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Anagrams

3.97 of 5 stars 3.97 · rating details · 2,027 ratings · 229 reviews

Gerard sits, fully clothed, in his empty bathtub and pines for Benna. Neighbors in the same apartment building, they share a wall and Gerard listens for the sound of her toilet flushing. Gerard loves Benna. And then Benna loves Gerard. She listens to him play piano, she teaches poetry and sings at nightclubs. As their relationships ebbs and flows, through reality and imagi...more

Paperback, 225 pages

Published March 13th 2007 by Vintage (first published 1986)

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May 22, 2011 K.D. Oliveros rated it 3 of 5 stars

Recommended to K.D. by: 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die (2006-2010)

Shelves: 1001-core

an•a•gram ( n -gr m ) 1. A word or phrase formed by reordering the letters of another word or phrase, such as satin to stain.

However, here in her first novel, short story writer Lorrie Moore (born 1957), reordered not letters but the different scenes in order for her reader to choose the one that he or she likes best. I have seen this approached in a couple of movies but my first time for a novel. Moore’s contemporary and humorous prose makes this approach not only crisp in its freshness but also memorable because of her believable characters.

There are only 3 main characters: the 32-y/o Benna Carpenter who is a poet, a teacher, a nightclub singer or an aerobics instructor depending on the version of the story that you are reading and/or prefer to take away as your favorite version of the story. Then there is Benna’s friend 31-y/o Eleanor who is either imaginary or real, again depending on which version you want to choose. Lastly, Benna’s love interest, 30-y/o Gerard Maines who is the single or divorced guy who lives next to Benna’s apartment with only a thin wall separating their rooms. In fact, Gerard could hear Benna’s toilet bowl when she is flushing it. Here in the Philippines, we have a term for this: “dingding lang ang pagitan (separated only by a wall) that actually came from a semi-erotic (ST – sex trip) movie in the 80’s.

But Anagrams is not an erotic story. It is a bittersweet love story about people in love and falling out of love. Reading it is like watching a romance-comedy movie set in an American city with characters in their last chances to find life-long partners. I would have given it five stars if I read this maybe a couple of decades ago. However, I was still mesmerized by Moore’s innovative approach even if at times the frequent shifts from 1st person to 3rd person and vice versa confused me. However, her imagination on the different versions is something that is commendable since all of them are not only plausible but also funny, playful and poignant that makes it hard for you to choose which version you want to remember for the rest of your life.

Also, unlike some of the novels of Haruki Murakami, who was also first known to be as a short story writer, Anagrams does not give me you that feeling that you are reading short stories merged into a big story just to make up a novel. Regardless of which version you choose or you want to believe in, everything is still coherent and integrated.

If you enjoy stories about single people looking for partners in their late 20's of early 30's, try reading this book. It is a joy to read and you will surely see yourself in one of the versions of the three characters.

I am now looking forward to more Moore books.
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Sep 30, 2008 Edan rated it 4 of 5 stars

Firstly, I am biased not only because I love Lorrie Moore but also because my first name is an anagram (I am named after my Grandmother, whose name was Edna).

***

This book is strange without being alienating, and while I was nervous that the "anagramming" of characters would annoy me, I actually got into the rearranging of facts and desires that Moore plays with--it reminded me very much of the process of writing, of those moments when your character can do this or this or this, and you have to...more Firstly, I am biased not only because I love Lorrie Moore but also because my first name is an anagram (I am named after my Grandmother, whose name was Edna).

***

This book is strange without being alienating, and while I was nervous that the "anagramming" of characters would annoy me, I actually got into the rearranging of facts and desires that Moore plays with--it reminded me very much of the process of writing, of those moments when your character can do this or this or this, and you have to make a decision, effectively leaving other fictional lives behind. Here, Moore has given her characters a variety of existences and situations, calling into question the idea of authenticity and truth in fiction writing. I found myself favoring one version of a character over another, and I would have to stop and ask myself why this was. I also loved the rearranging of images throughout--the way, for instance, Moore used "bathmat" as a metaphor in a number of different ways.

With all these ideas strolling through the book, Moore was smart enough to also give us great humor and beautiful prose, making the reading experience a joy. Lorrie Moore is one of my favorite writers because she is so damn funny and her cleverness and ability to turn a phrase feels effortless. I am in love with her puns, her similes, her whimsy, her bitterness.

