Twilight of the Superheroes: Stories
by Deborah Eisenberg
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other reviews (showing 1-20 of 399)
Read in September, 2007
Okay, I've now finished the book and I have to say that while it did get a little better, it wasn't by much.
The first story is AWFUL. She lectures you on things you already know, repeats the same crap over and over, and while the disjointed sections didn't really bother me, they didn't really add up to anything for me. It just seems like the story was pretty pointless. Unless the point was that after 9/11 we're just totally adrift. Maybe in the year or so afterwards it felt like that, ...more
The first story is AWFUL. She lectures you on things you already know, repeats the same crap over and over, and while the disjointed sections didn't really bother me, they didn't really add up to anything for me. It just seems like the story was pretty pointless. Unless the point was that after 9/11 we're just totally adrift. Maybe in the year or so afterwards it felt like that, ...more
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Read in December, 2007
I may just have to give up on reading short stories. Every so often, I am seduced anew by the breathless, hagiographic blurbs on the cover of the latest hip author's contribution to the genre, to the point where I actually allow myself to believe that the book in question really will be "exhaustingly fascinating", "spirited and masterly", the next {Jim Shepard, Alice Munro, Chekhov, Lorrie Moore, John Cheever.....}. Hope springs eternal.
Yet somehow, things never quite tur...more
Yet somehow, things never quite tur...more
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Read in January, 2007
A NY Times Notable Book of the Year from 2006 that got tons of press, this book is a collection of six short stories filled with the tension of lives post 9/11. The book’s title is the title of its first story, a look at the fractured lives of four twenty-something New Yorkers who were subletting an apartment with a view of the Twin Towers. “The Flaw in the Design” focuses on the tension between a son and his father; the son despises his family’s wealth and upbringing and his father’s...more
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Read in September, 2007
recommends it for:
People who like terrible writing
This book is emblematic of everything that's wrong with contemporary "literary" fiction. The only thing I can find of any interesting literary value here is the last paragraph or so of the titular first story. This book was reviewed well by a lot of publications, and I can't for the life of me understand why. I can only assume that the people who reviewed this book well are the same kind of people who like the whiny, affected fiction they print in The New Yorker and Diane Johns...more
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Read in October, 2007
recommends it for:
Patrick
You know, I don't hear too much about Deborah Eisenberg. Admittedly I am not exactly hanging out with Bill Buford and Charles McGrath, and spend 90 percent of my time talking to a baby (who frequently mentions Lorrie Moore and Alice Munro, but that's pretty much it.) But I find that she writes some of the best, richest, most alive, complex and affecting short stories I've ever read. I'm not sure this would be my favorite book of hers - I am partial to Transactions in a Foreign Currency, maybe be...more
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"The dining room was an aerie, a bower, hung with a playful lattice of garlands. Its white tile floors were adorned with painted baskets of fruit, and there were real ones scattered here and there on stands. But even as the waiters glided by with trays of glossy roasted vegetables and platters of fish, even while Harry took it upon himself to order for her, knowledgeably and solicitously, Kate felt tainted. Despite the room's conceit that eating was a pastime for elves and fairies, Mrs....more
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whoa. she writes about things that it seems like you shouldn't, in a way that it seems like you shouldn't. which only means, of course, that no one else does. people compare her to alice munro all over the place which is ridiculous because she is not at all economical with her words. it is liberating to read all that conversational padding in a short story. in the last story, the last two pages take away as much as they give to the reader - they show you that while you thought you had total acce...more
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I loved this book. The meandering, internal stream-of-consciousness style may not be for everyone, but it is just right for me. Even more important is that this is one of the first books I have read that could be classified as "post 9/11 literature." Not that it is about 9/11 -- not at all. One story touches on it. But what it does is it captures life in NYC post 9/11 with an unselfconsciousness and honesty that I have not yet seen -- usually it's not till a decade, at least, after som...more
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Read in June, 2007
The first two stories are really pretty amazing. There are a couple others in here that also resonated with me and then a couple that I just didn't enjoy.
The writing's occasionally a little patchy, but Eisenberg's observations are always pretty on-point and fascinating. At her best, she's identifiable to the point of being devastating and at worst she's a pretty astute study of human behavior. Occasionally excessively melodramatic and sometimes just a little uninteresting, but overall worth ...more
The writing's occasionally a little patchy, but Eisenberg's observations are always pretty on-point and fascinating. At her best, she's identifiable to the point of being devastating and at worst she's a pretty astute study of human behavior. Occasionally excessively melodramatic and sometimes just a little uninteresting, but overall worth ...more
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Read in May, 2007
The best of these stories — the title story and "Some Other, Better Otto" — are perfectly misshapen masterpieces chronicling The Way We Live Now. These are stories not only about the biggest questions of ethics and identity, but also about the processes by which we go about asking and answering such questions for ourselves.
