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The Odditorium: Stories
O, The Oprah Magazine “Title to Pick Up Now” & Oprah.com Book of the Week
San Francisco Chronicle Best Book of the Year
Library Journal Best Stories Collection of the Year
“Emotionally rich.” — New York Times
“Ambitious, lush and even thrilling.” — Los Angeles Times
“Ripping good yarns.” —Minneapolis Star Tribune
“The stories in this strange and original collection bend genres—horror, mystery, Western—into wondrous new shapes.” — O, The Oprah Magazine
In each of these eight lyrical and baroque tales, Melissa Pritchard transports readers into spine-tingling milieus that range from the astounding realm of Robert LeRoy Ripley’s “odditoriums” to the courtyard where Edgar Allan Poe once played as a child. Whether she is setting the famed figures of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show, including Annie Oakley and Sitting Bull, against the real, genocidal history of the American West, or contrasting the luxurious hotel where British writer Somerset Maugham stayed with the modern-day brothels of India, her stories illuminate the many ways history and architecture exert powerful forces upon human consciousness.
Melissa Pritchard is a Flannery O’Connor, Janet Heidinger Kafka, and Carl Sandburg award-winning author whose previous short fiction collections were New York Times Notable Book and Editor’s Choice selections. She has also been an embedded journalist in Afghanistan and is member of the Afghan Women’s Writing Project, which helps to promote literacy and education for Afghan women and girls. She lives in Arizona.
San Francisco Chronicle Best Book of the Year
Library Journal Best Stories Collection of the Year
“Emotionally rich.” — New York Times
“Ambitious, lush and even thrilling.” — Los Angeles Times
“Ripping good yarns.” —Minneapolis Star Tribune
“The stories in this strange and original collection bend genres—horror, mystery, Western—into wondrous new shapes.” — O, The Oprah Magazine
In each of these eight lyrical and baroque tales, Melissa Pritchard transports readers into spine-tingling milieus that range from the astounding realm of Robert LeRoy Ripley’s “odditoriums” to the courtyard where Edgar Allan Poe once played as a child. Whether she is setting the famed figures of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show, including Annie Oakley and Sitting Bull, against the real, genocidal history of the American West, or contrasting the luxurious hotel where British writer Somerset Maugham stayed with the modern-day brothels of India, her stories illuminate the many ways history and architecture exert powerful forces upon human consciousness.
Melissa Pritchard is a Flannery O’Connor, Janet Heidinger Kafka, and Carl Sandburg award-winning author whose previous short fiction collections were New York Times Notable Book and Editor’s Choice selections. She has also been an embedded journalist in Afghanistan and is member of the Afghan Women’s Writing Project, which helps to promote literacy and education for Afghan women and girls. She lives in Arizona.
256 pages, Paperback
First published January 10, 2012
10 people are currently reading
346 people want to read
About the author
Melissa Pritchard
26 books76 followersFLIGHT OF THE WILD SWAN, Bellevue Literary Press,
March 2024, RB Media audiobook
- Book Award Finalist: Last Syllable, Longform Literary Journal (winner announced 12/25)
- A Favorite Book of 2024: The Washington Independent Review of Books
- 2025 Georgia Author of the Year Finalist, Literary Fiction
-* Portland Book Review, "The writing is beautiful, stark and luxuriant by turns."
_ New York Times, "Best Historical Fiction"
_ New York Sun, "A standout."
- NPR/GPB's Peter Biello, All Things Considered: "...an amazing book. Just an incredible book."
- Denver Post, "An awe-inspiring story."
_ *Publishers Weekly, starred, Featured Fiction.
_ *Kirkus Review, starred.
_ *Foreword Reviews, starred, "An inspiring novel."
- Atlanta Journal Constitution, "An addictive read..."
_ Historical Novel Society, "Powerful...a significant tribute."
_ LibraryThing Review
_ Booklist, "A compelling human portrait of an extraordinary woman."
_ Historical Novels Review, "Powerful."
- Atlanta Journal Constitution, "An addictive read..."
_ Midwest Book Review, "Exceptional."
_ BookBrowse TOP PICK, "...a tremendously written novel...a story to read, reread, and share with others."
- A "Reading with Arizona PBS selection"
- Southern Literary Review: "Rich and detailed...exceptional!"
