false 4 28 5 true 5891016 read 7 true 2691887 currently-reading 16 true 2691886 to-read http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/29789647 Trouble: Stories (Paperback) by Patrick Somerville
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]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/29605470 Dinner with Osama (ND Sullivan Prize Short Fiction) by Marilyn Krysl
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]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/29605449 Ryan Seacrest is Famous (Paperback) by Dave Housley
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]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/29605421 The Dying Animal by Philip Roth
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]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/29604960 The Mayor's Tongue (Hardcover) by Nathaniel Rich
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]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/29604948 Insects Are Just Like You and Me Except Some of Them Have Wings (Paperback) by Kuzhali Manickavel
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]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/29324375 The Boat (Hardcover) by Nam Le
I was searching for a book to read and review for Virginia Quarterly Review’s Young Reviewers Contest and decided to try The Boat by Nam Le. This book matches my (and the contest’s) criteria exactly; the book I choose must 1) have been published this year, 2) preferably be a debut collection of short stories, and 3) have generated a lot of negative and positive interest among readers.

I gladly purchased this hardcover release for $25 at Barnes & Noble, thinking that I was doing this new writer a service. I started reading it the same day. And by page 15, I wanted to throw the book across the room.

I am probably going to return the book this afternoon. Is there anyone who can convince me to read further?

The first story in the collection is titled “Love and Honor and Pity and Pride and Compassion and Sacrifice.” I guess he had trouble thinking of a title. Nam also has trouble writing stories. But he’s really good at introspection.

I’m only saying this because I am sickened by the glorious New York Times review of this book, and I am highly skeptical of the Amazon.com reviews. This guy has quite an impressive writing resume, including a fellowship from the Iowa Writer’s Workshop. Want to know how I know about that? Because he writes about it in his first story!

The author describes his struggle with writer’s block and his burning desire to write about his father’s life. It just so happens that Nam’s father is visiting while he has to complete his story collection for school! His inability to write anything continues for fifteen pages; meawhile, he’s writing about the inability to write.

“Deadlines came, exhausting, and I forced myself up to meet them. Then, in the great spans of time between, I fell back to my vacant screen and my slowly sludging mind. I tried everything - writing in longhand, writing in my bed, in my bathtub…How hard could it be? Things happened in this world all the time. All I had to do was record them.”

Yes, Nam, that’s a genre called non-fiction. How about you find yourself an imagination?

I really liked the moments where Le describes Linda, his romantic interest. But he ruins it by whining about that too. “She looked like an actress who looked like my girlfriend. Staring at her face made me tired. I’d begun to feel this way more often around her.” She gets annoyed with him and tells him to finish his story already. But he can’t.

I kind of like the idea of Le trying to poke fun at ethnic fiction, which is apparently all the rage right now. But it is ethnic fiction! He’s not doing anything original; he’s only taking an intellectual approach to it. He’s not writing about the ethnic experience; he’s writing about looking at the experience from an educated perspective. It’s like Jhumpa Lahiri except at least Lahiri knows how to draw a character and tell a story.

I am really not interested in Le’s struggles to write at Iowa. I really don’t care. This story, or what I read of it, embodies everything I think is wrong with M.F.A. programs. Really, you should not be in the program, Nam, if you’re having this many problems. Don’t use the Iowa Workshop as a place to work out your issues with family and identity. And don’t pretend you’re bad-ass by describing that fling you had in your youth with the dangerous meth-addict girl.

This makes me sick. I don’t want to read any further. I don’t care if the rest of the collection is great - why would he start with such a self-absorbed story?

Does anyone want to talk me out of returning this book? It might be interesting to finish reading it, I guess. It would give me a lot to write about for my VQR review. ]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/29225189 Like You'd Understand, Anyway: Stories (Hardcover) by Jim Shepard
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]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/29198737 The Good Life: Stories (Paperback) by Erin McGraw
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