A few of the stories lack the clarity and audacity of the collection's best, and occasionally Eisenberg's structural experimentation becomes frustrating or p...more
A few of the stories lack the clarity and audacity of the collection's best, and occasionally Eisenberg's structural experimentation becomes frustrating or p...more
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Subtle and realistic, these stories are often powerful dramas of domestic and family strife. 9-11 hangs over several of the stories in unusual and affecting ways, including a couple of stories that lay bare the rationalizations that we comfortable Americans, even the best-intentioned of us, must make when you consider that an average American life is, as one character says, a "theft" from the rest of the world. But these stories don:t go into service of a message __ they are closely in...more
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Read in April, 2008
If you have just picked up this book, and find yourself mired in the title story then I have this advice: keep reading. It gets way, way better. I saw Deborah Eisenberg read in Brooklyn, and she herself chose to illuminate a section from "Revenge of the Dinosaurs", which captures a dialogue between a brother and sister that is wholly believable and frighteningly raw. My stand-out favorite story of the collection is "Window" but really all of them, with the exception of &qu...more
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Read in January, 2006
Often times short stories are over too quickly, or are written with a joke formula, heading directly to the punchline from the first word. I discovered Eisenberg from a review in Harpers and to paraphrase, She approaches the short story as if she is writing a novel. Every story in this book is beautiful, eloquent and wonderfully paced. Eisenberg is one of the few author's who treats the charachters in the short story with the same humanity as the masters of the novel.
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Deborah Eisenberg is US's answer to Alice Munro. It's tough for anyone to be compared to Munro, especially someone who often deals with similar topics. The title story, "Twilight of the Superheroes" is especially weak. A flimsy portrayal about 9/11 that is not imaginative and devoid of intensity or feeling.
I did enjoy the rest of the collection, although her stories do not leave the lasting and vivid impressions that Munro's does.
I did enjoy the rest of the collection, although her stories do not leave the lasting and vivid impressions that Munro's does.
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Read in August, 2007
I was disappointed by this book. I remember loving The Collected Stories of Deborah Eisenberg...So Far, and these stories didn't grab me the same way. They seemed to be *trying* to live up to a disaffected postmodern approach. Maybe I'm just not with it right now, but at some points I couldn't even figure out the abrupt time shifts. There were a few well-turned phrases, but not enough to make the book. Oh well.
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Read in April, 2008
Would have been one star, but the first half of the first story was pretty good (and was the reason I kept reading), and elements of the last story were somewhat interesting.
The jacket says "...Deborah Eisenberg seems incapable of writing a bad short story." I'd say that's pretty much true. But she's also incapable of writing a really good one. They're all just technically proficient, without being moving.
The jacket says "...Deborah Eisenberg seems incapable of writing a bad short story." I'd say that's pretty much true. But she's also incapable of writing a really good one. They're all just technically proficient, without being moving.
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If you can get past the stagey dialogue and severe, almost offensive, overuse of exclamation marks (!) this collection offers a lot: well-crafted stories with astute observations of the tensions and conflicts of family units. Eisenberg tackles issues of mental illness, sexuality, domestic violence, infidelity, the pressures of aging--all within the framework of a post-9/11 paranoia.
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Read in January, 2007
recommends it for:
everyone
This is a collection that will last--and continue to show what the possibilities are for the short story. I've read each story more than once, and some several times, because they stay exhilarating and moving. Eisenberg doesn't sound like anyone else, doesn't write like anyone else, and she brings me pleasures I can't find anywhere else.
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Read in January, 2007
I found the much-praised title story to be the weakest effort here. Eisenberg tries to connect 9/11 with the passivity of the younger generation, which is a stretch at best. The other stories are well written, subtly funny, and filled with strong characterization. But there's nothing mind-blowing here. Overrated.
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Read in January, 2006
recommends it for:
anyone who loves short stories
This is one of my favorite short story collections of all time, tied, I think, with The Progress of Love by Alice Munro, and maybe also Birds of America by Lori Moore, and oh yeah, of course, Dubliners. But in terms of contemporary short story writers, you don't get much better than Deborah Eisenberg. She's my hero.
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book data (includes all editions)
avg rating (all editions): 3.62 (256 ratings) avg rating (this edition): 3.65 (233 ratings) number of reviews: 54popular shelves
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"It's broadening. You meet people in your family you'd never happen to run into otherwise."
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