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What It Might Feel Like To Hope
What It Might Feel Like to Hope, the second collection from award-winning author Dorene O’Brien, is a masterful and eclectic mix of stories that considers the infinitely powerful, and equally naive and damning force that is human hope. A couple tries to come to terms with one another as they travel west in the uncomfortable twilight of their youth; a mortician and an idealistic novelist spar about the true nature of death; an aspiring author hopes to impress Tom Hanks with zombies; a tarot reader deals out the future of Detroit. Showcasing her diverse talents, O’Brien offers a panoply of characters and settings that dwells beyond the borders of certainty, in a place where all that has been left to them is an inkling of possibility upon which they must place all their hopes. These stories offer a variety of tones, forms, and themes in which O’Brien displays an amazing range and control of her craft, all while exploring the essential nature of humanity with nuance, empathy, and at times a touch of skepticism.
176 pages, Paperback
Published February 12, 2019
21 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
April 20, 2019
Dorene O’Brien’s newest collection of short stories “What It Might Feel Like To Hope” is both powerful and compelling. Through vivid prose, O’Brien portrays characters and worlds that are starkly different from one another: a health-conscious widow continually bails out her drunken next-door neighbor from jail while defying the peering eyes of their neighbors; a young couple on the brink of breaking up takes a road trip; a research scientist slipping into dementia discovers a whole different realm; zombies spring to life on the pages of a screenplay meant for Tom Hanks. Each story is a delight, filled with keen insight.
What I particularly enjoyed was the scope of subject matter that is portrayed effortlessly through beautiful language and crisp dialogue. From the tribulations of daily life to the history and symbolism behind weather vanes to corruption in Detroit, O’Brien’s finesse at weaving interesting facts into the arc of the story makes it even more engaging. There are also subtle connections between the stories – main characters briefly appear in other stories providing a nice sense of continuity. But it is the thread of hope – in all its desperate and wonderful glory – that ultimately connects these fine stories. Throughout, O’Brien’s characterizations are spot on and rich, taking readers on a wondrous journey that is at times laugh-out-loud humorous, at times heartbreaking, but always authentic and magnificent.
Here’s a snippet for your enjoyment: "We sit in the middle of the bench and I put my arm around her waist and hold on tight. When the boat swings us backward toward the sky I tell her to close her eyes. 'I'll get dizzy, Jake,' she argues. 'Trust me.' She closes her eyes, and I close mine, and we are sailing blindly, the wind whipping our hair, for the moment freed of gravity. It is dizzying, this loss of control, held aloft by an invisible force that swings us wildly forward and back, trapped again in a place where nothing matters but the physical sensation of our bodies responding to a strange and compelling momentum, to a course someone else has set."
What I particularly enjoyed was the scope of subject matter that is portrayed effortlessly through beautiful language and crisp dialogue. From the tribulations of daily life to the history and symbolism behind weather vanes to corruption in Detroit, O’Brien’s finesse at weaving interesting facts into the arc of the story makes it even more engaging. There are also subtle connections between the stories – main characters briefly appear in other stories providing a nice sense of continuity. But it is the thread of hope – in all its desperate and wonderful glory – that ultimately connects these fine stories. Throughout, O’Brien’s characterizations are spot on and rich, taking readers on a wondrous journey that is at times laugh-out-loud humorous, at times heartbreaking, but always authentic and magnificent.
Here’s a snippet for your enjoyment: "We sit in the middle of the bench and I put my arm around her waist and hold on tight. When the boat swings us backward toward the sky I tell her to close her eyes. 'I'll get dizzy, Jake,' she argues. 'Trust me.' She closes her eyes, and I close mine, and we are sailing blindly, the wind whipping our hair, for the moment freed of gravity. It is dizzying, this loss of control, held aloft by an invisible force that swings us wildly forward and back, trapped again in a place where nothing matters but the physical sensation of our bodies responding to a strange and compelling momentum, to a course someone else has set."
March 5, 2019
If you are a Detroiter, specifically a writer from Detroit, you don't explain Detroit--you let it speak its story. This is something a slew of young auteurs (le sigh) haven't figured out because they are trying so hard to convince us of their street cred. They could learn from Dorene O'Brien. In her story collection "What It Might Feel Like to Hope," we experience the city through its people, their self-effacing, often darkly comical struggle to salvage something they know might not be salvageable. The tales are filled with hard-luck survivors that seem to step from a collection of Philip Levine poems. Take the bachelor mechanic who couldn't accept happiness when it freely offered itself to him, who muses, "Painful though it may be, human nature drives us to tongue the crater left by a pulled tooth, save the collars of deceased pets, troll the websites of former lovers." O'Brien's style is at once brutally poetic and sparely direct--it is honest in the way honest people don't have to strain to prove their honesty. A young Tarot reader perhaps best sums up the tone of the tales: “People change when they watch their heritage being obliterated, when they walk past vacant buildings every day, when they feel the luster fading from their lives. They become desperate.” There is hard-fought luster in these stories, a real and at times desperate bluntness that neither offers nor accepts pity. Get this book.
