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La locura de amar la vida
La locura de amar la vida exhibe la cara más vulnerable y humana de varios personajes a lo largo de décadas, a menudo huyendo o tratando de encontrar su sitio en un mundo demasiado grande y hostil. A lo largo de ese tiempo, de esas páginas, la vida revela su esencia como algo simultáneamente comprimido y expansivo; en un reflejo de lo que implica haber vivido tanto, y asistir al paso de esos años en un abrir y cerrar de ojos. Todo ello, con una pátina de humor áspero, ácido y preciso, que arranca sonrisas cómplices o carcajadas según el momento, observaciones agudas, personajes imperfectos pero fuertes y los escenarios oscuros de Van Sant-ish, en Portland.
- GenresShort StoriesFiction
330 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2016
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 36 reviews
February 13, 2016
I got to introduce Monica at her book release party the other night and this review will paraphrase what I said...
Ever since I first met Monica in the late 90s and started to read some of the short stories she was publishing at that time, I found myself drawn to the double-edged sword of her writing—one side was like a no-nonsense badass heroine and the other side was like a rapid fire funny lady with no mercy for your funny bone. During the early part of our friendship, we talked about books and writers whenever we saw each other, we both wrote often about books for the local newspapers, and I published stories by her in three different anthologies that I edited. I basically took any chance I got to get a story by her out in the world. While I’ve been smitten by her two excellent novels, Clown Girl and The Stud Book, my heart of hearts always loved her stories above all else.
The Folly of Loving Life is a proud achievement for me as an editor and publisher and watching Monica edit and transform these tales into a linked wonderland of Portland-centric life, love, sadness, and weirdness has been a pretty astounding thing to witness. There’s a speed and wit that cuts through on every page. Some of my favorite stories include the opening story "Dearest Dear" (such an enthralling, greasy, and yearning narrative), the unsettling but subtle college romance of "Throw a Frisbee in the Park," and the epic multi-divorced dude story, "STD Demon."
One of the other highlights of her stories is the charged and seductive noir quality to her narration. Something that was also apparent to me when working with her on the Portland Noir anthology a few years ago—but feels even more assured and elevated now.
The Folly of Loving Life is full of all of these qualities and more—from beautifully detailed stories of family to the love of dark hearts and the tragicomedy of current Portland living. Like the Willamette Week said in their review of the book, “It feels like the book the city needs right now.”
Ever since I first met Monica in the late 90s and started to read some of the short stories she was publishing at that time, I found myself drawn to the double-edged sword of her writing—one side was like a no-nonsense badass heroine and the other side was like a rapid fire funny lady with no mercy for your funny bone. During the early part of our friendship, we talked about books and writers whenever we saw each other, we both wrote often about books for the local newspapers, and I published stories by her in three different anthologies that I edited. I basically took any chance I got to get a story by her out in the world. While I’ve been smitten by her two excellent novels, Clown Girl and The Stud Book, my heart of hearts always loved her stories above all else.
The Folly of Loving Life is a proud achievement for me as an editor and publisher and watching Monica edit and transform these tales into a linked wonderland of Portland-centric life, love, sadness, and weirdness has been a pretty astounding thing to witness. There’s a speed and wit that cuts through on every page. Some of my favorite stories include the opening story "Dearest Dear" (such an enthralling, greasy, and yearning narrative), the unsettling but subtle college romance of "Throw a Frisbee in the Park," and the epic multi-divorced dude story, "STD Demon."
One of the other highlights of her stories is the charged and seductive noir quality to her narration. Something that was also apparent to me when working with her on the Portland Noir anthology a few years ago—but feels even more assured and elevated now.
The Folly of Loving Life is full of all of these qualities and more—from beautifully detailed stories of family to the love of dark hearts and the tragicomedy of current Portland living. Like the Willamette Week said in their review of the book, “It feels like the book the city needs right now.”