AWARDS: 2025 Georgia Author of the Year Finalist, Flannery O'Connor, Carl Sandburg, Janet Kafka, NEA, five Pushcart and O.Henry Prizes, Barnes & Noble Great Writers Award, Carson McCullers Fellow. Fiction, non-fiction in Paris Review, Ecotone, A Public Space, Conjunctions, LitMag, Southern Review, O the Oprah Magazine, Wilson Quarterly, the Nation, Chicago Tribune, NYTBR, others. Frequently anthologized. Fiction editor: IMAGE
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Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews
June 13, 2013
Very few short story collections are as ambitious and successful as Melissa Pritchard's The Odditorium. First of all, Melissa Pritchard is smart. She almost frightens me, she's so smart. She does her research. She writes about the crimes of history, human psychology, the depths of the soul, and the memory of land (I mean that both ways: the land's memory and human memory of land). Think about a story with Sitting Bull and Annie Oakley. You cannot imagine what is going to happen here. These are genre bending stories. Buy this book. Read it. Urge it upon your students and friends. Flannery O'Connor brilliantly did the same thing over and over and got you every time. Melissa Pritchard does something different every time and gets you just the same.
November 30, 2012
http://wineandabook.com/2012/03/06/re...
Melissa Pritchard has some legit authorial street cred. Thus far, her short fiction has won:
*the Flannery O'Connor Award,
*the Carl Sandburg Literary Award,
*the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize,
*a PEN/Nelson Algren Honorary Mention
*TWO O. Henry Prizes,
*TWO Pushcart Prizes,
*the Ortese Prize in North American Literature from the University of Florence,
*the Barnes & Noble Discover Award,
*fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Hawthorne Foundation of Scotland, the Bogliasco Foundation of Italy, and the Howard Foundation at Brown University
AND she's been chosen for NPR's Summer Reading List AND her work has been anthologized many times over.
To say Pritchard was immensely talented would be a careless understatement.
Now, I usually grab short story collections as my subway reading. I like the feeling of accomplishment I get from being able to finish a short story or two while crushed against complete strangers during my commute.
(sidebar the first: did anyone else die laughing watching Liz Lemon's morning commute on 30 Rock a few weeks ago? For those of you who don't live in New York, that was not at all exaggeration for comedy's sake. That was EXACTLY what Newt Gingrich's "elite" New Yorkers face between the hours of 8-10am and 4:30-7:30pm EVERY SINGLE DAY. Which is probably why we New Yorkers have the reputation of being a bit cranky. The only thing missing from 30 Rock's vignette was the smell. When you're smashed against multiple people in several compromising positions, there's inevitably someone in close proximity who does not believe in deodorant. Or likes to pile on the perfume/cologne. Or who hasn't bathed in several moons. Or probably should see a physician re: what is making their feet smell like moldy cheese. Or all of the above. sidebar the second: perhaps I hold a grudge for an excessively long time, but I'm still in awe of how out of touch Newt Gingrich's comment about "elite" New Yorkers ride the subway. In my job, when I'm out working with schools, I ride the subway all day. I would like to personally invite Newt to commute with me for a day, on my dime, and then ask him how "elite" he feels....might also impact his stance on public school education...two birds, one stone. Now back to our regularly scheduled programming...)
However, this is not the ideal collection for short bursts of reading, because Pritchard is one of those amazingly rare contemporary authors whose prose is so lyrical and so thought-provoking that you're going to want a nice window of quiet time to savor it, like a well poured glass of Malbec on a chilly November evening. (Also, any author who can use the descriptor "labial pink" in a story without it feeling as tawdry as a bodice rippers' various "throbbing members" is truly a master of their craft). Each story in her collection defies the notion of genre, and as uniquely structured as each piece is, as a whole they form a coherent and well curated collection.
A couple highlights:
Captain Brown and the Royal Victoria Medical Hospital: My absolute favorite in the collection, this story focuses on Captain Brown, poetry enthusiast who's somewhat incongruous to what one typically pictures as a military commander, as he takes command of the Royal Victoria Medical Hospital post D-Day. The descriptions of the hospital itself are as haunting as many of the images and characters Pritchard conjures. A highlight of the collection.
Ecorché: Flayed Man: This story felt a bit like the love child of Salman Rushdie's The Enchantress of Florence and anything by the Marquise de Sade. It follows the crucial players who, while performing their collective tasks of "Collector," "Director" and "Anatomist," work to create and maintain 1798's version of the Bodies exhibit. I admire Pritchard's graphic and lyrical yet concise language as she describes the various exhibits and the men who maintain them.
Rubric rating: 8.5. One of the most unique collections I've read in ages. I can't add her to my "personal pantheon of prolific prose-makers" YET, but I have a feeling once I read more of her work, that's where she'll end up.
