An Amateur's Guide to the Night

by Mary Robison

Stories by Mary Robinson.

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction

129 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1983

About the author

Mary Robison is an American short story writer and novelist. She has published four collections of stories, and four novels, including her 2001 novel Why Did I Ever, winner of the 2001 Los Angeles Times Book Prize for fiction. Her most recent novel, released in 2009, is One D.O.A., One on the Way. She has been categorized as a founding "minimalist" writer along with authors such as Amy Hempel, Frederick Barthelme, and Raymond Carver. In 2009, she won the Rea Award for the Short Story.

Reviews

[Prerna · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think I read too much into the title and imagined that this book should be read only at night, and so for the past few weeks I read this just before bed. While it's not exclusively for nighttime reading, it did provide some much needed relaxation. I first came across Mary Robison about a year ago and I absolutely loved her writing.

These are very ordinary stories about extremely ordinary people, but that is exactly what I have been looking for - snippets of the ordinary. After enduring this past year, I feel I like I've prematurely aged by atleast 10 years and each night as I go to bed, I feel a weariness settling deep into my bones. Although fiction is obviously a great source of escapism, the fiction I've been reading lately has only provided more despair. (And I'm beginning to think I'm a masochist - the unhealthy sort.)

In this book, Mary Robison explores the fertile space between fiction and reality and I was glad to be cocooned by its warmth and simplicity. However, the writing was rather dull when compared with Why Did I Ever - that book was excellent, please read it. More people should be reading it.

[Emad · Rating 5 out of 5]

Just great as Robison's Days, and even greater!



Highlights:

The Dictionary in the Laundry Chute
An Amateur's Guide to the Night
Coach
Smart
The Nature of Almost Everything

[Peter Landau · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’ve been unsatisfied with much fiction. All the work is good but never great, following old beaten-down trails that haven’t lead anywhere in years. Mary Robison renews my faith in stories. Her collection AN AMATEUR’S GUIDE TO THE NIGHT flashes like a torch on the lives of its characters, caught in brief episodes that rarely unfold into back story or motivation. They just are slices from a fine knife that leave a sliver of humanity to savor before its gone.

[Sara Reali · Rating 3 out of 5]

3,5 per una bella raccolta di racconti ben scritti che scorrono veloci, ma senza la potenza di “Sabrina e Corina” (chicca imperdibile di Racconti edizioni).

[Emily · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've been reading this book very slowly over a few years. Robison hasn't published much and I would like to be able to read some of her stories as new when I'm older and hopefully wiser.

Like many of the minimalists, Robison is a master of sneaking up on the reader. One of my favorites in this collection, "Yours," is a good example. It's ostensibly about death but ultimately about living with knowledge of one's artistic mediocrity. For many of the stories, it's hard to say in neat words what they are "about" -- the thing they are "about" is so emotionally nuanced that it's most efficiently explained by the story itself.

Since they're contemporaries, I feel compelled to compare Robison to Hempel. Robison's stories are much, much quieter than Hempel's. Where Hempel challenges you to a staring contest and then slams you with an uppercut, Robison engages you in chitchat and then taps your other shoulder so you'll turn to see who's behind you.

Real as it comes, stripped totally bare. A few of the stories didn't engage me, but I bet that's mostly my own fault. Definitely a collection to reread.

[Ryan Werner · Rating 4 out of 5]

Solidly in my wheelhouse short stories--highly stylized, clever sentence work, short sections that work as piecemeal--that I can totally understand someone taking as a bunch of directionless snapshotting of mundanity.

Outside of the form used for her book Why Did I Ever, Robison's minimalism is staunchly rooted in the dominant style of 80's short fiction. That's nothing to hold against her, and she writes how she writes and trends come and go. There's timelessness here, just not in the style.

I've got four more unread Robison books on my shelf, so I'm glad I liked this one!

[Vincent Scarpa · Rating 5 out of 5]

The title story, “Coach,” and most especially “Yours” are gems, but every story here is worth reading.

[Godine Publisher & Black Sparrow Press · Rating 5 out of 5]

"The writing is cool and detached, controlling a breathtaking compassion. Her subjects and characters, mostly family members, are right out of life. An Amateur's Guide to the Night continues Robison's practice of penetrating the heart. There is not one story in this collection that does not evoke an emotional response. . . It's an intimate, enriching experience."
—San Francisco Chronicle

"These thirteen stories are glimpses from a moving train into lit parlors, dinettes, bedrooms and dens. Though the rider sees only fragments, he can intuit essentials from posture, from motion, and see the space that characters inhabit. Think of Robison as the engineer, blowing the whistle, calling the stops and starts; invisible when you want to ask her why we're stalled here in the middle of nowhere, between stations, jobs, relationships and decisions. Like Ann Beattie, Robison shunts the reader off the mainline to a limbo where everyone waits for something to begin or end. As narrative, the stories are inconclusive; as commentaries on the way Americans live now, they're absolute and final."
—Los Angeles Times

[Laurel · Rating 5 out of 5]

the cover of this is baller. i think this pressing is mad oop.

the title story is breathtaking and the kind of story i used to write all the time about capricious mothers and their unsteady teenage daughters.

also it was nice to see the the ennui of wealthy twins theme revisited in "the wellman twins".

