false 5 91 48 true 5678540 read 5 true 2241398 currently-reading 38 true 2241397 to-read http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/77549704 to: In The Year Of The Long Division: Stories (Hardcover) by Dawn Raffel
The stories in In the Year of Long Division show the ultimate end of the minimalist impulse: prose becomes poetry, external description subordinated to an internal dialogue, scenes sketched so lightly they become feathery suggestion. It is perhaps no surprise that Raffel calls out her thanks to Gordon Lish at the beginning of her acknowledgements: this is the short story shorn of traditional plot and character as was only hinted at in Raymond Carver’s work.

Full Review ]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/76461715 to: The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work (Hardcover) by Alain de Botton
Equally insightful and exasperating, with a significant dose of aristocratic condescension.

Full review here ]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/73171530 to: Voices from the Moon (Hardcover) by Andre Dubus
I have a theory–thoroughly untested, and probably wrong–that you can identify a novel written by a master of the short story by its use of the close third-person point of view. Where novelist-novelists might choose a more omniscient voice, flitting from consciousness to consciousness, or a point of view limited to the exterior, seeing only what the camera’s eye can pick out, the story-novelist settles into a character’s head and stays a while, letting their thoughts color whole chapters. Hawthorne’s Scarlet Letter comes to mind as such a novel, with its strong interior portraits of Chillingworth and Dimmesdale; and Andre Dubus’ Voices From the Moon is another.

Full review ]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/73012941 to: Pieces for the Left Hand: Stories (Paperback) by J. Robert Lennon
Pieces for the Left Hand</a> by J. Robert Lennon</blockquote>The 100 anecdotes collected in Pieces for the Left Hand are loosely held together by a setting (a small upstate New York town and its environs) and a narrative consciousness (an unemployed man who muses on these tales as he takes a daily walk). All are very brief--none more than three pages--and most have a gnomic or aphoristic quality. They touch on themes of mistaken identity, the pitfalls of memory, and unanticipated consequences, often refusing to come to a clear resolution.

Full Review ]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/72044230 Remember when we had a doorman? (Unknown Binding) by Josephine Lawrence
bookshelves: to-read
]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/70181911 Lovecraft Unbound (Paperback) by Ellen Datlow
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]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/70143090 to: Troll's Eye View: A Book of Villainous Tales (Hardcover) by Ellen Datlow
Troll’s Eye View is a collection of stories revisiting well-known fairy tales–Rumpelstiltskin, Hansel and Gretel, Molly and the Giants–often from the villain’s point of view. It’s a mixed bag of stories: some are slightly skewed re-tellings, some are realistic stories informed by the themes and structures of fairy tales, and some are new tales that add meat to the well-gnawed bones. Some of the stories work well, others don’t quite gel, but in the main, this is a solid little collection.

Full review ]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/69786576 to: Demons in the Spring (Hardcover) by Joe Meno
Joe Meno's Demons in the Spring is filled with wonders: a woman with a city growing inside her chest, an aquarium in decline, a world plunged into darkness by an absent moon, palaces made of ice. There's a touch of the absurd, and the surreal, with a melancholy haze over many of the stories, but the overall tone is of playfulness and amazement. It is informed by the logic of dreams, even in the more realistic stories; surrender to the dreams, and you'll be swept into a world spinning just a little out of phase with our own.

Full review
]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/69658417 The View from the Seventh Layer (Hardcover) by Kevin Brockmeier
bookshelves: to-read
]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/69658410 The Best American Fantasy 3 (Paperback) by Kevin Brockmeier
bookshelves: to-read
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