Melissa Pritchard has some legit authorial street cred. Thus far, her short fiction has won:
*the Flannery O'Connor Award,
*the Carl Sandburg Literary Award,
*the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize,
*a PEN/Nelson Algren Honorary Mention
*TWO O. Henry Prizes,
*TWO Pushcart Prizes,
*the Ortese Prize in North American Literature from the University of Florence,
*the Barnes & Noble Discover Award,
*fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Hawthorne Foundation of Scotland, the Bogliasco Foundation of Italy, and the Howard Foundation at Brown University
AND she's been chosen for NPR's Summer Reading List AND her work has been anthologized many times over.
To say Pritchard was immensely talented would be a careless understatement.
Now, I usually grab short story collections as my subway reading. I like the feeling of accomplishment I get from being able to finish a short story or two while crushed against complete strangers during my commute.
(sidebar the first: did anyone else die laughing watching Liz Lemon's morning commute on 30 Rock a few weeks ago? For those of you who don't live in New York, that was not at all exaggeration for comedy's sake. That was EXACTLY what Newt Gingrich's "elite" New Yorkers face between the hours of 8-10am and 4:30-7:30pm EVERY SINGLE DAY. Which is probably why we New Yorkers have the reputation of being a bit cranky. The only thing missing from 30 Rock's vignette was the smell. When you're smashed against multiple people in several compromising positions, there's inevitably someone in close proximity who does not believe in deodorant. Or likes to pile on the perfume/cologne. Or who hasn't bathed in several moons. Or probably should see a physician re: what is making their feet smell like moldy cheese. Or all of the above. sidebar the second: perhaps I hold a grudge for an excessively long time, but I'm still in awe of how out of touch Newt Gingrich's comment about "elite" New Yorkers ride the subway. In my job, when I'm out working with schools, I ride the subway all day. I would like to personally invite Newt to commute with me for a day, on my dime, and then ask him how "elite" he feels....might also impact his stance on public school education...two birds, one stone. Now back to our regularly scheduled programming...)
However, this is not the ideal collection for short bursts of reading, because Pritchard is one of those amazingly rare contemporary authors whose prose is so lyrical and so thought-provoking that you're going to want a nice window of quiet time to savor it, like a well poured glass of Malbec on a chilly November evening. (Also, any author who can use the descriptor "labial pink" in a story without it feeling as tawdry as a bodice rippers' various "throbbing members" is truly a master of their craft). Each story in her collection defies the notion of genre, and as uniquely structured as each piece is, as a whole they form a coherent and well curated collection.
A couple highlights:
Captain Brown and the Royal Victoria Medical Hospital: My absolute favorite in the collection, this story focuses on Captain Brown, poetry enthusiast who's somewhat incongruous to what one typically pictures as a military commander, as he takes command of the Royal Victoria Medical Hospital post D-Day. The descriptions of the hospital itself are as haunting as many of the images and characters Pritchard conjures. A highlight of the collection.
Ecorché: Flayed Man: This story felt a bit like the love child of Salman Rushdie's The Enchantress of Florence and anything by the Marquise de Sade. It follows the crucial players who, while performing their collective tasks of "Collector," "Director" and "Anatomist," work to create and maintain 1798's version of the Bodies exhibit. I admire Pritchard's graphic and lyrical yet concise language as she describes the various exhibits and the men who maintain them.
Rubric rating: 8.5. One of the most unique collections I've read in ages. I can't add her to my "personal pantheon of prolific prose-makers" YET, but I have a feeling once I read more of her work, that's where she'll end up.
December 18, 2015
This collection of eight worlds transported me inside the lives of these magical, haunting, luminous characters. No one can write like Melissa Pritchard! Her prose is a dense, exotic forest of language that you want to disappear in forever.
“Dank grub, cabbage vermin, white, hairless, altricial slug. It scarcely flourished in its cradle plot, its solitary necropolis, neither living nor dead, its budded tongue a fleshy club, its legs fwumped and futile.”
Pritchard never shies away from the darkest recesses calling to mind the work of Edgar Allan Poe and yet Pritchard digs deeper and takes us inside the heads of Kaspar Hauser, Pelagia: the swirling saint, ridiculed and abused, Annie Oakley and her relationship with Sitting Bull, Ripley’s fact checker and a myriad of other characters from history that are ghostly ventures through wax museums at night when all the statues come alive.