April 24, 2016
The cliché would be to say that this book is about dysfunctional relationships, but it's really not. It's about people doing the best they can with the materials around them. Darkly funny, heart-breaking, and full of insight into the deflating truth of human nature, Drake creates a mosaic out of scenes of the lives of Vanessa and Lucy, two sisters living in pre-Whole Foods Portland. It's a place where people don't report their mother's death in order to keep her reverse-mortgage alive, in a sort of real estate-based afterlife. Where people are permanently branded by their shitty jobs via deep-fryer. And where the guy living in your driveway may or may not carry a sexually transmitted demon. This is an incredibly funny book with moments of breathtaking insight. A book which you will hate yourself for putting down. A reminder that there really are no such thing as dysfunctional relationships. Everyone we've invited into our lives is there for a reason, sometimes a regrettable one, but it is the collage of these relationships that defines a life. In the end, all human relationships are a work of junk art.
February 13, 2016
Monica Drake has done it again. Swept me away into her world. The Folly of Loving Life is a collection of linked stories. Any one of them could stand on its own, but together they paint a picture of a family and the place that helped shape their lives. Portland, Oregon is more of character in these stories than the setting. So alive and full of life. I couldn't help but be transported. There wasn't a story in this collection that I didn't love. Favorites include: The Arboretum, See You Later, Fry-O-Lator, and Mustard. Haunting, laugh out loud funny, and most importantly REAL. Highly recommended!!
February 11, 2016
This book is uniquely Portland and wry as hell--I loved it! I got to hear Monica read one of the stories, "Mustard" at a Bedtime Stories event a few years ago. I still hear her making the creepy "Mmmm, mmmmm..." sounds in my head sometimes. I imitate it for my daughter when I want to freak her out.
I'd read, and really liked, a few of these stories in anthologies, but the overall effect of the interlocking stories all gathered together is wonderful. The stories are interlaced beautifully, creating varied and distinct tales with the underlying comfort of reoccurring characters. I really felt like I knew these fictional people and, since I am a Portland native, I definitely knew all the places that were mentioned in the book. THE FOLLY OF LOVING LIFE captures Portland perfectly, so much so that the city serves as its own character. Old Portland is there, and Drake managed to capture the newer Portland as well--the one where things are changing so quickly (and not for the better.)
I'd read, and really liked, a few of these stories in anthologies, but the overall effect of the interlocking stories all gathered together is wonderful. The stories are interlaced beautifully, creating varied and distinct tales with the underlying comfort of reoccurring characters. I really felt like I knew these fictional people and, since I am a Portland native, I definitely knew all the places that were mentioned in the book. THE FOLLY OF LOVING LIFE captures Portland perfectly, so much so that the city serves as its own character. Old Portland is there, and Drake managed to capture the newer Portland as well--the one where things are changing so quickly (and not for the better.)
March 8, 2016
I'm a big fan of The Stud Book, Drake’s last novel, and so much of what I loved about that book figures heavily here as well.
The characters who populate these linked stories, set in Portland, feel like my friends, family members, and acquaintances; the settings and scenes speak to this moment in history, this place in the world, in such a specific and satisfying way; and though these stories never quite go speculative (I would argue that “The Arboretum,” one of my favorite, could pass for a ghost story), there’s that delicious sense of a tilted world, the feeling that you couldn’t possibly predict which direction any given story is going to go. (This reminds me of the short fiction of Charles Baxter.)
The final story, “S.T.D. Demon,” is a tour de force. I feel like it actually rearranged my synapses, not unlike a talk the poet Mary Ruefle gave at the Tin House writers conference a few years back--the subject of which was, in part, shrunken heads.
That's the power of a great writer three or four levels deep with some genuinely profound (and profoundly weird) subjects--deep enough to make them funny.
And Monica Drake (in case you hadn't heard) is one of the funniest ladies around.
The characters who populate these linked stories, set in Portland, feel like my friends, family members, and acquaintances; the settings and scenes speak to this moment in history, this place in the world, in such a specific and satisfying way; and though these stories never quite go speculative (I would argue that “The Arboretum,” one of my favorite, could pass for a ghost story), there’s that delicious sense of a tilted world, the feeling that you couldn’t possibly predict which direction any given story is going to go. (This reminds me of the short fiction of Charles Baxter.)
