed to bring up her name pretty much every day in my Conversation class! I expressed to the guy I was seeing at the time-- and was really just a little too crazy about-- that her strong appeal was very weird to me, that she was not even so extraordinarily pretty..

And he said, with gentle confidence, "She's a cute girl."

My newfound interest in her felt normal and I never stopped to really examine why it was there. My friends were *not* understanding (and why would you??). Now you guys know! Now I know, and now I know that I should've known better! What was I thinking, you guys. Oh, my dear.

This book is full of moments like that for me. Funny, illuminating moments, full of color, wonderfully written.

Also, while reading this book, I really seriously thought I had lost a good friend. Fortunately, it was all in my head. My silly, silly head. And nobody knew the drama that was in there.. This book felt even closer to me then. I shall return to it next time I lose (or strongly believe i have lost) an important person in my life. :-P...less

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5 comments

Forrest rated it:

07/24/07

Read in September, 2006

recommends it for: anyone

Birds of America is a story collection by one of the most talented (but minimal) writers around, Lorrie Moore. The stories here are not big or grand or epic, but work simply as little one-act plays, exposing the inherent complexities and dramas in the everyday lives we all lead.

Moore's writing style is subtle, and laced with a fantastic sense of wit; witness, for example, her slight mocking of the health fad craze in the names she creates for juice bars; or her sly commentary about the misn...more Birds of America is a story collection by one of the most talented (but minimal) writers around, Lorrie Moore. The stories here are not big or grand or epic, but work simply as little one-act plays, exposing the inherent complexities and dramas in the everyday lives we all lead.

Moore's writing style is subtle, and laced with a fantastic sense of wit; witness, for example, her slight mocking of the health fad craze in the names she creates for juice bars; or her sly commentary about the misnomer of "busy bee" in the story "Whatever You Want, Fine." Added to this wit is a keen sense of what it means to be on this earth and to interact with someone else (I'm being cliche here, because I'm no Lorrie Moore), to have an effect upon someone's life simply because you happen to walk a similar road together for awhile, and it is the way in which she explores this truth that gives her stories the weight they need to avoid being simple comic pieces.

The three best stories, in my opinion, are "Four Calling Birds, Three French Hens," "People Like That Are The Only People Here," and "Which is More Than I Can Say About Some People." The first story deals with a woman who has a wonderfully loving husband and a great daughter, but can't get over the loss of her cat, and so decides to undergo therapy that guarentees to "cure her by Christmas or the last session is free!" The second deals with pediatric oncology in a harrowing and moving way, about the distance illness brings between people, and the last deals with a mother and daughter, on a road trip through Ireland, and the ways in which revelations of character don't end simply because you know someone for years and years.

These are wonderful, wonderful stories, the kind that make you think about your own life, examine it in the ways the characters are examined here, that affirm realizations you yourself have come to or guide you toward ones you haven't, and I don't think you can ask for much more than that from a book....less

Like this review? yes (1 person liked it)

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