“Who, you ask? A third or fourth leg of Swiss, Austrian descent? A shrunken head schooled in Krakow? A Friday night cranial hopper?”
“Given an era of less anxiety and more discretion, take away the Great Depression and two World Wars, and Ripley might have been your run-of-the-mill suburban crackpot. A plastic bag sorter, hoarder of stoppers and snaps, jam jars, jawbreakers, broken ping-pong paddles, push mowers, racially perverse lawn ornaments, waffle irons.”
These are stories to be read one by one, to really encompass the treasure chest of Pritchard’s mastery of storytelling and her inimitable landscape of descriptions. Unfortunately, this collection was impossible to put down once I had it in my hands. I do know that it will become another of Pritchard’s glowing gems that I will always keep near me for inspiration and an awestruck reminder of how far the imagination can travel.
“Objects, while appearing solid, are 99.9999 percent empty space. Chaos directs us to a higher order. Past and future do not exist. Dimensions are multiple and time can be traveled.”
Melissa Pritchard takes us into her own galaxies. Get a copy now!! A book that changes lives!
“Dank grub, cabbage vermin, white, hairless, altricial slug. It scarcely flourished in its cradle plot, its solitary necropolis, neither living nor dead, its budded tongue a fleshy club, its legs fwumped and futile.”
Pritchard never shies away from the darkest recesses calling to mind the work of Edgar Allan Poe and yet Pritchard digs deeper and takes us inside the heads of Kaspar Hauser, Pelagia: the swirling saint, ridiculed and abused, Annie Oakley and her relationship with Sitting Bull, Ripley’s fact checker and a myriad of other characters from history that are ghostly ventures through wax museums at night when all the statues come alive.
“Who, you ask? A third or fourth leg of Swiss, Austrian descent? A shrunken head schooled in Krakow? A Friday night cranial hopper?”
“Given an era of less anxiety and more discretion, take away the Great Depression and two World Wars, and Ripley might have been your run-of-the-mill suburban crackpot. A plastic bag sorter, hoarder of stoppers and snaps, jam jars, jawbreakers, broken ping-pong paddles, push mowers, racially perverse lawn ornaments, waffle irons.”
These are stories to be read one by one, to really encompass the treasure chest of Pritchard’s mastery of storytelling and her inimitable landscape of descriptions. Unfortunately, this collection was impossible to put down once I had it in my hands. I do know that it will become another of Pritchard’s glowing gems that I will always keep near me for inspiration and an awestruck reminder of how far the imagination can travel.
“Objects, while appearing solid, are 99.9999 percent empty space. Chaos directs us to a higher order. Past and future do not exist. Dimensions are multiple and time can be traveled.”
Melissa Pritchard takes us into her own galaxies. Get a copy now!! A book that changes lives!
March 27, 2012
Review based on ARC.
There is no doubt that Ms. Pritchard has a talent with words... However, i feel she is lacking in story and flow. I have often said that I love a well-written book, but even better, a well-told story. The conflict is apparent in the Odditorium.
It is clear that she has a poetic and lyrical method to her prose. But I don't care about the characters, not a single one has been endeared to me, and it feels like a well-written, albeit dry, history book. One that I know is fiction.
But she's smart. She is evocative with her language. She is creative and presents thoughtful and involved perspectives. I was almost intrigued. I was almost interested. I kept wanting to fall into the tales. But I remained above, reading from an outside perspective.
If you want something literary, intelligent, thoughtful.. pick it up. If you want to lose yourself in another place, another world... hold off. You won't lose yourself here -- you will merely be intellectually stimulated.
There is no doubt that Ms. Pritchard has a talent with words... However, i feel she is lacking in story and flow. I have often said that I love a well-written book, but even better, a well-told story. The conflict is apparent in the Odditorium.
It is clear that she has a poetic and lyrical method to her prose. But I don't care about the characters, not a single one has been endeared to me, and it feels like a well-written, albeit dry, history book. One that I know is fiction.
But she's smart. She is evocative with her language. She is creative and presents thoughtful and involved perspectives. I was almost intrigued. I was almost interested. I kept wanting to fall into the tales. But I remained above, reading from an outside perspective.
If you want something literary, intelligent, thoughtful.. pick it up. If you want to lose yourself in another place, another world... hold off. You won't lose yourself here -- you will merely be intellectually stimulated.
March 18, 2012
I enjoyed the rich texture and detail of these stories. If you read one story in this book then the longest 'Captain Brown....' stands out as an almost novella that really had me engrossed. Very pleased to have discovered this author and will seek out her other books.