The final story, “S.T.D. Demon,” is a tour de force. I feel like it actually rearranged my synapses, not unlike a talk the poet Mary Ruefle gave at the Tin House writers conference a few years back--the subject of which was, in part, shrunken heads.
That's the power of a great writer three or four levels deep with some genuinely profound (and profoundly weird) subjects--deep enough to make them funny.
And Monica Drake (in case you hadn't heard) is one of the funniest ladies around.
March 2, 2016
Well, is Monica Drake not the most eloquent and nifty lady ever? My my my. Using flowery language, very sweet and human characters, and really interesting dynamics, these stories were so delightful.
March 16, 2016
Drake's darkly funny, mesmerizing writing is a perfect vehicle for this story of a fractured, fragmenting family and the collapsing sense of place around them. This collection of short stories builds a whole portrait of a Portland family plagued by poverty, mental illness and disconnection. Their pain and longing, described in alternating points of view leaping years and decades, is palpable on the page and propels the narrative forward with the question, how will they put this back together again?
February 13, 2016
"This was the new Portland--a constant, throbbing sweet tooth. There were endless lines for ice cream, cake, beer and breakfast. Everybody was carbo-loading for the marathons. In the old Portland, the rainy, broke, working class city, where I migrated as soon as I left [home]? The masses had been more into heroin than doughnuts." - from 'S.T.D. Demon'
If someone asked me to recommend a book that really captures the essence of Portland, Oregon--past and present--I would point them to Monica Drake's 'The Folly of Loving Life.' This collection of short stories--which really feels more like a novel interspersed with beautifully observed interludes--captures what it means to feel connected to a place, with all the inherent contradictions. This is a place you love, but one that also has been the source of darkness and pain in your life, a place you'd leave, if only you could. This is also place as the source of displacement, a city marked by urban encroachment and gentrification, the draw of the 'next best place,' the 'Portlandia' effect. Drake has seen it all, and relays these stories of her characters and her city with a keen eye and dry wit.
Drake's collection is constructed around tales of two women over a period of roughly thirty years, daughters of ill-equipped parents whose youthful ideals of raising children in a rural Eden on the outskirts of Portland are quickly derailed. Vanessa, the eldest, leaves home early but ultimately gravitates back to the city after making a game effort to separate herself from her past. And the younger sister, the goth Lucia, whose arms display the fast-food fryer scars of her youth as well as a web of tattoos, grows up in the city where she lives hand-to-mouth, often dodging damaged people while trying to find a place for herself. Nessie and Lu rarely appear in the same story--with a couple of notable exceptions--but their individual stories bear their distinct voices.
The sisters' tales are bookended by short 'Neighborhood Notes' chapters, a distinct touch that lends an impressionistic--even cinematic--aspect to the collection. Like prose polaroids, these short segments are little glimpses into the city, third-person observations that give color and depth to Drake's canvas. A favorite, entitled 'Used Goods,' is a beautiful rendering of a five-drawer dresser, abandoned on a Portland street corner, where the disembodied narrator discovers it:
"Watch out for splinters when you run to meet it, little lover! So many plans rush in, each thought golden as marriage: You could put your underwear in the top drawer, once you wrestle it home, dry it off. Every drawer in this dresser is entirely different from the one below, the one above. The first drawer has grooves notched to match a cousin piece of furniture long, long gone. It's a foster drawer, tucked cozy in a new home... The dresser is a place for gathering the lost and found, like a church or a block party... These are very good and used used goods, a place where all mismatched socks can feel at ease. Now this traveling dresser, moving like a hitchhiker, needy and broken, has found a new home. when you open a drawer you'll see a pen and a book of matches. You'll find an uncapped needle. You can use it. Go ahead. It's fine. How do we know it's fine to use? Because other people have." -from 'Neighborhood Notes: Used Goods'
Passages like this are the hallmark of Drake's work: a voice both whip-smart and empathetic, finding the beauty and danger in a city of the discarded and damaged. People doing their best to define what it means to be home.
