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Feb 02, 2009

Sharon rated it:

There's no doubt that Aimee Bender has a vivid imagination and a penchant for the strange. Unfortunately, for me that is simply not enough to make for a memorable, satisfying read. I came away from this collection with an overwhelming feeling of disappointment.

Sure, the writing is fine and it even sparkles on occasion. There are enough strange things happening to catch anyone's interest, at least momentarily. The problem is a lack of depth. Every single story felt superficial to me, More...

0 comments like (8 people liked it)

Oct 01, 2007

Ben rated it:

How funny that I should have just read the essay "A Reader's Manifesto", by B. R. Myers, when I picked up this book. In the essay (available at http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200107/my... for now) Myers skewers various superstars of "literary fiction"--Cormac McCarthy, Rick Moody, David Guterson, and others--for turning out poorly-written books that are all flash and no substance. The brilliantly bizarre set pieces here, unfortunately, suffer from the same problem. Bender i More...

1 comment like (7 people liked it)

Jun 22, 2008

Yulia added it

It was suggested she was a female Etgar Keret, but Keret is far more artful and thoughtful in his shorts. Whereas I have the sense he's a melancholy and thoughtful man who hides his sensitivity with a cuddly veneer, I feel Bender is a Keret-wannabe who hides her lack of insight and wisdom with her cute, "imaginative" story lines.

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jan 18, 2010

jess rated it:

I read this book because my friend Imogen Binnie told me that she loves (LOVES!) Amy Bender. Imogen has good taste in books, so I thought, How Could This Be Bad? I requested it from the library. I had a sense of déjà vu reading this book; I have read one (or more) of the stories in one of their previously-published incarnations. So in that case, it was like an old friend and a friend of a friend, plus I read it in one of my favorite places (the bathtub), and the point I'm making is that this bo More...

5 comments like (1 person liked it)

Oct 16, 2007

Kristi rated it:

I read The Girl in the Flammable Skirt and found it bitter, brittle and melancholy. It's a book of short stories and they are very memorable and well written stories. She uses a lot of magical realism in them, like in the story of the father who woke up with a hole going straight through his body, though he remained in perfect health and the one with the stolen ruby that turns everything it touches red. But the characters and their relationships are superficial and facile. Not in the way they ar More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Mar 24, 2011

Melissa rated it:

I had a teacher in college that wrote speculative fiction she suggested that in writing speculative fiction you just change one thing and keep everything else realistic, but to keep in mind all the changes that come with changing that one thing. Like if the world were flat rather than round than perhaps we would not travel by boat… etc.

Aimee Bender does a brilliant job and changing the one thing. I found her stories refreshing and fun. Her work was reminiscent of Martin Amis and Sal More...

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Apr 22, 2010

Mike rated it:

Lots of weighty subject matter in this book, but it all stemmed from fantastical plots, situations, or character attributes (e.g., girl with flaming hand). The characters themselves, though, seemed only loosely sketched and insubstantial. Like they were there primarily to advance the storyline, rather than the author's message or intention. Does that make sense? Of course if the intention is bundled up in the storyline then the characters do wind up serving the author's intention in a sort of me More...

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Oct 17, 2009

Ben rated it:

i've read aimee bender stories before but never a whole book at once. i think to be honest i like them better spaced out. but that's my fault, i suppose, and not hers. not like she's got a gun to my head.

anyway, bender writes short, perfectly structured surreal first-person stories. well, mostly first person. sometimes third. there's a story about a man who wakes up with a hole going directly through his stomach, and then his wife becomes pregnant and gives birth to her own mother. b More...

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Jul 26, 2009

Debbie (Readerbuzz) rated it:

Do you ever add books to your wishlist and forget who recommended a book and how you first heard about it and why you wanted to read it? I wish I knew who recommended this book to me....In a sentence, it is one odd book. In this book of short stories, you never know what is going to happen. You might go to school with an imp or an ice girl. Your father might develop a hole through his stomach the size of a soccer ball. You might fall in love with a robber who takes you along on his jobs. The sto More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Apr 15, 2009

Scalder rated it:

Look for my April review on this one: www.anewscafe.com.

2 comments like (1 person liked it)

Sep 08, 2009

Saxon rated it:

This book has a whole bunch of filler. I am sorta baffled how such filler... okay, "stories", ever made it to print. That being said, there are a few enjoyable reads in here as well. Thus, the two star rating on Goodreads which apparently = "It was OK" is how I mostly feel about this collection.

Aimee Bender likes the gimmick. Most of the stories in this collection revolve around one surreal characteristic or occurrence that could never exist in the real world and More...

4 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jan 27, 2009

Jason rated it:

The first time I read this, I gave it four stars. Recently I had to reread it for a fiction class, and after pouring over it a second time, I have no choice but to lower the score to a three. Initially, I think I was enchanted with Bender's work due to her unique plots and characters. Following my second run through, I can't say that there were many characters I liked, and the characters I did like usually weren't the protagonists.

7 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jan 10, 2009

Rhi rated it:

I think of that girl I read about in the paper - the one with the flammable skirt. She'd bought a rayon chiffon skirt, purple with wavy lines all over it. She wore it to a party and was dancing, too close to the vanilla-smelling candles, and suddenly she lit up like a pine needle torch. When the boy dancing next to her felt the heat and smelled the plasticky smell, he screamed and rolled the burning girl up in the carpet. She got third-degree burns up and down her thighs. But what I keep wo More...

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Jan 26, 2011

Pam rated it:

This collection of short stories really knows how to capture your attention. These stories definitely take you to unexpected places. There are surprising twists with every turn of the pace. I liked the opening story, The Rememberer, because it really makes me look at how people change and how they almost are like a new creature at times. Sometimes, they change so much that it's better for you to accept that they aren't who you once knew. Then you have to make a decision...is it better to se More...

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Dec 02, 2008

Jennn rated it:

You're going to like it or not. There seems like there's only a small middleground, which is (ironically) where I stand.

There were very strong stories mixed with "snappy, chic, in-your-face, over-the-top" stories that were about "pain" and "human ugliness" and such, but I saw a lot of flash and pop phrases in a forced surreal world. A woman giving birth to her mother. A librarian having sex with every man she sees out of grief. A woman in love with a man More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Aug 22, 2010

Christina rated it:

These stories do what a John Donne poem does--they plunk you down in the middle of action that's already going, present a few rules of whatever world you've landed in, and then let the current carry things away. For example, consider the opening lines of the story The Healer, which is one of my favorites: "There were two mutant girls in town: one had a hand made of fire and the other had a hand made of ice. Everyone else's hands were normal." Here's another opening line, from the story More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Dec 16, 2009

Snarky's rated it:

I love this quirky collection of short stories. I read this book a long time ago and recently reread it. The stories are still moving and funny and ridiculous and sharply written. I like this better than her novel. It seems as though she's unable to sustain all the good things about her short fiction in a longer work.

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Apr 08, 2009

Kirsten rated it:

Look, most of you on my Goodreads friends list are not going to like this collection. I do not recommend it for you. You will probably leave it unfinished, annoyed that you spent the money on it, and slightly cynical about any of my future book recommendations. Do not read this book. Unless...

Unless you're ok with sifting through this odd collection of freakshow characters, mundane settings and surreal plots to discover prose that cuts right through you and stories that leave you More...

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Feb 10, 2012

Lori rated it:

I wish I could give this more than 5 stars! It was a wonderful collection of short stories that I could not put down. With her surreal touch this collection reads like a series of quick dreams - some disturbing, some funny, and all without regard to the laws of reality. The stories are about community, about relationships, about the intrigue of being both an outsider and an insider and about deciding whether or not to face and accept the truth often within the same story. These odd, rambuncti More...

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Dec 16, 2009

oriana rated it:

All's I am saying is, if you do not love Aimee Bender yet, get this book, read Skinless, Fell This Girl, The Healer, and The Ring. If you still don't love her after that, I'm not really sure we can be friends anymore.

2 comments like

Mar 07, 2009

Dana rated it:

I really wanted to love this book, but it just didn't happen for me. Andrea was right--these stories read great out loud, in a performative medium, but on the page, there's not much happening. Each story contains so much whimsy, coupled with such simple, economic language, that the stories come off as mere fairy tales rather than moving stories. And by the end, I was kind of sick of the whimsical stuff, the imps and fire and deformed individuals of sideshow nature.
Bender's images, however More...

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Aug 05, 2008

Helen rated it:

I like the story where the boyfriend begins reverse evolution and is an ape and finally is an amoeba, and she puts him in the ocean.
I think I liked every story in this collection "five stars" worth.

1 comment like (1 person liked it)

Sep 12, 2010

Renee rated it:

Read for school. I'm not usually a short story person, but occasionally I stumble on one that's pretty entertaining. This was recommended to me by my creative writing teacher, who said the style of it reminded her of me. It's a very odd little collection with mostly creative, surreal plots. In the first story, a girl's lover experiences reverse evolution. In another, a girl's father wakes up with a giant hole going through his stomach. In another, a little town surrounded by hills is home to a g More...

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Jan 27, 2012

Frances rated it:

Introduced to Aimee Bender by "This American Life". Master of intriguing short stories that connect the reader to the characters. I feel the need to read all of Aimee's stuff just to make sure I am not missing some sort of amazing feeling I have not felt before.

The nameless "finding guy" made me cry:

"He lay in bed that night with the trees from other places rustling, and he could feel their confusion. No snow here. Not a lot of rain. Where am I? More...

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Mar 25, 2009

Dan rated it:

A fantastic collection of magical realism that captivated me wholly for much of my productive years in Knox writing workshops. Bender's playful, wholly realistic works have only an anchor apiece of pure fantasy: a perfect point of focus for an analogy, probably the core of most of my own philosophies and my writings. Ambiguous endings, as well as lovingly sex-positive (or at least sexually challenging) twists on most of the stories save them from slipping too easily into Grimm/Anderson retreads. More...

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Aug 03, 2011

Robert rated it:

Like most short story collections, Aimee Bender's has its high points and its low points. Overall, though, the book is a fabulous read, refreshing, surprising and creative. Occasionally Bender's characters seem homogeneous - especially in part one, one could imagine each different story being told by the same character/narrator. It's obvious that Bender is at her best when writing stories with fantasy elements, and thus part three truly shines, "The Healer" being my favorite in the bo More...

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Aug 09, 2010

khatch rated it:

i liked this book way better in its goofier moments: the lady that gives birth to her mom, the fire and ice hand girls. her girl against the world stories are less appealing to me, i think, because the characters often have no boundaries. as all ego, nothing is off limits, so the action seems sort of random. and her endings often made me say "boy oh boy" to their attention to symbolism, elusive or obvious.

but sometimes there'd be a whip-smart sentence and it was all okay More...

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May 10, 2010

Erikaaaa rated it:

Mixed feelings about this book--I wavered between two and three stars. Mainly, Bender's use of magic realism is just too precious for me. Many of the stories are told like fables or faerie tales and the novelty of that wore on me. A prevailing theme of bored women using sex for power also got a little old, but was done very well in at least one story--"Fell This Girl" got at some really weird and authentic ideas about women and sexuality. Her longest stories--"Skinless," " More...

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Dec 16, 2009

Jenny rated it:

These stories make me want to be promiscuous!

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May 20, 2011

Mckinley rated it:

She's a wonderful writer, very creative. And she's a good speaker too. Saw her speak, and read one of her short stories, at Colorado College. I guess the fact that she teaches helps...

I think I stumbled across this book helping a patron locate a different book. And I'm glad I did. What an amazing collection of short stories -- not like anything else I've ever read. I found each one of the 16 tales original and thought provoking. Many caught me off guard not expecting the turn the story More...

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