October 22, 2012
Ah, I love you Melissa. Thank you for writing these intensely intelligent, socially responsible stories.
February 9, 2012
Melissa Pritchard's new collection of short stories draws on the deep well of history to produce stories based on characters both famous and obscure. This collection of eight stories, told in a variety of ways, is inventive and satisfying on a number of levels.
My absolute favorite stories from The Odditorium are based on the strangest historical figures. "Pelagia, Holy Fool" is based on a woman named Pelagia, born in 1807 during the reign of Tsar Alexander I who was a Fool-for-Christ. In short, she was so dedicated to God and receiving the Word of God, that she acted as if she was totally insane and lived a hard, filthy life. People came from far away to receive her spiritual guidance, although it was often came across as gibberish. Like any good sermon, "Pelagia, Holy Fool" ends with three morals, each a short story that touches on insanity in a different way.
Another fantastic story is "The Hauser Variations," which details the story of Kaspar Hauser, a "feral boy" found on the streets of Nuremberg, Germany in 1828. Each of the eleven "variations" contain a note on how it is to be performed. For example, the first variation is to be performed "in a narrative tone, not too fast," while the second variation is to be performed "with poetic sobriety." The variations shift in tone and voice, making the whole story playful and exciting and amplifying the mystery behind the very strange Kaspar Hauser. The story is a lot of fun - one variation is presented in the form of a play, complete with stage direction.
What I found most interesting about Melissa Pritchard's stories was that I didn't feel like there was really a subtext to any of the stories. I often felt like the emphasis was more on how the story was being told than the actual story itself. This is obvious in "The Hauser Variations," but other stories like the chilling "Patricide" and the stoic "Captain Brown and the Royal Victoria Military Hospital" are each told in a very unique voice and style. The glue of The Odditorium is history and not a cohesive style, where each story is a unique reading experience.
As I read the stories of The Odditorium, I repeatedly looked up the characters on Wikipedia or other online resources. This made the reading rather slow, but also really enhanced my experience. Checking the colorful characters that Pritchard puts on the page against the stark black and white of a Wikipedia entry only enlarged my appreciation of what was being done with the characters and how they were being fleshed out in the stories. Each new story had me trying to work out where the historical "truth" ended and where the fiction began.
Overall The Odditorium is a rewarding read. Spending time discovering the historical figures put new light on the characters, illuminating clever details and embellishing Pritchard's own embellishments. Some of the characters I encountered in The Odditorium will stay with me a while and other's will fade back into the shadows of history, but I'm glad they got to come out and play for a while.
My absolute favorite stories from The Odditorium are based on the strangest historical figures. "Pelagia, Holy Fool" is based on a woman named Pelagia, born in 1807 during the reign of Tsar Alexander I who was a Fool-for-Christ. In short, she was so dedicated to God and receiving the Word of God, that she acted as if she was totally insane and lived a hard, filthy life. People came from far away to receive her spiritual guidance, although it was often came across as gibberish. Like any good sermon, "Pelagia, Holy Fool" ends with three morals, each a short story that touches on insanity in a different way.
Another fantastic story is "The Hauser Variations," which details the story of Kaspar Hauser, a "feral boy" found on the streets of Nuremberg, Germany in 1828. Each of the eleven "variations" contain a note on how it is to be performed. For example, the first variation is to be performed "in a narrative tone, not too fast," while the second variation is to be performed "with poetic sobriety." The variations shift in tone and voice, making the whole story playful and exciting and amplifying the mystery behind the very strange Kaspar Hauser. The story is a lot of fun - one variation is presented in the form of a play, complete with stage direction.
What I found most interesting about Melissa Pritchard's stories was that I didn't feel like there was really a subtext to any of the stories. I often felt like the emphasis was more on how the story was being told than the actual story itself. This is obvious in "The Hauser Variations," but other stories like the chilling "Patricide" and the stoic "Captain Brown and the Royal Victoria Military Hospital" are each told in a very unique voice and style. The glue of The Odditorium is history and not a cohesive style, where each story is a unique reading experience.
As I read the stories of The Odditorium, I repeatedly looked up the characters on Wikipedia or other online resources. This made the reading rather slow, but also really enhanced my experience. Checking the colorful characters that Pritchard puts on the page against the stark black and white of a Wikipedia entry only enlarged my appreciation of what was being done with the characters and how they were being fleshed out in the stories. Each new story had me trying to work out where the historical "truth" ended and where the fiction began.