If someone asked me to recommend a book that really captures the essence of Portland, Oregon--past and present--I would point them to Monica Drake's 'The Folly of Loving Life.' This collection of short stories--which really feels more like a novel interspersed with beautifully observed interludes--captures what it means to feel connected to a place, with all the inherent contradictions. This is a place you love, but one that also has been the source of darkness and pain in your life, a place you'd leave, if only you could. This is also place as the source of displacement, a city marked by urban encroachment and gentrification, the draw of the 'next best place,' the 'Portlandia' effect. Drake has seen it all, and relays these stories of her characters and her city with a keen eye and dry wit.
Drake's collection is constructed around tales of two women over a period of roughly thirty years, daughters of ill-equipped parents whose youthful ideals of raising children in a rural Eden on the outskirts of Portland are quickly derailed. Vanessa, the eldest, leaves home early but ultimately gravitates back to the city after making a game effort to separate herself from her past. And the younger sister, the goth Lucia, whose arms display the fast-food fryer scars of her youth as well as a web of tattoos, grows up in the city where she lives hand-to-mouth, often dodging damaged people while trying to find a place for herself. Nessie and Lu rarely appear in the same story--with a couple of notable exceptions--but their individual stories bear their distinct voices.
The sisters' tales are bookended by short 'Neighborhood Notes' chapters, a distinct touch that lends an impressionistic--even cinematic--aspect to the collection. Like prose polaroids, these short segments are little glimpses into the city, third-person observations that give color and depth to Drake's canvas. A favorite, entitled 'Used Goods,' is a beautiful rendering of a five-drawer dresser, abandoned on a Portland street corner, where the disembodied narrator discovers it:
"Watch out for splinters when you run to meet it, little lover! So many plans rush in, each thought golden as marriage: You could put your underwear in the top drawer, once you wrestle it home, dry it off. Every drawer in this dresser is entirely different from the one below, the one above. The first drawer has grooves notched to match a cousin piece of furniture long, long gone. It's a foster drawer, tucked cozy in a new home... The dresser is a place for gathering the lost and found, like a church or a block party... These are very good and used used goods, a place where all mismatched socks can feel at ease. Now this traveling dresser, moving like a hitchhiker, needy and broken, has found a new home. when you open a drawer you'll see a pen and a book of matches. You'll find an uncapped needle. You can use it. Go ahead. It's fine. How do we know it's fine to use? Because other people have." -from 'Neighborhood Notes: Used Goods'
Passages like this are the hallmark of Drake's work: a voice both whip-smart and empathetic, finding the beauty and danger in a city of the discarded and damaged. People doing their best to define what it means to be home.
April 6, 2016
THE FOLLY OF LOVING LIFE is at turns damp and dark, occasionally feverish or glittering with mania. Not so much interlocking as interwoven, Monica Drake's first collection of stories spans several generations while remaining firmly rooted in the Pacific Northwest and more often specifically Portland. Plenty of short story collections can be read piecemeal but this is one best encountered chronologically. It provokes the sweet sensation of recognition - I kept thinking "I know that guy!" when a character would reappear in a different setting - which initially felt like a novelty and eventually felt like family. There's a satisfying diversity of viewpoints: a range of ages and incomes, levels of self-awareness or sobriety. Each story is a different shade of expectation realized or thwarted, but they're further colored by how each rubs up against every other story. Drake is a master of the idiosyncratic protagonist. They are often unsure of themselves but are so beautifully realized that we as the readers never question them even for a moment.
August 18, 2017
This book is all about the crack: it's addictive like crack, it cracks me up even as it's cracked by which I mean crazy so it's a crack-up about people who are cracked (as in broken, flawed, vulnerable, maybe insane, maybe just barely holding it together) living in a world of cracks -- basically, people who have fallen through the cracks. As Leonard Cohen put,"There is a crack in everything; that's how the light gets in." The same here.
August 11, 2024
No sé qué esperaba cuando lo cogí, pero estoy muy contenta de haberlo hecho.
Es un libro sobre dos hermanas haciéndolo lo mejor que pueden, intentando vivir y amar vivir. Una trama que no es muy novedosa, pero la narrativa de Drake es increíble. La manera de unir las vidas de las hermanas con mini historias, haciéndote reconstruir a ti los vacíos que no te cuenta, me ha cautivado. Ha sido una casualidad bonita dar con esta autora.
Es un libro sobre dos hermanas haciéndolo lo mejor que pueden, intentando vivir y amar vivir. Una trama que no es muy novedosa, pero la narrativa de Drake es increíble. La manera de unir las vidas de las hermanas con mini historias, haciéndote reconstruir a ti los vacíos que no te cuenta, me ha cautivado. Ha sido una casualidad bonita dar con esta autora.
June 5, 2016
I loved this book. It's a tight, cohesive collection of short stories. Dense with details, and insights into human behavior, the combination plus excellent writing made it a book I couldn't put down. Yes, it's set in Portland, and while the location binds the stories, it doesn't limit them. Just a good, solid read.
February 26, 2016
Monica Drake is a wizard. Nothing else justifies the brilliance of this book or these stories.
November 29, 2016
The Arboretum
Should not have read this right before I went to sleep. This warm little start of a family buying a home took a dark turn that I was not expecting. Super hated the grilled cheese plot, because I love grilled cheese and I haven't had once since when I didn't think of this damn story.
Referee
When I was 14, my best friend moved from our small hometown to the metropolis of Pendleton, OR. Her family lived in an apartment building next to the Pendleton Airport- the description was exactly like the Divorce Caves in Referee. A lot of lost, bored kids with terrific potential and inadequate parents who left booze and pot available. Looking back it was a dark few summers with enormous potential for bad things to happen, even though at the time we felt so grown up and free. Very few of us kids made it out of that life. This story hit too close to home and I felt the dry-wall as it rained on Mack and Nessa.
"His eyes were motor oil. His chew faded a white ring in the back pocket of his jeans. He smelled like clean skin, but in a cloud of smoke and old beer, like he'd just come from some party I'd never be invited to. He was a hockey player and a stoner and a good time and everything I wanted in the whole world."
Neighbourhood Notes: Art Show
"Anger? Well, that's familiar territory. Maybe you are an insider to certain corner of this scene."
"You're a well-trained, highly experiences party paramedic."
"The whole moment passes fast as a mileage marker clipping by on the side of a highway. It's in the future, then happening, then over and gone. It will happen again in other buildings, other crowds of people when you move forward then hang back."
Mustard
OMG! I love this kid! I could totally see myself eating a dead pedo's hotdog. It is such a quick story, so menacing, really. I kept waiting for some awful, truly awful thing to happen, but that ending! Epic. And satisfying- like he was preying on her in her own space, but in the end she finished him of, without having to do a thing.
This was the line in Mustard that made my heart lurch into my throat, bad things can only follow:
"Once she said, "We don't know, do we?" like life was all some big questions and she wasn't really in charge."
Miss America Has A Plan
"I'm American though, and American women drink by themselves just fine."
See You Later Fry-O-Later
"Once she piled bricks on our storm cellar doors. I thought, what dead thing is down there? Dad had brought her back inside, acted like that was normal, all part of a longer conversation between them. We, their kids, were living in that conversation."
One of the most beautiful descriptions of living with a parent with mental illness. Terrifying and true.
Should not have read this right before I went to sleep. This warm little start of a family buying a home took a dark turn that I was not expecting. Super hated the grilled cheese plot, because I love grilled cheese and I haven't had once since when I didn't think of this damn story.
Referee
When I was 14, my best friend moved from our small hometown to the metropolis of Pendleton, OR. Her family lived in an apartment building next to the Pendleton Airport- the description was exactly like the Divorce Caves in Referee. A lot of lost, bored kids with terrific potential and inadequate parents who left booze and pot available. Looking back it was a dark few summers with enormous potential for bad things to happen, even though at the time we felt so grown up and free. Very few of us kids made it out of that life. This story hit too close to home and I felt the dry-wall as it rained on Mack and Nessa.