My complaint with the novel is that the one storyline that got the most pages didn't interest me as much as some of the others, and although this section's shifting third to first person point of view felt meaningful at the end, it was otherwise jarring and overly cutesy for me. Also, because of the nature of the book, if I went too long not reading it, I had a difficult time coming back to the characters and feeling invested in them.

And now I will rewrite one passage that made me laugh out loud in the bathtub. There are other ones, but you will have to read the book the find them:

"The problem with a beautiful woman is that she makes everyone around her feel hopelessly masculine, which if you're already male to begin with poses no particular problem. But if you're anyone else, your whole sexual identity gets dragged into the principal's office: "So what's this I hear about you prancing around, masquerading as a woman?" You are answerless. You are sitting on your hands. You are praying for your breasts to grow, your hair to perk up" (48).

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Apr 22, 2008 Erika Jo rated it 5 of 5 stars

This book was devastating – devastatingly funny, devastatingly honest. And its denouement, or the final unraveling of plot complexities, is devastatingly sad.

Let me back up for a minute. "Anagrams" rearranges and frames three characters dynamically against each other, first in a sequence of short scenes, then in a longer sustained story. So the key characters – like letters in an anagrammatic word – function differently, contribute to a separate-though-equally-plausible reality, when located in...more This book was devastating – devastatingly funny, devastatingly honest. And its denouement, or the final unraveling of plot complexities, is devastatingly sad.

Let me back up for a minute. "Anagrams" rearranges and frames three characters dynamically against each other, first in a sequence of short scenes, then in a longer sustained story. So the key characters – like letters in an anagrammatic word – function differently, contribute to a separate-though-equally-plausible reality, when located in varying relationships with each other.

The elements consist, primarily, of Benna, Gerard, and Eleanor. The first two are archetypal lovers and their affairs shift “requitedness”. Eleanor, as friend and rival (both imagined and real), perhaps functions hermeneutically, as a way to comment on the story, present a foil, or just add a third tip to the triangle, echoing the question: why is it so hard for two people to just love each other?

Known principally as a short story writer, Moore creates a novel with a vividly cinematic eye (an image of a menstrual stain on a nightgown waving in a tree at a yardsale resonates with loss and loneliness) paired with pithy humor. Her dialogues (and internal monologues) capture our awkwardness and nerdy, punny humor (“endurance is a country in Central America”).

The characters are often pictured as flailing intellectuals, with jobs like hotel lounge pianist, geriatric aerobics teacher, poetry teacher at a community college, representing, yes, characters of a certain age, angry at themselves for not making harder decisions, for not taking harder chances, and angry at the world for making it so damn hard. I’m quick to point out that it’s not an angsty anger. It’s the anger you feel for someone you want to live with forever, but who always leaves an eggy mess on the kitchen burners and really, why do you always have to clean it up? It’s a relatable, and hilarious, despair.

I read this book very slowly, so it wouldn’t be over soon, so I could savor each bite. And it is biting. The description of the book as a love story, and of the characters as angry, does not quite give the novel credit. Its metapoetic touches, and light sense of balance and boundary, enables it to evade those clichéd generalizations (really, even the generalization of it as a novel is not apt). It’s sensitive, sad, and flirty. It’s solid, addicting and silky. It is, as they say, a “good read”. (less)

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Mar 10, 2008 Lindsay rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

The concept of this book is intriguing and for the most part well executed. The relationship between a woman, Benna, and a man, Gerard, is described in six different "possible lives" or what Moore calls anagrams: jumbled up versions of the same people and ingredients, rearranged into six different plot lines. The last one is the longest -- maybe it is the "true" one, maybe it isn't, but it is unequivocally the saddest. I was just going along with this book for a while, enjoying the humor, and th...more

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Dec 11, 2007 Natalie rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

"life is sad. here is someone."

Don't let this book fool you. You might pick it up and be humored by intellectual puns and clever turns of phrase before you realize you are reading what appears to be the highly conventional story of a woman in an unfortunate relationship. Like Todd Solondz's film Storytelling this novel plays with notions of fact and fiction. It isn't as simple as having a reliable or unreliable narrator, it's that everything said can mean something else, and perhaps even people...more

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Aug 26, 2008 Shaindel rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: writers, anyone...

I seriously think if I could choose to write like *anyone*, it would be Lorrie Moore.

Moore does something amazing in the beginning of this book; she rearranges the characters' lives over and over in various short stories--hence the name Anagrams. Then, the last piece in the book is a novella using the same characters. Like all of Moore, it is by turns laugh out loud funny and heartbreaking.

My only fear in recommending this book to students is that they will think I'm the main character in the no...more

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Nov 17, 2012 David Groves rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Lorrie Moore is a fabulous prose stylist who made a misstep on this one. Having read the incisive and clever Self Help several years ago, I came to Anagrams with great anticipation. Unfortunately, it is a failed experiment.

The experiment is to see whether a novelist can set forth a cast of characters with a certain set of characteristics, gradually change those characteristics, and still retain the readers' interest. The answer, of course, is no. Readers have a difficult enough job keeping chara...more Lorrie Moore is a fabulous prose stylist who made a misstep on this one. Having read the incisive and clever Self Help several years ago, I came to Anagrams with great anticipation. Unfortunately, it is a failed experiment.

The experiment is to see whether a novelist can set forth a cast of characters with a certain set of characteristics, gradually change those characteristics, and still retain the readers' interest. The answer, of course, is no. Readers have a difficult enough job keeping characters' traits straight in a regular novel, much less one in which the author wants to prove how clever she is.

Not only that, but Moore changes the characters themselves, so that in one chapter, Benna is a jazz singer, in the next, a college instructor, and in the next, a mother with an imaginary child. In one chapter, Gerard is smitten with Benna, in the next, he cheats on her with her best friend, and in the next, he's a longtime friend with sometime benefits. The details are so hard to keep track of that the reader's interest drops precipitously. There seems to be no rhyme or reason for the equivocation, and even if there were, it would make no difference.

The fact is that the human mind wants to follow characters, firm characters, to cast light on its own life. It is a physiological desire to want to project oneself into the protagonist, but how does one do that when there is no firm protagonist into which to project? To make matters worse, the events through which the protagonist passes are so insignificant that one forgets from one page to the next what his or her struggles are. When something finally happens, it is such a senseless, insignificant event that the reader is disgusted.

No doubt about it, Moore is a masterful stylist. Her humor is especially wonderful. However, her obsession with the insignificant is mind numbing. Don't get me wrong. I intend to read other Moore books. I have one by my bedside now. But something happened to Moore during the writing of this book that made the final product something trivial and terribly disappointing.(less)

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Jan 04, 2012 Courtney Gustafson rated it 5 of 5 stars

This is the Lorrie Moore I love. There is essentially nothing wrong with this book. You couldn't find a flaw if you tried.

Anagrams follows the stories of Benna and Gerard, who, in a strange mash-up of scenarios, are poetry teachers, lounge singers, piano players, neighbors, parents, friends, lovers. In love and not in love. Together and then alone. The book plots the course of their relationship as it might take place if Gerard was in love with Benna, fully-clothed in his bathtub and listening f...more

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Aug 18, 2011 Madeline rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: the-list

Margaret Atwood has a great short story called "Happy Endings" that I kept thinking about as I read this book. Read it here and then continue with the review.

Did you read it? Seriously guys, it'll take you like two minutes. I'll wait.

Okay, good. So I don't know which came first, "Happy Endings" or Anagrams, but I feel almost sure that one of them had to influence the other. Anagrams is about two people, Benna and Gerard, who are in love - sort of. When we first meet them, they are living in ad...more Margaret Atwood has a great short story called "Happy Endings" that I kept thinking about as I read this book. Read it here and then continue with the review.

Did you read it? Seriously guys, it'll take you like two minutes. I'll wait.

Okay, good. So I don't know which came first, "Happy Endings" or Anagrams, but I feel almost sure that one of them had to influence the other. Anagrams is about two people, Benna and Gerard, who are in love - sort of. When we first meet them, they are living in adjacent apartments which they essentially share. Benna is a nightclub singer, Gerard works with preschoolers. We see them interact, talking about their lives and generally being messed-up people, and then a new chapter starts. In this one, Gerard is a singer and Benna teaches dance to senior citizens. They talk about their lives and are generally messed-up people, and then a new chapter starts. The details of Benna and Gerard's lives change, but the central story stays the same: two lonely, unhappy people are trying to figure out their lives and each other, and not doing a very good job at it.

I make it sound depressing, but it's surprisingly not. Lorrie Moore's characters are smart and witty and sprinkle their conversation with literary puns and play-on-words that are actually entertaining, unlike the work of some pun-loving authors I could name but won't (Did you guess Jasper Fforde? Jasper Fforde was the author I was talking about. It's Jasper FForde.) and she writes with that delightfully bitter, dry, funny voice I'm so fond of:

"One in Modern Dance class in college one sunny September afternoon we had been requested to be leaves tumbling ourselves across the arts quad. I knew how to perform it in a way that prevented embarrassment and indignity: One became a dead leaf, a cement leaf. One lay down on the dying grass and refused to blow and float and tumble. One merely crumpled. One was no fool. One did not listen to the teacher. One did not want to be spotted fluttering around on campus, like the others who were clearly psychotics. One did not like this college. One wanted only to fall in love and get a Marriage Equivalent. One just lay there."

Sometimes it's hard to figure out exactly what's going on in the book (especially in the beginning, when I didn't know about the shifting-details thing) and sometimes it's depressing and sometimes it's sort of hard to keep going, but I didn't care because the whole book is full of little spots of brilliance like this:

"I've found that you can best entrap ants with the corpse of another ant. A squashed one of their own in the middle of the floor, and boom, like stubborn Antigones, they rush out to bury their dead brother and get nabbed."

and that made it all worth it. (less)

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Jun 03, 2011 Nikitabanana rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I've been going through a hard core reading phase and I’ve learned some valuable lessons from this: don’t read a book about cadavers on the subway unless you want weird looks. Don’t tell your friends or boyfriend that you can’t go out because you’re reading. And most importantly for the rest of you Cannonballers, be VERY careful when people recommend you books. Since January, people have been handing me books that they love and the worst sin you can commit, worse than hating their favorite book,...more I've been going through a hard core reading phase and I’ve learned some valuable lessons from this: don’t read a book about cadavers on the subway unless you want weird looks. Don’t tell your friends or boyfriend that you can’t go out because you’re reading. And most importantly for the rest of you Cannonballers, be VERY careful when people recommend you books. Since January, people have been handing me books that they love and the worst sin you can commit, worse than hating their favorite book, is to think that it’s only eh, ok.

That’s the deal with Anagrams by Lorrie Moore. My friend who recommended it to me called it fantastic, amazing and told me it would pull the rug out from under me. I hope she doesn’t read this review. Anagrams is really a series of short stories and one novella all patched together, short story writer’s equivalent of cheating their way into a novel. The book has an interesting premise and focuses on a woman named Benna. Who exactly is Benna, the 33-year-old poetry teacher (or singer? or aerobics instructor?)? It is hard to say. She hides from us and from herself behind imaginary identities, relationships, and scenarios in which elements of character and action are transposed like the letters of those anagrams she scribbles on napkins. In one section Gerard is her close friend, in another her lover and in another her long-term boyfriend. Sometimes her mother is alive; in another chapter she has been dead for 24 years, sometimes she has a deceased lawyer husband and other times a six-year old daughter.

At the end of the book, I finally thought that I understood Anagrams as a whole. But when I reread chapters after, I found myself just as lost as before. And I like confusing books where it is the reader’s job to puzzle everything together. The problem with the book is a complete lack of transition between stories that leave the reader pistol-whipped. I read an interview with Lorrie Moore where she said that she wrote Anagrams when her publishers were nagging her to write a novel rather than another collection of short stories. Publishers famously prefer novels to short story collections because they are much easier to sell to the major distributors. Anagrams makes a sharp, tight collection of short fiction, and a disjointed, plot-less muddle of a novel which is truly a shame considering Moore’s masterful way with words.
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May 24, 2011 V. rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Some strong prose and often comic in a mild way. A woman, a man, the woman's female friend. The conceit here is to have the same characters appear in five chapters (four very short and one very long) but each chapter is a totally new story where each character reappears but in a different role with different relationships, jobs, goals etc. The events are completely separate and the chapters don't link together.

Makes the book very disjointed and to be honest it reads like a bunch of short stories...more

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Apr 14, 2010 Heather S. Jones marked it as to-read · review of another edition

mara just highly recommended this particular lorrie moore to me saying,

"My Lorrie Moore connection goes back to being assigned "Anagrams" for my lousy freshman English class in college [my note: she means bryn mawr college, which i can't imagine to be THAT lousy! i hold a certain respect for these institutions!], which I expected to be another mind-numbing and vicious screed alongside the other supposedly "enlightening" books my professor had selected and then....it was transforming. I read it...more

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Aug 10, 2012 Jim Leckband rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Only people who can tolerate puns

Beware! Here Be Punsters!

The above should be a warning sticker on this book. I used to think that my friends* were pretending to be anguished when I made a brilliant** pun. I thought, "How nice of them!" As I've become older, I've realized that perhaps I was the one that needed a warning sticker on my forehead. Maybe I'd have more friends.

And that's the problem with the main character in "Anagrams", she has hardly anybody and tends to lose the ones she has. The author (and the main character, Be...more

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Jan 14, 2012 Tfitoby rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: lit

Well. It was certainly better than recent Nick Hornby novels. But is that the best thing I can say about my first Laurie Moore experience?

She writes beautiful things, possesses a wonderful turn of phrase, uses the English language to create incredible images BUT I just couldn't relate to this story, didn't find myself absorbed in the multiple potentialities posited by the coming together of these two soul mates and I was left underwhelmed by the narrative.

Many questions have formed in my mind fr...more

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May 03, 2011 Scott rated it 4 of 5 stars

Lorrie Moore can write a sentence, or an exchange of dialogue, or compose a scene, as well or better than anyone writing today. At least, anyone that I've read in the past ten years or so. And she comes up with dozens and dozens of descriptive images, and observations about life and the world and love and despair and loneliness and pathetic-ness and hope, that would never occur to you or I in a million years and yet are so dead-on perfect that they seem almost obvious once you hear them. AND Moo...more

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Jan 25, 2012 Billy rated it 3 of 5 stars

Lorrie Moore's first novel proves that her affinity for puns was fully developed early on. They're a good means of reminding the reader that however plumb dark the outlook of her narrating character, she survives by humor, by not approaching anything with seriousness. What seems to be a depressing interior life eventually you understand has a certain playful, carefree aspect to it.

I like how Lorrie Moore has a distinct, jolie laide voice, off-putting a little initially, but roping in eventually...more

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Apr 29, 2009 Debbie Reschke Schug rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

It was my stint reading all the Nick Hornby novels I could find that started me reading Lorrie Moore books. I think she’s more of a short story writer, which I guess why this novel reads more like four separate pieces rather than a cohesive one.
“Anagrams” is a concept novel where the characters in the story stay basically the same, but are rearranged a little each instance a slice of time gets retold. What remains constant is the two main characters, Gerard and Benna, are in love with each othe...more

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Dec 01, 2012 Annie Schoening rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I will defend her novels at my own peril. I loved this one better than Frog Hospital. The thing about LM's novels is that there is often more impact and truth and humor in one paragraph than most other authors' entire canon, same as her short stories.

Despite a few intentional smoky mirrors, she never throws the wool over your eyes and she is never, ever contrived or smug -- hard to do for 100+ pages of a novel about being a person.

This one had a clever conceit (Anagrams, doi) and it's clearly...more

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Sep 16, 2011 Uzma rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: wishlist

Lorrie Moore can write. I can't believe this book is from 1986. I don't even know what to say. This book could make me feel completely heartbroken and depressed to making me laugh in a matter of sentences. I wish it hadn't ended. I want to own this

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Oct 16, 2011 Marike added it · review of another edition

Shelves: novels

Anagrams by Lorrie Moore (faber & faber, 1988)

A novel. Difficult to describe. Different versions or possibilities of someone’s life. Somewhere Benna thinks the sadness of a dying is that with you die all the possibilities of other lives, all the imagined lives. Anagrams are such rearrangements of basic elements.

There are 4 short pieces – all of them featuring characters names Benna, Gerard and Eleanor. They stand in different relationships towards one another, live in other places, do diffe...more Anagrams by Lorrie Moore (faber & faber, 1988)

A novel. Difficult to describe. Different versions or possibilities of someone’s life. Somewhere Benna thinks the sadness of a dying is that with you die all the possibilities of other lives, all the imagined lives. Anagrams are such rearrangements of basic elements.

There are 4 short pieces – all of them featuring characters names Benna, Gerard and Eleanor. They stand in different relationships towards one another, live in other places, do different things – but strands of human connection remain. Tentatively they share some things.
And then follows a long section – the bulk of the book – The Nun of That. Benna is the narrator – most of the time. She slips into telling about herself in the 3rd person (as ‘the teacher’) when she talks about her work at a college. Here Gerard is an old friend. They share loneliness? Eleanor is an imaginary friend. She also has an imaginary daughter – Georgianne.
These little scenes are touching ,though Moore seems to tell a story in such a way that some sort of irony is very much present. The loneliness and yes even despair of the characters seep through. They are hopeful and hopeless about themselves.
Such an awkward scene between Benna and her brother towards the end I wonder how she could write that, the wish both to push away and to be kind.

