Jodi's review
Self-Help
by Lorrie Moore
Jodi's review
Self-Help by Lorrie Moore
Jodi's review
rating:
bookshelves:
2008-read
You pick up Lorrie Moore’s collection of short stories called Self-Help because you’ve always admired her writing. Plus, your own writing is often compared to hers. Not because you are a master of the form, like Moore, but more because your short stories are peppered with a sort of sad and self-deprecating humor.
What you love about reading short story collections over short story anthologies is that you can pick up the threads that move throughout the stories. Moore has a thing for opera singers and women who work in retail, women with cheating men and weird moms. You enjoy the collection because you enjoy Moore’s writing, however you are a little put off by the choice of the second person in so many of the stories.
You wonder what it is about the second person that you don’t like. Perhaps it’s the presumptuousness of what “you” would do. It immediately puts you on the defensive and the whole time you are reading a story you can’t help but think, “I would never...more
What you love about reading short story collections over short story anthologies is that you can pick up the threads that move throughout the stories. Moore has a thing for opera singers and women who work in retail, women with cheating men and weird moms. You enjoy the collection because you enjoy Moore’s writing, however you are a little put off by the choice of the second person in so many of the stories.
You wonder what it is about the second person that you don’t like. Perhaps it’s the presumptuousness of what “you” would do. It immediately puts you on the defensive and the whole time you are reading a story you can’t help but think, “I would never...more