The Book of Other People

by Zadie Smith, David Mitchell (Contributor) George Saunders (Contributor) Colm Tóibín (Contributor) Aleksandar Hemon (Contributor) Nick Hornby (Contributor) Hari Kunzru (Contributor) Toby Litt (Contributor)

book data

673 ratings, 3.39 average rating, 185 reviews (more data...)

rating	frequency	%
5		9%
4		34%
3		43%
2		11%
1		1%

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published

January 2nd 2007 by Penguin (Non-Classics)

binding

Paperback, 352 pages

isbn

0143038184 (isbn13: 9780143038184)

description

The Book of Other People is about character. Twenty-five or so outstanding writers have been asked by Zadie Smith to make up a fictional character. By...more

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05/29/08

Katherine rated it:

Read in June, 2008

I so wanted to like this book. The concept is great - it's a collection of character sketches written by a host of terrific contemporary writers, brought together and sold to raise money for a children's arts charity in NYC. It's edited by Zadie Smith, who I love, and has stories by lots of writers for whom I eagerly await any new book they put out. BUT. This is just not a very good collection. Don't get me wrong, some of the character sketches were great and some were fun and some were tho...more

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02/21/08

Jennifer rated it:

bookshelves: short-stories

This is a collection of short stories to benefit some young writers' program in NYC. I was drawn to it because I recognized the cover-art as being by my favorite comic book artist Daniel Clowes, who also did a short piece for this book (disappointing) as did C. Ware (writer/artist of Jimmy Corrigan.) Three of the stories are written comic/graphic style and the others are just regular non-illustrated short stories. The title of each story is the name of a person (or animal/creature) as each is a...more

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2 comments

01/06/08

Adele rated it:

Read in December, 2007

From the literati club that is the Dave Eggers 826 empire comes this collection of short stories, written by authors for free to benefit 826 New York. The stories were written from the prompt that editor Zadie Smith basically describes as "create a character"-- and mixed results ensue. Smith's story, for example, is a mediocre effort about a father-son relationship that leaves much to be desired. Eggers goes mythical and writes about giants, while Vendela Vida, his wife, delivers st...more

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06/07/08

Eugenie rated it:

Read in May, 2008

recommended to Eugenie by: Jarrett

I most liked the pieces in this collection that were real stories rather than fragments. Despite the impressive cast of writers, too many of the pieces felt like obligatory, though inventive, answers to a character sketch assignment for a writing class. And I think it was just a coincidence, but most of them are pretty bleak. If you read just one, let it be Dave Eggers' achingly beautiful "Theo," about a lovelorn giant. Miranda July, Vendela Vida, and George Saunders also contribute sh...more

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11/04/08

Tattered Cover Book Store added it

bookshelves: amy-h-recommends, staff-recommends

This is an anthology that collects the works of some of today's coolest authors. Jonathan Lethem, Chris Ware, Dave Eggers, Zadie Smith, A.M. Homes, David Mitchell, Jonathan Safran Foer, Nick Hornby, and Z.Z. Packer all made contributions. I especially liked Mitchell's and Saunder's contributions. I must say, the fact that this is a collection of character sketches rather than short stories is
incredibly intriguing to me. Oh. The proceeds from the sales will be donated to that literacy c...more

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02/02/09

Alistair Ashe rated it:

Read in October, 2007

I really enjoyed this book as an introduction to contemporary writers (whom to which I may have not been introduced) and a study on character.

There are some excellent submissions that, although this may sound cliché will move you to laughter then to tears (with sometime the fewest of words. It’s an easy read - but one to savour (my advice is to read each story separately and return to the book later).

Selected Favorites: Magda Mandela by Hari Kunzru ("I know you!), Sol...more

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07/31/08

Kara rated it:

bookshelves: short-stories-and-essays

Read in July, 2008

I loved reading this book. There were many times through out this book where I stopped to re-read a sentence and soak it in because of it’s poetic nature. I loved the gathering of authors that contributed to this book, this book that focuses on character alone. Also another plus of this book is that some of the proceeds of the sale go to a children’s literacy fund in NY.