Two quotes from the book, but not to say that they are central at all. Nothing is really told completely chronologically, slips to and fro as thoughts through a day.

“It has started to snow almost like sleet, and it patters against the windows like the staticky glitches in an old record. All of life seems to me a strange dream about losing things you never had to begin with. About trying to find your glasses when you can’t see because you don’t have your glasses on. That is what it seems.”

Some of Benna’s older students were war veterans from Vietnam.
“She hadn’t know it about Darrel, though he, too, had been in the war. “A million years ago,” he said. They spoke about it carefully and the teacher hoped he would not tell her stories about ears and eyes – about pendants made from the shrivelled leather of ears, how in the rain they changed from dried fruit to soggy recognizable flesh, how gouged eyes were placed on the foreheads of the dead, about how there were cash prizes. Anemically, she would have to muster that old horror and alongside it, another horror would not require mustering at all – the very familiarity of the tale, the survivor’s tale edged always with other survivors’ tales who got there first and told. Told first. Those who don’t get there first, before the books and poems and television shows, had stories no one ever really heard. Please not the eyes and ears, I won’t listen, I won’t hear, thought the teacher to herself, and shame leaped in like a commercial. This is a flaw in my character, she would think to herself later. This is what is known as peacetime.”

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Sep 28, 2008 Vivian rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

My favorite novel of the summer. I've read it twice so far: once curled up on a sofa in my old apartment, once slouched under the covers in my Mom's guest room. The jokes are funnier the second time around.

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Sep 27, 2010 Sarah rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This books is sort of a cross between a novel and a collection of short stories- it's a novel comprised of different incarnations of the same characters, rearranged slightly in each tale. It felt like an exercise in recombining characters to find the right fit for the plot. Lorrie Moore loves words, loves playing with puns and wordplay and clever combinations of cliches, song phrases, etc. In this book, I think she has actually created the characters who can realistically speak like this without...more

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Apr 09, 2012 Blanche rated it 4 of 5 stars

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

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Mar 17, 2013 Luna rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I primi tre capitoli sono tre racconti, come tre persone possono, con lo stesso carattere, trovarsi insieme in tre situazioni completamente diverse... e li vabb�, poteva starci.... poi inizia il romanzo, che inizia con una nuova storia e la porta alla fine delle pagine. Il racconto di un pezzo di vita, senza origini e senza fine.... mi ha dato l'impressione semplicemente di quando una amica la sera a cena ti racconta di una persona che tu non conosci, e ascolti l'affetto con cui ne parla, ma un...more

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Jun 17, 2010 Amy Marie rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

If there was a 3 and a half, I would. Why is there no system of halves? I can't be the only one who wants them. Not a 4 because I really loved it in theory but not completely in practice. I love this kind of clever ennui going on here, the play with puns--the anagramming of everything, everything is something else and most of it is either nothing or so incredibly bleak you kind of wish it was. At times, a little precious for my taste, moments where its cleverness is just so thickly laid on that...more

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May 22, 2010 Diane rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I read this book because I loved Lorrie Moore's The Gate at the Top of the Stairs. I didn't like this book as much. It is strange, disjointed and difficult to know what is real and what is imagination. And, the overall mood, despite some quirky humor, is overwhelming sad and lonely. Basically it is the story of an on-again, off-again relation of a man and woman over a long period, told from the woman's point of view. The Times said this novel was "an extraordinary, often hilarious novel." I didn...more

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Mar 19, 2013 Hafeez Lakhani rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: novels, novels-in-stories, short-stories

Lorrie Moore, I'll read anything you write. Even if it doesn't quite piece together, your prose is still a pleasure.

"I missed him. Love, I realized, was something your spine memorized. There was nothing you could do about that."

"The problem with a beautiful woman is that she makes everyone around her feel hopelessly masculine, which if you're already male to begin with poses no particular problem. But if you're anyone else, your whole sexual identity gets dragged into the principal's office: 'S...more

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Oct 11, 2010 Misha rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2010, literary-fiction, loved-it

Thirteen years ago, the dean of my law school gave a speech on our orientation day about how what good lawyers do is to “turn the crystal” on the law – look at it from different angles, bend the light a little differently and see how a whole new world of ideas can open up just by virtue of a different perspective. I often thought of that long-ago lecture while reading this book, as I watched Moore turn the crystal on three people and how their lives intertwine under different sets of circumstanc...more Thirteen years ago, the dean of my law school gave a speech on our orientation day about how what good lawyers do is to “turn the crystal” on the law – look at it from different angles, bend the light a little differently and see how a whole new world of ideas can open up just by virtue of a different perspective. I often thought of that long-ago lecture while reading this book, as I watched Moore turn the crystal on three people and how their lives intertwine under different sets of circumstances.

This slender volume could more accurately be described as a set of linked stories than a novel. Each “chapter” puts Benna, Gerard and Eleanor together in different iterations and looks at how their lives would shake out as small, or sometimes large, things about their histories are changed. It's an intriguing conceit for a set of stories – a literary, personal-scale version of the science fictional alternate universe trope.

Most of the stories are told from Benna's point-of-view, and it's Benna who is struggling to connect to Gerard, to Eleanor, or to herself. Moore has a gentle, self-deprecating style littered with jokes and puns and nuggets of wisdom that often felt like she was peering into my life and my heart and saying, “You are not alone in this.” I think Moore understands longing, loneliness and loss better than any other contemporary writer I've read. That alone is worth a five-star rating from me.

A few favorite passages:

Pg 4 - “But what do I know.” She smiled and shrugged. “I grew up in a trailer. It's not like a real family with a house.” This was her excuse for everything, her own self-deprecating refrain; she'd grown up in a trailer in upstate New York and was therefore unqualified to pronounce on any of the subjects she continued to pronounce on.

Pg 10 – This is why I was pleased: The lump was not simply a focal point for my self-pity; it was also a battery propelling me, strengthening me—my very own appointment with death. It anchored and deepened me like a secret. I started to feel it when I walked, just out from my armpit—hard, achy evidence that I was truly a knotted saint, a bleeding angel. At last it had been confirmed: My life was really as difficult as I had always suspected.

Pg 16 – Basically, I realized I was living in that awful stage of life between twenty-six to thirty-seven known as stupidity. It's when you don't know anything, not even as much as you did when you were younger, and you don't even have a philosophy about all the things you don't know, the way you did when you were twenty or would again when you were thirty-eight.

Pg 39 – But I believed in starting over. There was finally, I knew, only rupture and hurt and falling short between all persons, but, Shirley, the best revenge was to turn your life into a small gathering of miracles.

If I could not be anchored and profound, I would try, at least, to be kind.

Pg. 109 - People talk past us, we are invisible; when they say our name, if they really look at us, they don't mean it, they only want us to say anything, anything stupid, but our dark woman's voice, we know, would terrify.(less)

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Jul 20, 2012 Jennifer rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Benna is the main character in all but the first version of a chain of stories that move fictional elements around like letters in an anagram. Each version informs the other and I found myself haunted by the ways that characters and situations were reinvented and by the bottomless sorrow that permeates each reincarnation, regardless. It seems that in this world, no matter whom you turn yourself into, there is no escape from loneliness and sorrow, but there is laughter and there are exquisite mom...more

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Nov 03, 2012 Laurie rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: really-really-sad, took-me-a-million-years, 1001-books-to-read-before-death

If Margaret Atwood had decided to be just a little more of a bummer, she could have been Lorrie Moore, and she might have written Anagrams.

It was a good book. I liked the play on narrative structure, going from each different incarnation of Benna, Gerald, and Eleanor. It was something that only someone as skilled at short story writing as Moore could have really pulled off and made feel cohesive.

Not that anything is really accomplished in the end or even happens. It is a study with a fine toot...more

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About Lorrie Moore

Lorrie Moore was born in Glens Falls, New York in 1957. She attended St. Lawrence University in Canton, New York, where she tutored on an Indian reservation, and was editor of the university literary magazine and, at age 19, won Seventeen Magazine’s Fiction Contest. After graduating summa cum laude, she worked in New York for two years before going on to received a Masters in Fine Arts from Cornel...more

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Quotes from Anagrams

“I count too heavily on birthdays, though I know I shouldn't. Inevitably I begin to assess my life by them, figure out how I'm doing by how many people remember; it's like the old fantasy of attending your own funeral: You get to see who your friends are, get to see who shows up. ” — 68 people liked it

“They had, finally, the only thing anyone really wants in life: someone to hold your hand when you die.” — 39 people liked it

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