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Anne's review

The Best Place to Be: A Novel in Stories
by Lesley Dormen

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<a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/722805.The_Best_Place_to_Be_A_Novel_in_Stories?utm_medium=api&amp;utm_source=blog_review" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px"><img alt="The Best Place to Be: A Novel in Stories" border="0" src="http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1177636202m/722805.jpg" /></a> <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/722805.The_Best_Place_to_Be_A_Novel_in_Stories?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review">The Best Place to Be: A Novel in Stories</a> by <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/247205.Lesley_Dormen">Lesley Dormen</a> 
 <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/21668679?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review"><h3>My review</h3></a>
 rating: 4 of 5 stars 4 stars for each individual story; 3 stars for the book as a whole
 
 I first read Dormen's work in the December 2001 Atlantic Monthly (<a target="_blank" href="http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200112/dormen)">http://www.theatlantic.com/doc...</a>, as assigned by my wonderful writing teacher at the time, Greg Lichtenberg. [side note: If I could afford it, I would pay that man just to talk to me about fiction. If anyone gets a chance to take any kind of class with him anywhere, do it.] The story was "The Old Economy Husband," and while some of my classmates worried it was too bourgeois, I was utterly smitten by its style, voice, and narrator.
 
 My favorite writers give me words to describe an emotion I recognize immediately but, until that moment, was unable to articulate. Dormen's prose gives this gift again and again.
 
 The Best Place to Be opens with "The Old Economy Husband;" the stories that follow afford additional glimpses into first-person narrator Grace's life, from age 15-50. Dormen makes old-hat short story themes (the loss of a parent, the plight of a single woman among married friends) seem new again. And Grace's relationships with her brother, Alex; her best friend, Phoebe; and the changing landscape of Manhattan are vividly realized, each love obsessive in its own way. The order of events is not chronological, but it is purposeful. I've recently talked with several writer-friends about the pitfalls and pleasures of successfully bending narrative time, focusing on the "how and why" rather than the "what."
 
 While The Best Place to Be explores such hows and whys (and unravels layers of who) with gusto, I can't help but wish the book were longer, more fleshed out. Each story, by itself, feels finished, but the book as a whole does not. At the end, I felt I had read a series of perfectly realized scenes excerpted from a larger novel.
 
 I still highly recommend it.
 <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/list/69506?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review">View all my reviews.</a>

Anne's review
rating:
recommended for: Jenni

4 stars for each individual story; 3 stars for the book as a whole

I first read Dormen's work in the December 2001 Atlantic Monthly (http://www.theatlantic.com/doc..., as assigned by my wonderful writing teacher at the time, Greg Lichtenberg. [side note: If I could afford it, I would pay that man just to talk to me about fiction. If anyone gets a chance to take any kind of class with him anywhere, do it.] The story was "The Old Economy Husband," and while some of my classmates worried it was too bourgeois, I was utterly smitten by its style, voice, and narrator.

My favorite writers give me words to describe an emotion I recognize immediately but, until that moment, was unable to articulate. Dormen's prose gives this gift again and again.

The Best Place to Be opens with "The Old Economy Husband;" the stories that follow afford additional glimpses into first-person narrator Grace's li...more

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message 1: by edanami (last edited 05/16/2008 06:33AM)

05/16/2008 06:32AM

Thanks, Anne. I can always count on you for a great review.