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2 comments

01/21/08

Rob rated it:

Read in January, 2008

gets four stars because there are some 2 and some 5 star stories in the collection. but it's more than worth a read, if only to give a clue to some authors that you haven't read yet...

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05/21/08

Anina Ertel rated it:

(review of isbn 0241143632)

Read in May, 2008

best story in this book...magda mandela by zz packer...i read it about 9 times this weekend and i never do that

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01/07/09

Sarah rated it:

Read in March, 2009

So far, it's amazing! I love the characters, especially Judith Castle, the uppity, overly-dramatic, manipulative Judith.

Every day I go to read one of the short stories and end up reading 3 or 4. It's addicting. I haven't come across any I hated and only a few that left me indifferent.

I enjoy the varieties of characters from the eccentric to ordinary. I identified with Miranda July's what-ifs, Judge Gladys Parks-Schultz's blame game, and Gabrielle's ingenuity in s...more

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12/21/08

Chriso rated it:

Read in April, 2009

This turned out to be a largely fantastic collection of stories. It's always going to be difficult to please one reader from start to finish in a book like this with so many authors and different styles and voices. But I was loving it more than I wasn't throughout. The concept, put forth by editor Zadie Smith, was "make somebody up". So the book is a study in characters and all of the different ways they can be introduced and presented to readers. I found myself drawn into so many diff...more

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12/20/08

Stephanie rated it:

Read in February, 2008

THESE days, it seems that the best way to make it in the literary world is not to slog away at submitting short stories to journals, but to write an epic novel at a dazzlingly young age -- see young and acclaimed writers like Zadie Smith, Jonathan Safran Foer, David Mitchell and Dave Eggers. Thus, it can seem as if the art of crafting short stories seems all but lost, or at least increasingly irrelevant.
Still, every once in a while a publishing house will come up with a collection of short...more THESE days, it seems that the best way to make it in the literary world is not to slog away at submitting short stories to journals, but to write an epic novel at a dazzlingly young age -- see young and acclaimed writers like Zadie Smith, Jonathan Safran Foer, David Mitchell and Dave Eggers. Thus, it can seem as if the art of crafting short stories seems all but lost, or at least increasingly irrelevant.
Still, every once in a while a publishing house will come up with a collection of short stories featurung well-known novelists, the offerings either a revelation as to the writer's gift for the conciseness and clarity required in short story writing, or evidence that they should stick to the more generous boundaries of the novel.
This time, publishing giant Penguin has released The Book Of Other People, edited by none other than British novelist Smith -- she of White Teeth and On Beauty fame.
The writers featured are, like Smith, mostly young and acclaimed. Thus you'll find Granta's "Best of Young British Novelists" like Hari Kunzru (The Impressionist) and David Mitchell (number9dream) and American wunderkinds like the New York Jonathans -- Safran Foer (Everything Is Illuminated) and Lethem (Motherless Brooklyn).
As the book's title suggests, their mission, as instructed by Smith, is to "make somebody up". As charity is fashionable these days, all profits from the sale of this book will go to American writer and publisher Dave Eggers' 826 NYC, a charity promoting children's literacy.
Or, as Smith writes in her introduction: "real people making fictional people work for real people -- a rare example of fictional people pulling their own weight for once."
Writing a story about a character is at once easier and harder than you might think. Easy because, well, all stories, especially short stories, are really about a protagonist anyway. Hard because, with the focus so much on character, the onus is on the writer to examine what it is that makes a character interesting, compelling and memorable in the first place.
Is it weird characteristics, or a beguiling narrative voice? Do exciting circumstances add to character or overwhelm it? It's all too easy to give your character a memorable name, but can you convince the reader that the character as a soul?
The collection is arranged alphabetically by the last name of the character. Thus, it gets off to a rather weak start with David Mitchell's Judith Castle, a rather conventional portrait of a self-deluded woman from a dysfunctional family, and a twist at the end you can literally guess from the first page.
But you are not obliged to read the stories in order, and once you get going, you discover lots of stories which, charcater portraits aside, are simply well-crafted stories in themselves.
One that stands out is Soleil by American author Vendela Vida (who, incidentally, is married to Eggers), about an aging party girl whose carefree attitude, as observed by the 12-year-old narrator, reveals a vulnerability and insecurity mirrored by the narrator's own adolescence.
Another, Foer's Rhonda, displays in a monologue his gift for creating quirky narrative voices, as the weathered and cantankerous Jewish grandmother spills out her life story and philosophy while trying to get her grandson to eat something.
Some people cheat on the assignment, like George Saunders in Puppy, which is not really about the titular puppy, but a bleakly humorous story about two mothers involved in the buying and selling of the puppy, their life situations seemingly different but their personalities more similar than they would ever dream.
And some are simply brilliant comic gems, like Miranda July's Roy Spivey, a tale about a woman's brief connection with a movie star on a plane which manages to be at once hilarious and yet magically wistful.
The Book Of Other People is not limited to humans. British author Toby Litt writes a rather twee one about a monster named, well, The Monster, while Eggers offers a wonderful portrait of the melancholic giant Theo, whose gargantuan size belies his utterly human-scaled loneliness.
But some stories are just so sprawling, the ending so awkward, that it's clear that the novelist is really more comfortable with the sprawl of a novel than the discipline of a short story. Thus Lethem weaves an quirky, Bartelby-esque character in Perkus Tooth, but gets so carried away with describing his character's wonky eye and mysterious migraines that he forgets about plot, resulting in a rather abrupt and trite ending.
Like different people, different stories will appeal to different readers. You will love some, you will hate some, you will skip some. Some will make you cry. Perhaps, when you look up from reading this and your eyes meet someone else's across a crowded train, you will think: I wonder what his story is.
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09/30/08

Christoffer rated it:

bookshelves: 3-stars, books-i-own, fiction, short-stories

Read in October, 2008

The Book of Other People is a compilation of short stories from twenty-three different authors. The stories are as varied as the authors who wrote them. They range from really bad to really good, to funny, to sad, to weird and two of them are cartoons. There is definitely something for everybody in the Book of Other People. I’m the kind of person who reads a book from start to finish and even thought this is a book of many short stories I forced myself to read them one by one in the ‘right�...more

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08/25/08

saxonb rated it:

Read in August, 2008

(NOTE: NOT by Zadie Smith. Rather a collection of shorts edited by Smith.)

Its difficult to rate a collection of short stories by different authors. Do you rate the collection on its selections? Each individual story? The concept? I dunno. That being said, Zadie Smith decided to put together a book about "character." Her instructions to these authors was simply, "make someone up." She then also had a portion of the proceeds go towards 826 NY.

The storie...more

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06/27/08

Ukrainer rated it:

Read in June, 2008

I’d considered reading The Book of Other People, a collection of short stories by “the best writers of their generation,” several months ago. However, I didn’t get the impetus to actually read it until I discovered Aleksandar Hemon a few weeks ago. He, along with other favorites like Jonathan Safran Foer and Nick Hornby, contributed to the collection.

Ironically, Hemon’s short story, “The Liar,” is the most disappointing in the collection, reminding me of something a nov...more

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06/26/08

Brittany rated it:

bookshelves: compilations, literary-fiction, short-stories

Has a copy to sell/swap — Read in December, 2008

recommended to Brittany by: Glamour magazine
recommends it for: People looking to discover new authors, Fans of short stories, Fans of these authors

How I Came To Read This Book: Thanks to some skilled books publicity mongrels, this book showed up in a few magazines I read, and I spotted it at Chapters, and just generally wanted to read it. I bought it about a year ago maybe?

The Plot: Erm, well, the 'idea' behind the book is Zadie Smith is the editor of this collection of short stories - all profits go towards a writing program for underprivileged youth. The caveat of the stories is they are all supposed to revolve around the cr...more How I Came To Read This Book: Thanks to some skilled books publicity mongrels, this book showed up in a few magazines I read, and I spotted it at Chapters, and just generally wanted to read it. I bought it about a year ago maybe?

The Plot: Erm, well, the 'idea' behind the book is Zadie Smith is the editor of this collection of short stories - all profits go towards a writing program for underprivileged youth. The caveat of the stories is they are all supposed to revolve around the creation of a character - a fun exercise for the 20+ writers involved I'm sure. The actual characters range from monsters to babies to husbands to friends...and even, somewhat indirectly, about a puppy, in possibly the saddest story in the entire book.

The Good & The Bad: I'm not a short story reader, but I do want to make it my goal to read a book of short stories a year. Admittedly I liked a handful of these stories - about a third - but many left me uncaring, to the point of being bored sometimes (eep!). In comparison to other short story collections I've read, this one was almost *too* loosely themed and I just couldn't get a good flow / connection going. That being said, there are some really well-written, very thoughtful, and at times, heartwrenching pieces. My personal favourites included: - the first one, Judith Castle, the story of a woman whose 'one true love' has suddenly passed away
- Frank, although a bit disjointed, had some really memorable parts, I especially loved his speech about waves and repeat buttons on stereos
- Lele felt like a novel sample rather than a short story, but it still worked and told me a lot about the character of a woman who is pregnant but mysteriously estranged from her husband
- The Liar was interesting, a memorable departure from the rest of the book as it isn't a *new* character, just a reinvention of perhaps the most famous character of our time
- Jordan Wellington Lint was definitely the best of the graphic stories, an abstract visual tale of the thoughts of a young boy
- Puppy was freaking sad on so many counts...
- Soleil was interesting, although felt a bit Short Story 101
- Had Roy Spivey not spelled out the ending for the main character (not Roy Spivey) I would have enjoyed it more, but it was possibly my fave in the book

The Bottom Line: An interesting author sampler, but a bit too loose in terms of theme to satisfy me

Anything Memorable?: This book took me some sweet time to read - but that's okay cause it was really just a surplus to my annual challenge

50-Book Challenge: Book #51 in 2008(less)

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04/28/08

Brian rated it:

Read in February, 2009

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

The Book of Other People is a collection of short stories by 23 different writers who were tasked to "make somebody up." I most enjoyed ZZ Packer's "Gideon," which is actually online at The Guardian. I liked "Donal Webster," I liked "Lele," I liked the comic (graphic short story?) "Jordan Wellington Lint."

I thought a lot about "Rhoda", Jonathan Safran Foer's contribution. A Jewish grandmother begins by asking you, "Hav...more

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03/16/08

Nickie rated it:

(review of isbn 0241143632)

Read in March, 2008

It's annoying to have to judge this as a collection, as it's so variable. The good stories are very bloody good. I love the fact that Zadie Smith (ed) included comics/graphics. The Chris Ware story is one of the best things I've ever read. The Daniel Clowes good. Hari Kunzru ace - wanna read some of his. Miranda July good. Dave Eggers, Colm Toibin, Aleksander Hemon all well written, nice nice.

But it all kicks off with David Mitchell. I've not read Cloud Atlas or any of them and I ain...more

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01/27/08

anne rated it:

bookshelves: short-story-ies

The four stars are mostly because I am left with a generally happy feeling after reading this book.
Of course, different authors' short stories means, just like everyone has said, that the quality level was different for each. In fact, the enjoyment level was clearly also different for each reader, because there's many different picks in the reviews I've read so far, here, there, and everywhere.
Quite a few of those stories I really liked, most of all Perkus Tooth, but also Puppy (unf...more

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01/14/08

Izetta Autumn rated it:

bookshelves: shortstory

Read in May, 2008

What a gem! I truly enjoyed this collection of short stories, edited by Zadie Smith. As the title indicates, Other People's Lives, is character focused, designed to act as a window into the lives of each protagonist. The result is a collection of inspired writing - and the bonus is that the sale of the book benefits 826 Valencia, a non-profit organization that works with young people to develop their writing skills. Without a doubt each author brings to life an intriguing character, peeling bac...more