July 5, 2019
Loved this collection of short stories! Each speaks to the human condition; each packs a punch in very few words. O'Brien is a master of dialog and story structure.
May 21, 2020
Dorene O’Brien’s collection of short stories, What It Might Feel Like to Hope, surprises and delights the reader on every page. Eleven stories, whose titles are irresistible invitations--”Eight Blind Dates Later,” “Tom Hanks Wants a Story,” “Pocket Philosophers”--take the reader into the lives of characters on the threshold of change.
In “Turn of the Wind” a scientist specializing in crystallography, facing the onset of dementia, leaves the lab and builds weathervanes for a hobby. A weathervane, he says, “is a story on a stick,” it “offers beauty without the hope of anything more.” Faith, the main character in “Falling Forward,” takes responsibility for her dysfunctional neighbor, Ed, “a creased and rumpled man with doom etched on his face.” She is alone, and he is alone but for a lizard named Little Richard who figures prominently in the story’s climax, which holds out the promise of “falling forward into a new life.”
In “Honesty Above All Else,” along with the title of the story, O’Brien deploys a skilled writer’s second device for grabbing the reader, a smart first sentence: “I’ve never told anyone this story, and I’m only telling you now because Mrs. O’Leary is dead.” These first sentences aren’t just springboards; they’re catapults. Like this, in “A Short Distance Behind Us”: “Braelynn and I have been operating at the intersection of I love you and Fuck off for the last year.” And like this, in “Reaping: “Her hair was pulled up into a plastic bag, and red dye trickled down her face and neck as she stood on the front porch trembling.” And here, in “Little Birds”: “May told Dina to take the chair, or she’d regret it for the rest of her life.”
Five of these stories are first person narrative, five are third person, and one, the Tom Hanks piece, subtitled “An Anatomy of a Tale” (it might also be subtitled “What It Might Feel like to Write”) is at times first, second, and third.
Technically accomplished, emotionally taut, always captivating, these vivid stories are little worlds of conflict, pain, beauty, and hope. They are richly imagined and deeply satisfying. Dorene O’Brien has written a truly beautiful book.
In “Turn of the Wind” a scientist specializing in crystallography, facing the onset of dementia, leaves the lab and builds weathervanes for a hobby. A weathervane, he says, “is a story on a stick,” it “offers beauty without the hope of anything more.” Faith, the main character in “Falling Forward,” takes responsibility for her dysfunctional neighbor, Ed, “a creased and rumpled man with doom etched on his face.” She is alone, and he is alone but for a lizard named Little Richard who figures prominently in the story’s climax, which holds out the promise of “falling forward into a new life.”
In “Honesty Above All Else,” along with the title of the story, O’Brien deploys a skilled writer’s second device for grabbing the reader, a smart first sentence: “I’ve never told anyone this story, and I’m only telling you now because Mrs. O’Leary is dead.” These first sentences aren’t just springboards; they’re catapults. Like this, in “A Short Distance Behind Us”: “Braelynn and I have been operating at the intersection of I love you and Fuck off for the last year.” And like this, in “Reaping: “Her hair was pulled up into a plastic bag, and red dye trickled down her face and neck as she stood on the front porch trembling.” And here, in “Little Birds”: “May told Dina to take the chair, or she’d regret it for the rest of her life.”
Five of these stories are first person narrative, five are third person, and one, the Tom Hanks piece, subtitled “An Anatomy of a Tale” (it might also be subtitled “What It Might Feel like to Write”) is at times first, second, and third.
Technically accomplished, emotionally taut, always captivating, these vivid stories are little worlds of conflict, pain, beauty, and hope. They are richly imagined and deeply satisfying. Dorene O’Brien has written a truly beautiful book.
January 4, 2020
O'Brien's stories are digestible, succinct and so refreshing. Each one is like a little gift, a surprise, a neatly tied package with a twist you didn't see coming. Her characters are ordinary people, which I love, and yet their voices are unique. It's hard to resist a story that begins "So, let's say Tom Hanks asks you to write a story that he can turn into a movie" after you've casually mentioned to him that you are a writer. Plus you're not at all obnoxious, so he seems to like you. It could happen, right? A wonderful collection
September 29, 2019
Luminous. Every story in the collection is meant to be savored, and the collective impact is an attitude of radical hope in the face of darkness, decay, and self-destructive tendencies. As Leonard Cohen observed, there is a crack in everything; that's where the light gets in.
August 6, 2019
Vibrant and thought-provoking, I thoroughly enjoyed spending time with this wide-ranging cast of characters. Now I want to re-read, savor each story, and study the construction of this collection.
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March 29, 2023These well crafted short stories depict Detroit in all its many flavours of quirky authenticity and showcase why the city and its people are so fascinating.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews