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303rd out of 1,169 books
—
879 voters
The Nimrod Flipout: Stories
From Israel's most popular and acclaimed young writer--"Stories that are short, strange, funny, deceptively casual in tone and affect, stories that sound like a joke but aren't" (Yann Martel, author of Life of Pi)
Already featured on This American Life and Selected Shorts and in Zoetrope: All Story and L.A. Weekly, these short stories include a man who finds equal pleasure...more
Already featured on This American Life and Selected Shorts and in Zoetrope: All Story and L.A. Weekly, these short stories include a man who finds equal pleasure...more
Paperback, 176 pages
Published
April 4th 2006
by Farrar, Straus and Giroux
(first published 2002)
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after reading: Right, here is the thing about short stories: I just don't like them. And here is why: short stories (like long stories) are either good – and you wonder why the writer didn't just keep writing because now you are really interested in these characters/this scenario/the voice/whatever – or they are not good, and you wonder why you wasted your time.
It should come as no surprise that I, as expected, put our friend Etgar in the former category. Many of these stories are really good! S...more
It should come as no surprise that I, as expected, put our friend Etgar in the former category. Many of these stories are really good! S...more
I had no expectations when I picked up this collection of short stories. It was, along with other books, a surprise gift from a friend–would I like the books? Would I like the stories? I wondered. And oh boy–I certainly do like the stories in this collection!
Etgar Keret is now on my radar–his writing reminds me of Aimee Bender’s short stories, whimsical and so reminiscent of fairy tales, only with a very dark twist. (For instance, a story entitled “Pride and Joy” is about a boy who keeps growing...more
Etgar Keret is now on my radar–his writing reminds me of Aimee Bender’s short stories, whimsical and so reminiscent of fairy tales, only with a very dark twist. (For instance, a story entitled “Pride and Joy” is about a boy who keeps growing...more
I reviewed this for a class I was in so I thought I'd post my revieweven if it is a little to long:
Young Israeli men, their penises, lovers, pets, and business deals are the subjects of this collection of short and very short short stories. Keret speeds through the lives of his lonely characters barely stopping for plot and refusing conclusions but making plenty of space for some phenomenally funny details of Israeli urban life. His characters “puke chopped liver” and encounter a pest control ma...more
Young Israeli men, their penises, lovers, pets, and business deals are the subjects of this collection of short and very short short stories. Keret speeds through the lives of his lonely characters barely stopping for plot and refusing conclusions but making plenty of space for some phenomenally funny details of Israeli urban life. His characters “puke chopped liver” and encounter a pest control ma...more
Maybe this just got too built up for me or something, but... I get it, the tone sounds flippant but it really isn't. That gets kind of samey. Shrug.
I hate to be lazy and quote a critic’s review of a book I just read, but it’s this or nothing. Anyway, Joseph Weisberg in the newest NYT Book Review critiques Keret’s “latest” collection (early work recently released in the US), “The Girl on the Fridge.” Near the end of his review Weisberg states, “If you haven’t read Keret, start with his 2006 collection, “The Nimrod Flipout.” It shows him more fully in command, better able to connect his style to the emotion that lies beneath.” Having only rea...more
Es increíble la habilidad de keret para sacar historias de todos lados. De las situaciones más cotidianas saca fantasías que suelen ser bastante divertidas. De el ser pareja, o no serlo, de los niños, de los adultos, de todos lados parece encontrar humor y fantasías que a veces pueden ser aterradoras. Pero siempre contadas con tal naturalidad que no saltan, sino que parecen hasta lógicas. Porque aún cuando esta contando algo que parece no tener sentido, en el fondo parece estar dándote un retrat...more
Any reader tickled by the early stories of Woody Allen - the one about the moose at a costume party comes to mind - will delight in these stories. They are witty and poignant in unexpected ways, rambling sometimes like a conversation with an underachieving friend you knew in middle school who with the sensibilities of a 14-year-old has had adulthood thrust upon him.
Making meaning of it all, when life was supposed to be simple, is a task that leads his narrators in a hundred circuitous ways to in...more
Making meaning of it all, when life was supposed to be simple, is a task that leads his narrators in a hundred circuitous ways to in...more
I know I'm naive and American (but I'm not ignorant) but Israel's got some funny writers going on. Etgar Keret isn't as hard-hitting and poignant as, say, Sam Lypsite, but he does have that sly hetero-in-love "buddy humor" thing like the narrator Teabag and his friend drug dealer friend Gary in 'Homeland', and a perfect sense of comic timing. The stories in this are usually no more than 3 pages, but each has some delicate bit of truth in it that keeps such a story in your head. Keret writes kind...more
Like a box of chocolate truffles, each bite sized, complex, and mouthwatering
I am at a loss for how to describe Etgar Keret’s work to those who’ve yet to have the pleasure. To comment merely on his stories brevity – the longest I believe comes in at perhaps eight pages and thirty fill this slim volume – would make him seem too much the trickster, a writer with a gag instead of the extraordinary story teller one will meet in “The Nimrod Flipout.” Perhaps instead I might offer examples of a few of...more
I am at a loss for how to describe Etgar Keret’s work to those who’ve yet to have the pleasure. To comment merely on his stories brevity – the longest I believe comes in at perhaps eight pages and thirty fill this slim volume – would make him seem too much the trickster, a writer with a gag instead of the extraordinary story teller one will meet in “The Nimrod Flipout.” Perhaps instead I might offer examples of a few of...more
This is an utterly fantastic collection. I've long been meaning to read some Keret and am so glad that I've finally gotten here. He's capable of doing one of the most challenging things in writing with surprising ease and agility: humor. And not just a smile, but pure laughter, rising on accident, despite suppression and embarrassment at being in public with a bus full of people who don't speak your language.
He gets there through situations. It's not a single sentence that makes you laugh, not a...more
He gets there through situations. It's not a single sentence that makes you laugh, not a...more
"Щом стигнете до най-важния кръстопът в живота си и не знаете как да постъпите, просто се отбивате в най-близкия до дома ви офис на "Втори шанс" и подробно им обяснявате дилемата си. После избирате която си пожелаете от алтернативите и продължавате да живеете нея. Не се притеснявайте, другата опция - тази, която не сте избрали, не отпада. Пускат я да върви на един от техните компютри "Дедабях" и грижливо отчитат всички променливи. След като изживеете каквото сте предпочели докрай, тялото ви се д...more
Within Israeli letters Etgar Keret apparently occupies a sphere of his own. Kind of Raymond Carver like in not only his use of the short story but also in the somberness of tone and subject matter Keret also has definitely learned some things from the schools of magical realism and absurd fiction, and all to his benefit.
Keret's stories, while not all equally brilliant are all substantive and intriguing as all hell. Starting from a basic premise and giving it a simple but integral dark twist Kere...more
Keret's stories, while not all equally brilliant are all substantive and intriguing as all hell. Starting from a basic premise and giving it a simple but integral dark twist Kere...more
I'm not sure how many stars to give this book, because I only liked 2 of the stories in it, but fuck it, those 2 were really good stories!
I'm more interested in Goodreads as a way to share enthusiasm and excitement than I am in a network of Pedagocial Pedigree.
So... If you like short stories then you might really like this book, but I wouldn't g out and buy it. I'd borrow it from your cousin, and then lend it to a friend. Hell, I'd lend it to you, if Mya ever gives it back to me.
The 2 good sto...more
I'm more interested in Goodreads as a way to share enthusiasm and excitement than I am in a network of Pedagocial Pedigree.
So... If you like short stories then you might really like this book, but I wouldn't g out and buy it. I'd borrow it from your cousin, and then lend it to a friend. Hell, I'd lend it to you, if Mya ever gives it back to me.
The 2 good sto...more
Brilliant and fresh. So original that when I first read a few of these stories, about four years ago, I could not get my head around them and wrote Keret off as a gimmicky style-over-substance flash-in-the-pan. I was wrong. These little stories are like mini-morality tales, little lessons in finding humanity in cruel world. Keret is like a modern Israeli Aesop but instead of foxes and donkeys he writes about talking fish and women who give birth to horses. And it makes perfect sense.
The gushing...more
The gushing...more
My wife watched old episodes of Real Housewives. I finished this book.
This is a collection of short stories, some absurd, some pointless, some funny, some dull.
It's really hard to figure out how much I did or didn't like this book. The cover alone sold me on reading the book, and there are times when it almost reaches the heights of absurdity that a picture of a short man in a bunny suit who has just shotgunned a bunch of fat birds promises. With the exception of the story about the guy whose do...more
This is a collection of short stories, some absurd, some pointless, some funny, some dull.
It's really hard to figure out how much I did or didn't like this book. The cover alone sold me on reading the book, and there are times when it almost reaches the heights of absurdity that a picture of a short man in a bunny suit who has just shotgunned a bunch of fat birds promises. With the exception of the story about the guy whose do...more
My second collection of short stories by Keret this year (see my review of The Girl on the Fridge). As in the other book, The Nimrod Flip Out is a set of thirty ultra-short “stories” categorized as quirky, absurdist, and minimalist. These stories often present slices of life (or in some cases, slices of slices of life) filled with strangeness meant to emphasize the absurdities of life and life’s situations and the emotions that fill these situations. Overall, I found this to be a stronger collec...more
Nobody else writes short stories quite like Etgar Keret, but, if I had to come up with an analogy, I would probably compare him to Jorge Luis Borges, although nobody is quite like, or, for that matter, quite as accomplished a short story writer as Borges. Most of the stories in this collection are between three and five pages long, and read as more like (dark, surreal, twisted) parables as they do short stories in the conventional sense. Very few characters are given a third dimension, but nonet...more
OK, es oficial, encontré un nuevo escritor favorito. Cada cuento es sorprendente e ingenioso, y a pesar de que la mayoría de ellos son fantasiosos, te hacen pensar sobre tu propia vida y sentimientos. Leer a Keret es adictivo.
If Sigmund Freud, Salvador Dali, and Quentin Tarantino managed to have a love child and this child wrote a collection of short stories - this would be it. Some really interesting and creative stories are contained in this collection....and some duds (hence my rating of 3 stars). The stories are surreal at times but often thought provoking. Many different themes are covered through the stories - relationships, sex, manhood, friendship, family, death, violence, career, etc. I learned about this au...more
Jul 06, 2008
Erica
rated it
5 of 5 stars
Recommends it for:
everybody
Recommended to Erica by:
Katrina
love love love. some of the best short stories I have ever read. Read this book now! there is a story about the craters on the moon that will take your breath away.
Why did I buy The Nimrod Flipout? Look at the cover, and look at that name. It just seemed so unique and inviting. The Nimrod Flipout is just a bunch of short stories, and some really short stories - like, 2 pages short. The author doesn't really seem to care that much. He comes up with a good, kooky idea or two, or a keen observation or two, and that's a story. Write a real novel and then I'd have something to discuss. Still, the next time you're lost in a bookstore and bored, maybe you'll pick...more
Some stories are fascinating, others are funny and a few are question marks, which entertain. Etgar Keret is very imaginative and the ideas are often surprising.
He never lets you settle in, which I don't love, but which he intends, so I try to be forgiving. Full of the awesomes, though, regardless of my prejudice.
Great selection of short stories, which felt less like reading and more like sitting in a bar listening to the funniest guy you know tell you stories. Not even very funny stories in particular, but... The kind that, given the right storyteller, suddenly become humorous. Also, because it's like listening to your friend tell you stories, it feels so familiar that you kind of sit back and accept everything as it comes. Even when it comes to talking fish, shrinking humans and people giving birth to...more
I think of Keret as the Israeli Murakami, when Murakami's good, that is. Stick with it to the end: the last five stories are especially rewarding.
wow someone out there totally understands my slightly demented sense of humor...ok, completely demented!
I find it hard to believe that I picked up this book just because of the crazy cover art (a mournful looking little fat guy with a smoking rifle surrounded by dead birds). The short stories in this book are amazingly well crafted and extremely powerful. The oddness could leave me a bit befuddled, but in a good way if that makes any sense. Sometimes something is so well written you just get pissed you haven't written anything like that. Sometimes it's so much better than even that and you just re...more
Reviewed at my blog:
I finished The Nimrod Flipout while sitting in my mechanic's office as he patched our tire. Keret's stories are the short, sharp kind that can be killed off in that brief an interval and in such a magnificent place. The last time I chuckled aloud so much at a book was when I discovered David Sedaris. Keret deals in a homey sort of magical realism as if magic was merely the hook for a joke. Really, you should go read some; it will only take a minute.
I finished The Nimrod Flipout while sitting in my mechanic's office as he patched our tire. Keret's stories are the short, sharp kind that can be killed off in that brief an interval and in such a magnificent place. The last time I chuckled aloud so much at a book was when I discovered David Sedaris. Keret deals in a homey sort of magical realism as if magic was merely the hook for a joke. Really, you should go read some; it will only take a minute.
This is a collection of very short, imaginative, surreal stories by an Israeli author. The stories are all well translated into English. Most of the stories have unexpected, absurd twists that took me quite by surprise. They manage to be both sad and humorous at the same time--that's quite a feat! Each story captures a realistic bite of life, and then adds an absurd twist that takes the approach to the extreme. I can just imagine listening to the author, Etgar Keret as a master storyteller, reel...more
Well, first off you need to know how hard it is to write a short story to appreciate the beauty and craft of these. Not that I could do it, but looking at the reviews by people who say Keret "just doesn't care" is infuriating to me…
These are beautiful and kooky and hurtful. I cried more than once, which was more than I laughed. I loved this book. I wanted to read through the whole thing in a night, but it requires time to digest, even the really short stories. I know I didn't understand all of t...more
These are beautiful and kooky and hurtful. I cried more than once, which was more than I laughed. I loved this book. I wanted to read through the whole thing in a night, but it requires time to digest, even the really short stories. I know I didn't understand all of t...more
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Etgar Keret is an Israeli writer known for his short stories, graphic novels, and scriptwriting for film and television.
Keret has received the Prime Minister's award for literature, as well as the Ministry of Culture's Cinema Prize. The short film Malka Lev Adom (Skin Deep, 1996), which Keret wrote and directed with Ran Tal, won an Israel Film Academy award and first place in the Munich Internatio...more
More about Etgar Keret...
Keret has received the Prime Minister's award for literature, as well as the Ministry of Culture's Cinema Prize. The short film Malka Lev Adom (Skin Deep, 1996), which Keret wrote and directed with Ran Tal, won an Israel Film Academy award and first place in the Munich Internatio...more
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“It's amazing how people can sound like retards when they're talking to their girlfriend, especially if they really love her a lot. Because when you're just fucking someone you make a point of keeping your cool, but when you're really in love - it can sound pretty repulsive.”
—
127 people liked it
“According to Gur's theory of boredom, everything that happens in the world today is because of boredom: love, war, inventions, fake fireplaces - ninety-five percent of all that is pure boredom.”
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a woman after my own heart.
:)
(as a story writer, myself).
Dec 13, 2010 08:02am
I knew it. That's where I went wrong. Not even...more
Dec 13, 2010 08:48am