"His eyes were motor oil. His chew faded a white ring in the back pocket of his jeans. He smelled like clean skin, but in a cloud of smoke and old beer, like he'd just come from some party I'd never be invited to. He was a hockey player and a stoner and a good time and everything I wanted in the whole world."
Neighbourhood Notes: Art Show
"Anger? Well, that's familiar territory. Maybe you are an insider to certain corner of this scene."
"You're a well-trained, highly experiences party paramedic."
"The whole moment passes fast as a mileage marker clipping by on the side of a highway. It's in the future, then happening, then over and gone. It will happen again in other buildings, other crowds of people when you move forward then hang back."
Mustard
OMG! I love this kid! I could totally see myself eating a dead pedo's hotdog. It is such a quick story, so menacing, really. I kept waiting for some awful, truly awful thing to happen, but that ending! Epic. And satisfying- like he was preying on her in her own space, but in the end she finished him of, without having to do a thing.
This was the line in Mustard that made my heart lurch into my throat, bad things can only follow:
"Once she said, "We don't know, do we?" like life was all some big questions and she wasn't really in charge."
Miss America Has A Plan
"I'm American though, and American women drink by themselves just fine."
See You Later Fry-O-Later
"Once she piled bricks on our storm cellar doors. I thought, what dead thing is down there? Dad had brought her back inside, acted like that was normal, all part of a longer conversation between them. We, their kids, were living in that conversation."
One of the most beautiful descriptions of living with a parent with mental illness. Terrifying and true.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
July 8, 2016
I was prepared to give Monica Drake’s, the Folly of Loving Life 4 stars, but felt compelled to reread the first chapter. I’m glad I did. The stories were even more connected than I had previously noticed.
The 2nd story in the collection, reads like a portrait of a haunted house. Very moving and creepy. What “haunts” this home shapes the lives of two young sisters and sticks with them throughout their lives. They remain nostalgic for a place (House, Portland, family) that was real, but perhaps never as great as they remember.
As with her previously novel, Stud Book, Monica presents Portland as a town that is weird and wonderful. A place that is deserving of both satire and a visit. I would argue that this is her gift as a writer, making people and places sad and humorous at the same time. Highly recommended.
The 2nd story in the collection, reads like a portrait of a haunted house. Very moving and creepy. What “haunts” this home shapes the lives of two young sisters and sticks with them throughout their lives. They remain nostalgic for a place (House, Portland, family) that was real, but perhaps never as great as they remember.
As with her previously novel, Stud Book, Monica presents Portland as a town that is weird and wonderful. A place that is deserving of both satire and a visit. I would argue that this is her gift as a writer, making people and places sad and humorous at the same time. Highly recommended.
August 25, 2021
I guess a rating scale of 10 would be much too nerdy and an eyesore (look at IMDB), but I could definitely use a 3.5/5 rating because a lot of good books are a 3.5 for me. And somehow for such books both 3 and 4 stars feel very out of place. Elizabeth Strout's Anything is Possible, Michael Martone's Alive and Dead in Indiana, Octavia Butler's Bloodchild and Other Stories and so many other books I have rated either a 3 or 4 are actually 3.5 and while such triviality shouldn't bug anyone, it does bug a few of us.
April 22, 2017
I like to think I would have enjoyed this book just as much even if I weren't 'old Portland'.
May 6, 2017
Great book set locally in Portland. Intertwined short stories should be read beginning to end.
November 3, 2017
You can read my review of this book online at The Brooklyn Rail.
http://brooklynrail.org/2017/06/books...
http://brooklynrail.org/2017/06/books...
November 3, 2017
I was expecting a nebulous collection of assorted short stories but in actuality these individual pieces come together almost like a novel with a slightly amorphous structure. they concern a common set of characters, and while they are arranged chronologically, there are enough gaps and tangents that it didn't pace like a novel. it reminds me a bit of Salinger's "Raise High The Roofbeams" in that sense, but far superior in my opinion.
all that said, and despite about a hundred brilliant little quirky moments of individual brilliance it didn't quite coalesce the way Clown Girl or the Stud Book do. it made me smile often, but it never made me laugh out loud the way that Clown Girl did.
sometimes the short works are the best way to get an introduction to a writer, but in this case I'd still recommend one of the full novels.
all that said, and despite about a hundred brilliant little quirky moments of individual brilliance it didn't quite coalesce the way Clown Girl or the Stud Book do. it made me smile often, but it never made me laugh out loud the way that Clown Girl did.
sometimes the short works are the best way to get an introduction to a writer, but in this case I'd still recommend one of the full novels.
December 31, 2017
I read The Folly of Loving Life awhile back but failed to note it here. I love linked short stories and this book does it so well. The stories are full of heartbreak and real people just trying to do things right (well most of them), but not always managing that. Besides the great stories, there is the place, Portland, Oregon, a character of its own in this and in Monica Drakes other books, and a setting she uses so well to tell the story.
June 3, 2016
Extraordinary! Every story left me with a "WOW "!
June 13, 2016
Drake's descriptions in this novel are so vivid you feel as if you are watching it on the big-screen rather than reading it. A profound work of art. My favorite Drake novel to date.
April 29, 2018
A great book about Portland’s past, present and future.
August 5, 2020
“He picked up a shirt she’d left on the bed, pulled it to his face for animal reasons, then put it back where he’d found it.”
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March 3, 2020
I picked this book up because Chuck Palahniuk recommended it in Consider This. Clearly, ol’ Chuck doesn’t know what the FUCK he’s talking about because this book sucked a big. Hairy. Cock. There was exactly one story in this book I actually liked, and it wasn’t even that great a story. But let me back up and talk about the stuff I did like, which actually isn’t much. Every story in this book focuses on a character from the same family of four. And in between nearly every story is a vignette. So it was a lot like Hemingway’s In Our Time but a REALLY shitty version of In Our Time. So I liked that connective tissue, so to speak, but that was the only thing I really liked about it. The one story I actually liked, “See You Later, Fry-O-Lator” was about a girl named Lu who works at a burger place working the fryer. Like all the rest of the stories in this piece of shit, it didn’t do much. BUT it was pretty straightforward in terms of storytelling - just a high school kid having to work a shitty job on her birthday. That was the other thing about it - it was such a sad story. I mean, her mom is all fucked up so her dad has to look after the mom all the time, leaving Lu’s proverbial cheese out in the wind. So they completely forget about poor Lu’s birthday. So she has a shitty day at school and then has to drive a shitty car to her shitty job. After her shitty shift, her shitty car craps out in the parking lot, and she’s left there with nobody to call. A stranger from a donut shop finally pulls up and helps her out, and they hang out at her house. The end. What I liked about the story is that it was sad, but Lu herself wasn’t sad. Rather, she was so used to dealing with her fucked-up family that it was just another day in the life, and, as such, she persevered. I will say that was a theme throughout the book - there was this constant undercurrent of sadness as these two young women (Lu and her older sister, Vanessa) dealt with life. (I said before it was about a family of four, but really it focused more on the two daughters than the parents.) And nothing is easy for either of them. They both deal with shitty relationships and shitty circumstances and nothing ever seems to improve. Yet they both just deal with it. And for a good chunk of their adult lives, they completely lose contact with each other, finally reuniting at the very end of the book. And I will admit that that sadness was quite compelling. I liked that life didn’t really work out for either of them. Oh, there actually was another story that I kind of liked. “The First Normal Man” was about a past fling of Lu’s named Sean. He met her in college in an earlier story in the book, and then went on to work in a museum as a security guard, which is where this story finds him. Like the other pieces of shit in this book, the story went nowhere and got very odd at the end, but I liked that Sean was this very regular guy just working a very regular job in a museum. And I liked how he described his life and his job, even though they were both ordinary. It was nice to read about a person who is content with his ordinary station in life. I don’t experience much of that in real life - people seem to always muse about how things could be better, grander. But Sean just leaned into the ordinary-ness of it. The only thing he longed for was companionship, even though he was mostly okay with being alone. But like I said, this thing went fucking nowhere. And that’s what’s so puzzling about Palahniuk’s recommendation - he goes on and on and on about the importance of building tension and drama, but these stories did NONE of that. There wasn’t even a sliver of tension or any kind of stakes in any of them. So why the FUCK would you recommend this crap, Chucky Boy? The best thing about this book is that I’m now done with it. It’s reminiscent of that Denis Johnson bullshit that only literary critics cream their jeans over. In other words, this was a tremendous sack of shit, and I really, really, REALLY fucking hope that Clown Girl, one of Drake’s novels, which I already purchased, is better than this travesty. Of course, it must be - no way anything is worse than this. Fuck this book.
September 3, 2024
Aunque son relatos independientes, algunos tienen relación, los personajes de Lucía y Nessie, así como la finca, El Arboreto, irán apareciendo con los cambios que el tiempo ofrece y las circunstancias de la vida, moldeando las personalidades y el paisaje.
Esta lectura ofrece perspectivas muy diferentes de la vida de dos hermanas, a través de ella se compone dos personalidades casi opuestas en estrecha relación con una ciudad, Portland. Una ciudad clave para la autora, su relación con ella es más que palpable a lo lardo de los relatos, la conoce bien, a los edificios y sus habitantes.
He de confesar que no fue el momento más adecuado para esta lectura, se me escaparon detalles, tengo la sensación que no supe extraer el suficiente jugo, porque la madre es un personaje fascinante, creo que el que más recuerdo tras cerrar el libro, una mujer preocupada por el pasado, atormentada por las vidas perdidas.
Esta lectura ofrece perspectivas muy diferentes de la vida de dos hermanas, a través de ella se compone dos personalidades casi opuestas en estrecha relación con una ciudad, Portland. Una ciudad clave para la autora, su relación con ella es más que palpable a lo lardo de los relatos, la conoce bien, a los edificios y sus habitantes.
He de confesar que no fue el momento más adecuado para esta lectura, se me escaparon detalles, tengo la sensación que no supe extraer el suficiente jugo, porque la madre es un personaje fascinante, creo que el que más recuerdo tras cerrar el libro, una mujer preocupada por el pasado, atormentada por las vidas perdidas.
April 9, 2022
After a not-so successful attempt at writing chick lit with The Stud Book, Monica Drake returns to what she does best: transgressive lit. Like Clown Girl, The Folly of Loving Life looks at people who are making their way through the world in ways that may not seem all that normal, but deep down are all too relatable. Unlike Clown Girl, The Folly of Loving Life is a collection of short stories that secretly operates like a disconnected novel. Mostly set in or around Portland, Oregon, the majority of the stories operate like little episodes in the lives of two sisters. Topics of poverty, mental illness, dependency, emptiness and feeling incomplete are all highlighted at different points, but that's just the 'folly' that comes along with what's most important: loving life and enjoying who and what you have in it.
August 13, 2023
I absolutely loved this book. I thoroughly enjoyed the writing style. I love the dynamics between the characters, and how we learn more about them as time goes on. I also enjoy the i underpinning of general dysfunction, and the juxtaposition of growing up on a woodsy plot of land amidst an expanding concrete jungle.
This book brought me back to so many moments in my own life. I was able to picture the scenes exactly as the writer described them. I also was able to relate with my own experiences growing up, and my relationships with people and the ways they’ve changed as their lives take their respective paths, and so does mine. I enjoyed this so much that I’m sure I’ll read it again, and I’ll absolutely go on to read more from this author.
This book brought me back to so many moments in my own life. I was able to picture the scenes exactly as the writer described them. I also was able to relate with my own experiences growing up, and my relationships with people and the ways they’ve changed as their lives take their respective paths, and so does mine. I enjoyed this so much that I’m sure I’ll read it again, and I’ll absolutely go on to read more from this author.
July 15, 2024
One of the favorite short story collections of all time. A collection that connects characters across stories beautifully. Sometimes spooky and haunting, sometimes hopeful and sweet, sometimes dark. I've reread it multiple times and I always keep it on my shelf.
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