Overall The Odditorium is a rewarding read. Spending time discovering the historical figures put new light on the characters, illuminating clever details and embellishing Pritchard's own embellishments. Some of the characters I encountered in The Odditorium will stay with me a while and other's will fade back into the shadows of history, but I'm glad they got to come out and play for a while.
September 3, 2013
absolutely brilliant little book.
October 18, 2015
Interesting weaving of true events with narratives. My favorite piece was about the friendship and respect shared by Annie Oakley and Sitting Bull.
Read
June 14, 2019Reading this collection felt a lot like sitting in a beautifully decorated room with lots of intricate detail, but almost no natural light. That is to say, you sit and admire, but can’t feel engaged.
It’s still worth a peak though, it’s grotesque and uncanny at moments when you can’t look away. Would recommend to: fans of Angela Carter and Patrick Süskind.
It’s still worth a peak though, it’s grotesque and uncanny at moments when you can’t look away. Would recommend to: fans of Angela Carter and Patrick Süskind.
July 7, 2024
the stories were all way longer than i would have liked them to be with layers and layers of description. last story was sad but again...too long for my taste.
November 30, 2024
A bit too “odd” for me. And the vocabulary was above my reading level. DNF. That being said, the story about Annie Oakley, and Sitting Bull was very interesting.
December 3, 2012
It's hard to find fault with the dense recreations here, stories that are, I think, in the mode of Jim Shepard: historical fictions, by and large, that emphasize character over narrative. Sometimes, like in Shepard (and maybe about half the stories here), the characters are historical personages, and the other half are ostensibly imaginary characters. And really, I think the goal of these stories is to set character against that historical tableau, to see them as both products of and somehow distinct from their circumstance. It's an admirable project, even if it's one that didn't move me-- there's not a lot of narrative tension to these stories, and sometimes the plotting, as in the way the paired injured French resistance fighter and captured German officer at the WW2 hospital in "Captain Brown" feels a little blunt and inelegant and ultimately only a projection, of sorts, of the title character's psyche. That's badly worded, but here's another take: not a lot happens in these stories, and when things do happen, they aren't handled with the circumspection and sophistication, the nuance and deep deep detail of the characters and settings.
I think that for some people, this is an ideal book. For me, though, it never quite broke out of itself to become fully alive-- these stories did remain like museum pieces, and not ultimately as strange as what you'd insist on seeing at an Odditorium.
I think that for some people, this is an ideal book. For me, though, it never quite broke out of itself to become fully alive-- these stories did remain like museum pieces, and not ultimately as strange as what you'd insist on seeing at an Odditorium.
February 5, 2012
I remember as a kid I'd go to the county fair and pay 50 cents to see a two headed calf or the world's largest horse or a three-eyed toad and it wasn't really a circus freak show, they would just be odd things. That's kind of like this book, the stories are well-written, odd little things that you wouldn't normally focus on. There's a thread through the stories of what is news, what gets chosen to reported, how frequently this information is wrong or truncated. And in the end, the stories failed to engage me emotionally. That I was just another observer who'd paid my 50 cents to walk through.
June 28, 2012
I had to take this down one star because, although most of the stories are magical, a few seem like wastes of time (and they are the longest). I absolutely loved all the tales based in history but I felt like the others were put in as filler in order to make the book long enough to pay full price. Those stories have their merits but should be in a different collection; one called 'Life's little mundanities' or something.
July 26, 2016
The prose is rich and it's easy to get lost in it. The stories in this collection are diverse and compelling. It's smart and lovely and I'm going to read it again really soon. While the writing flowed nicely, some of the stories plot-wise were a little clunky. It's dense and historical and not light beach reading, but I do recommend this to all readers who are fans of good writing and interesting subjects.
December 2, 2012
I once heard Melissa Pritchard tell students to collect words. Ms Pritchard is a careful gatherer of words and a master at using them. This collection brims with historical variations from 17th century Germany to modern India. Stories cleverly told with humor and understanding of the human condition.
Read slowly on a winter's eve.
Read slowly on a winter's eve.
January 19, 2017
Maybe I'm missing something based on all of the five star reviews of this book but I found this novel to be dry and unentertaining. I could not engage with any of the short stories or characters. While she has a talent for writing, I just wasn't a fan of the author's prose. The Odditorium was less intriguingly odd for me, and more of a slog to get through.
May 2, 2012
Clever, stylized writing
August 3, 2012
So could not connect to this book. While the author has a way with words and a definite talent as a writer I found this collection of stories dry and un-entertaining. Disappointed to say the least.
Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews