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79th out of 100 books
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Love and Obstacles
A new book of linked stories by the author of the National Book Award finalist The Lazarus Project.
Aleksandar Hemon earned his reputation- and his MacArthur "genius grant"-for his short stories, and he returns to the form with a powerful collection of linked stories that stands with The Lazarus Project as the best work of his celebrated career. A few of the stor...more
Aleksandar Hemon earned his reputation- and his MacArthur "genius grant"-for his short stories, and he returns to the form with a powerful collection of linked stories that stands with The Lazarus Project as the best work of his celebrated career. A few of the stor...more
Hardcover, 224 pages
Published
May 14th 2009
by Riverhead Hardcover
(first published January 1st 2009)
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Robertha
added it
Who knew I could get so bored by a Hemon collection of short stories? I've heard him speak; I've loved the work he's presented on stage, yet I can't wait for this book to be over already.
The material isn't dull. I like the tales o exiles and immigrants and the gloriously observed bizarrerie of the America that they are confronted with. It's just a bit cold, this book. Very intellectualized, somewhat choked emotionally.
Yawn. I already know enough men like that. Don't need them...more
The material isn't dull. I like the tales o exiles and immigrants and the gloriously observed bizarrerie of the America that they are confronted with. It's just a bit cold, this book. Very intellectualized, somewhat choked emotionally.
Yawn. I already know enough men like that. Don't need them...more
Made up of eight interconnected short stories, Love and Obstacles details various aspects of a Bosnian's life as he begins in Sarajevo as a child and then, due to horrific warfare, lives in Chicago as an adult. While each story has moments of great depth and even greater hilarity, I must admit that I found myself largely uninterested for most of the book.
Don't misunderstand, a few of the stories such as "Szmura's Room," "The Bees, Part I," and "Death of the Ame...more
Don't misunderstand, a few of the stories such as "Szmura's Room," "The Bees, Part I," and "Death of the Ame...more
Great short stories with something autobiographically Hemon on every page. Settings vary: Africa, the States, Bosnia before and after the war. As we read the stories the author figures in them to varying degrees. And the war seeps into each story in the collection. In "Everything" we board the train with him and he's a pimply, underconfident teenager sent on a mission to purchase a freezer for the family. In "American Commando", we go back further in time to when he's ...more
I did not like this. And the main reason for this dislike is the fact that I cannot wrap my head around it.
The thing is, I was very much confused as to the nature of this book. It was a collection of stories, and yet the stories were linked with each other, in fact, too linked to each other that I am not sure whether this is a novel or not. The whole collection of stories sounded like several chapters of a novel about this one person.
Now the other disturbing thing is that thi...more
The thing is, I was very much confused as to the nature of this book. It was a collection of stories, and yet the stories were linked with each other, in fact, too linked to each other that I am not sure whether this is a novel or not. The whole collection of stories sounded like several chapters of a novel about this one person.
Now the other disturbing thing is that thi...more
As a young writer, Aleksander Hemon has already accumulated a lifetime of writer accolades: he’s a MacArthur Foundation “genius” grant recipient, he’s been a Guggenheim fellow, and both of his recent books (“The Lazarus Project” and “Nowhere Man”) have been short-listed for the National Book Award. So expectations for “Love and Obstacles,” a collection of short stories, was high. Aleksander Hemon did not disappoint.
It takes a little while to immerse yourself in the autobiographical w...more
It takes a little while to immerse yourself in the autobiographical w...more
New Yorker: How much of your work is autobiographical Mr. Hemon?
AH: “Here’s how it works: Last night, on my way to give a reading, I hurt a ligament in my right hand while putting my shoe on. As I was driving this morning and talking on the phone with my sister in London, I lost my grip and sideswept my neighbor’s car. Being honest, I went to their house to tell them what I had done. When I rang the bell nobody answered. I knocked and went in anyway, thinking they might be in the bac...more
AH: “Here’s how it works: Last night, on my way to give a reading, I hurt a ligament in my right hand while putting my shoe on. As I was driving this morning and talking on the phone with my sister in London, I lost my grip and sideswept my neighbor’s car. Being honest, I went to their house to tell them what I had done. When I rang the bell nobody answered. I knocked and went in anyway, thinking they might be in the bac...more
I should have written this while it was fresh in my mind. Now it's been a week and I can't remember all the things I liked about it
Oh well, on the whole, I think I like Hemon better as a short story writer than a novelist. Possibly it's the result of his wonderfully playful and lyrical sentences. This makes his stories seem dense and packed with meaning, but at times in The Lazarus Project, I felt like it actually bogged down the pace of the book. Too much of a good thing, perhaps. ...more
Oh well, on the whole, I think I like Hemon better as a short story writer than a novelist. Possibly it's the result of his wonderfully playful and lyrical sentences. This makes his stories seem dense and packed with meaning, but at times in The Lazarus Project, I felt like it actually bogged down the pace of the book. Too much of a good thing, perhaps. ...more
"""Steeped ... in male ego [and] sexuality"" (Houston Chronicle), Hemon's wry, robust, and entertaining stories bring to light the immigrant's hunger for identity -- caught between two worlds but truly belonging to neither -- and the writer's hunger for validation. Poised between two worlds himself, Hemon's vantage point and marvelous flair for the English language yield deliciously sardonic cultural observations and ask insightful questions about the meaning of family a...more
i will start by reminding everyone that i love aleksandar hemon. and i'll also note that if i could do a half star, this review would look more like 3.5 stars. i'm part way between liking this novel and loving it.
i'm a junkie for short stories, which are no longer in vogue. its hard to find a great collection of short stories. the art was lost somewhere along the way. i'll save my opinions on short stories for another day, though. but i was curious about hemon's collection an...more
i'm a junkie for short stories, which are no longer in vogue. its hard to find a great collection of short stories. the art was lost somewhere along the way. i'll save my opinions on short stories for another day, though. but i was curious about hemon's collection an...more
I've been wanting to read something by this author for awhile now, mainly because he is originally from Sarajevo, in Bosnia (actually was Yugoslavia when he grew up). Having myself lived for several years in Croatia, one of Bosnia's neighboring countries, I have sort of a love for reading about the former Yugoslavia. And that particular connection was one thing I loved most about these short stories.
In general I enjoyed them - some more than others, of course. There was a bit too mu...more
In general I enjoyed them - some more than others, of course. There was a bit too mu...more
The guy's being compared to Nabokov, how could I not give his work a try? Love And Obstacles is short, containing eight short-stories with set similarities and recurring themes. Each protagonist is an immigrant to the United States from Bosnia, and there's always a poet/writer. Sounding rather familiar, Mr. Hemon; Mr. Nabokov?
Most of the stories also center around The Bosnian War and male adolescence. "In Hemon's hands, seemingly mundane childhood experiences become daring, dram...more
Most of the stories also center around The Bosnian War and male adolescence. "In Hemon's hands, seemingly mundane childhood experiences become daring, dram...more
Kirstie
rated it
Recommends it for:
People interested in the essence of the human story, those interested in this author
I really think Aleksandar Hemon is one of the most underrated authors of our time. Though I think some of his other works are more astounding outright, this is very subtly effective in its statements. He's had an interesting life and no doubt that helps make these stories diverse and exceptional. It's interesting to see how others and his experience have shaped him, making him one of the greatest authors of today. In this book, he skirts the line between what seems like fiction and nonfictio...more
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Reading Hemon gives you a thrilling freedom, a brief liberation from the standards of the English language. He describes people, objects, and phenomena with the fresh incredulity of an alien being, somehow blessed with the observational skills of Didion and the image pool of Milosz. His stories are taut; brief scenes, crisp as gunfire, clatter across the pages, while jokes, triumphs and crises perform clever, recursive dances throughout. Much is made of Hemon's ability to observe American cultur...more
Reviewers find it difficult to resist comparing Aleksandar Hemon to Nabokov, since both men are expatriates whose preternatural facility in their second, acquired language seems shadowed by the ghostly overtones of their first. The stories in "Love and Obstacles" are intricate and droll, with tricky narrative rhythms that only occasionally stumble over self-consciously literary language. Like Adichie, Hemon gets well-earned mileage out of the reliable trope of the foreigner encounterin...more
Judging by this collection, Aleksandar Hemon is an average storyteller. Well, average in the sense of literary talent. His characters are pretty average. In most ways, Hemon's stories seem pretty average.
Where Hemon stands out from the rest of his literary contemporaries, however, is in his use of language. It is both gorgeous and original. He is able to paint an image of a common object in a way no one has before, and he does it over and again. Sometimes it is a stretch--but i...more
Where Hemon stands out from the rest of his literary contemporaries, however, is in his use of language. It is both gorgeous and original. He is able to paint an image of a common object in a way no one has before, and he does it over and again. Sometimes it is a stretch--but i...more
I liked this, but didn't love it. A lot of the stories were a bit sprawling and I, being lazy, wanted something I could hold in my hand, look at, and then chomp in one bite. "Good Living" gave this to me. Many of the other stories are layered with I suppose "postmodern" . . . um, layers, with snippets of other authors' work, which authors the first-person, basically unnamed protagonist comes in contact with along the way. I thought this was handled well, and was never devicey...more
I'm having a hard time separating these stories from This Cake is for the Party (which I also struggled to review!) because I read them back to back and keep thinking about them together although they aren't similar. I don't feel I have much to say - the stories had such a different tone to them compared to other things I've read and I can't quite put my finger on it yet. I just flipped through to check the title of the story I thought was my favourite, but looking through, I think I liked them ...more
With this collection of short stories, Aleksandar Hemon continues to blur the line (or obliterate it, maybe) between nonfiction and fiction. It all seems so much like autobiography, and it all hews so close to his real life, that it's hard to seperate author and subject in more than one place. Of course, who cares as long as the stories are good, and they are. It's a more cohesive and consistent collection than The Question of Bruno, but doesn't quite hit the same highs as the best stories in...more
Alta
added it
Like Nowhere Man and The Question of Bruno, Aleksandar Hemon’s Love and Obstacles is a collection of short stories whose main narrator is a Bosnian man of Ukrainian extraction, or an American man of Bosnian-Ukrainian origin, whose father has worked as a diplomat in Africa and the Middle East during communism.
Another autobiographical element is the fact that in the early nineties, when he was a recent immigrant in Chicago, Hemon (apparently) worked as a door-to-door magazine sales...more
Another autobiographical element is the fact that in the early nineties, when he was a recent immigrant in Chicago, Hemon (apparently) worked as a door-to-door magazine sales...more
Better than *The Lazarus Project,* not as good as *Nowhere Man.* Violence and alcoholism, with a sprinkling of drugs. (On the other hand, more sexual frustration than sex.) Identity issues. Some but, thankfully, not too much spy-related material. A generous serving of meta-fiction. I really liked two of the stories, the one about Dedo and the one about a Pulitzer-prize winning war-novelist. Not too bad, but Hemon can do better. He just needs some time and variety.
Love and Other Obstacles is filled with entertaining stories narrated by a young man living in Sarajevo who leaves for the United States just as his city is torn apart in the 1992 Bosnian Wars. Hemon does a wonderful job of illustrating an immigrants struggle between the world he came from and the one he strives to now fit into.
It took awhile for me to warm up to this novel. Overall, I enjoy Hemon's writing, but definitely favored The Lazarus Project over this novel.
It took awhile for me to warm up to this novel. Overall, I enjoy Hemon's writing, but definitely favored The Lazarus Project over this novel.
Hemon's supposed to be some sort of literary genius? After the first three stories, I gave up trying to pretend to be interested and picked up my next book in the pile. Maybe I'll try again some day...
Couldn't leave well enough alone. And I'm grateful for that today. Just finished "Conductor" and "Good Living" and suddenly I am transfixed, transformed by the detail of the priest's flaking scalp, the smell of Dedo's infected gums, and the immaculate selfishness of th...more
Couldn't leave well enough alone. And I'm grateful for that today. Just finished "Conductor" and "Good Living" and suddenly I am transfixed, transformed by the detail of the priest's flaking scalp, the smell of Dedo's infected gums, and the immaculate selfishness of th...more
I read this book after reading a review of it in The Week and I really liked it. It is written by a Bosnian author and the stories take place both in Bosnia and the US before and after the war. Although it is a collection of short stories, it is all told by the same narrator, so it feels more like a slightly disjointed novel. I loved the writing style and the images and characters created by the author. I especially loved the character of the father and his stories about beekeeping.
This was my first experience reading anything by Hemon, and it was powerful. He is a masterful writer, a gripping storyteller. The experience left me a little dazed and a lot humbled at the prospect of writing anything. His last story about his own experience meeting a prize-winning writer left me feeling hopeful rather than wistful. If you don't read "Love and Obstacles" in its entirety (the first story is particularly rough), at least read "American Commando." It is classic...more
I LOVED "The Lazarus Project," but this collection left me cold. Too many of the stories went nowhere and seemed content to stare at the navel for a while and then end on a strikingly odd note. It seemed to sorely lack "TLP's" plot and the emotional engagement provided by that novel's exploration of a horrific historical event. He's a great, great writer but is best served when he has a story to tell.
Not my style of writing or preferred reading material.
I appreciate his process and clear talent, simply was not anything I would chose to read. In fact I slogged through simply to finish it, something I try to avoid.
Had read at least 4 of these in The New Yorker and thought maybe their abridged version altered my experience. It had not.
I appreciate his process and clear talent, simply was not anything I would chose to read. In fact I slogged through simply to finish it, something I try to avoid.
Had read at least 4 of these in The New Yorker and thought maybe their abridged version altered my experience. It had not.
I'm not generally a big fan of short stories, but Hemon might be the most exciting writer of them today. This collection doesn't quite measure up to his earlier efforts, but some of the stories are amazing and his prose is still among the best of current writers, a mix of dry humour and incredible sadness paired with an inventiveness that is rarely seem and hard to resist.
It's a Hemon book, so of course I liked it, but I have to say that this being the fourth book of his that I have read, I would love to see him tackle a different subject. I still think Nowhere Man is the best example of combining the Bosnia immigrant experience/identity with some really interesting writing. Everything other book or book of stories kinda just blends together...
I was not expecting to like this book so much. It's a collection of "coming of age" short stories told from the perspective of a teenager/young man who moves to the United States from Sarajevo during the Bosnian War. The stories are artfully written and thought provoking. I can't wait to read more from this author.
This was a fun, quick read that I could pick up and put down as needed. The short stories had a fun theme that linked them all together. Some of the stories are so lewd that they made me laugh out loud (I had to stifle my laughter on crowded trains). Some of the stories remind me of similar stories of college friends.
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Hemon graduated from the University of Sarajevo with a degree in literature in 1990. He moved to Chicago, Illinois in 1992 and found that he was unable to write in Bosnian and spoke little English.
In 1995, he started writing works in English and managed to showcase his work in prestigious magazines such as the New Yorker and Esquire. Finally in 2000, he published his first book of sho...more
More about Aleksandar Hemon...
In 1995, he started writing works in English and managed to showcase his work in prestigious magazines such as the New Yorker and Esquire. Finally in 2000, he published his first book of sho...more
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“We knew - but didn't want to know - what was going to happen, the sky descending upon our heads like the shadow of a falling piano in a cartoon.”
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