[Anna Spanos · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think I might like anything that Mary Robison writes. She's got the oddest bunch of characters running around in her head... So odd, in fact, that they don't even need story arcs to keep me interested.

[Anne Sanow · Rating 5 out of 5]

A title story with a standout first-person narrator, and other gems with pared-back, precise, and revealing prose.

[Courtney Watson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Robison is a beautiful writer, and I look forward to reading more of her work.

[William Ghosh · Rating 4 out of 5]

The title story is beautiful. "Dictionary" and "Coach" are also good and there are a couple of nice shorter pieces ("In Jewel", "Yours"). There is a general mood to these stories which I like. The characters might be lonely, but unorthodox kinds of family keep appearing to populate their apartments ("Smart" is a good example of this). Sometimes the pieces feel slight or, as in "Nothing's It" give a sense of anomie that's maybe a little *too* vague. I felt the stronger pieces were towards the beginning of the book, which slightly petered out. But this is really mood music, good company during nights spent alone.

[Carlotta · Rating 3 out of 5]

13 racconti
Alcuni mi hanno toccata nel profondo e a quei capitoli avrei dato anche 5 stelle altri, invece, mi hanno costretta a leggere alcune parti più volte per riuscire a dare un senso alle parole riportate dall’autrice.
È il primo libro che leggo di Mary Robison, forse non l’ho capita dalla prima pagina ma solo con l’auto della critica a fine libro, forse esagerata

[Ben Brackett · Rating 2 out of 5]

As much as I like Robison's sharp wit and skill with dialogue, it was pretty much all the style of short story that when you finish one you double check you didn't miss a bunch of pages and go that's really it?

[Cecilia Lodigiani · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5

[Rhea · Rating 4 out of 5]

Short stories are so odd

[Giacomo DR · Rating 5 out of 5]

https://ilrifugiodellircocervo.com/20...

[Robert Morgan Fisher · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm more and more enamored with Robison's approach. I could read her stories forever.

[Gianni · Rating 4 out of 5]

Isole nella corrente, istantanee di quotidianità immerse nel flusso della vita e illuminate improvvisamente, senza un prima né un dopo a instradare il lettore. Si deve ricorrere al proprio bagaglio di istantanee per dare un seguito agli interrogativi che restano alla fine dei racconti, al senso di provvisorietà e precarietà che queste storie provocano. Nessun dolore esasperato, nessuna solitudine irrisolvibile o disperazione infinita, ma tante incrinature nell’orrore della routine quotidiana senza scopo in attesa di qualche piccola luce, ”Sorrideva come se amasse tutti i ragazzi del mondo e fosse orgoglioso di ciascuno di loro, perfino del mio. Sorrideva come se amasse anche me. Lo lasciai entrare, tutto quell’amore così facile.”

[Simone Subliminalpop · Rating 3 out of 5]

★★★ e mezza.


Tra i migliori racconti della raccolta: "Guida alla notte per principianti" e "Sveglia".


Cit.

[Chilly SavageMelon · Rating 3 out of 5]

I came to this collection via Selected Shorts which did a reading of the title story. I wrote it down on a list of other leads I got from that source, and after this collection took a while to track down, realized it didn't contain the story I thought it did. But that title story is still the best included here.

There is something really, but only slightly, strange about these stories, which I think is more due to them being so utterly late 70's/early 80's than the "minimalism" you'll see associated with this writer. Something about smoking/drinking, the idea of visual art as an outlet that doesn't really satisfy, vague mistrust of "therapists", other anachronistic clues...watching Wonder Woman on a TV that temporarily can't hold the pattern as one obvious example. Talk of divorce and separation another, by which I mean not it's reality, which endures, but the way it's referenced. A sort of "everyone is not completely realized and a bit nuts" captured in the characters and by default defining that era. But there is a magical quality to how concise they are; implications...things not said but that still engage the mind of the reader.
Aside from the title story, which I would have liked to seen flushed out to novel length, The Dictionary in the Laundry Chute, Coach, Smart, Falling Away, and Nothings It stood out for me.

As for "minimalism", I'd refer you to Kawabata's Palm-of-the-Hand Stories...

[Steven · Rating 3 out of 5]

None of these stories rocked me the way I always hope a story will. I was quite impressed, however, by her style and language. The stories do have a subversive tone. And they leave a lot out, clamor to be filled—the reader's job. There were some great scenes in these stories—moments hidden inside a glimpse of a life. "Coach" had some interesting tensions around the daughter, hints really, leaving the reader to imagine what lies ahead. "Nothing's It" had that great line where the salesman says: This one I'll remember. The narrator in "The Nature of Almost Everything" seemed the most believable character, the one that rang the most true. A lot of the other character's didn't seem real to me, they seemed just products of language—which, of course, is all they are anyway—but they never crossed over the boundary for me where I could connect them as representing real people.

[Jeff Hobbs]

Read so far:

The Dictionary in the Laundry Chute --
*An Amateur's Guide to the Night --
*The Wellman Twins --
*Coach --
You Know Charles --
*I Am Twenty-One --
*Smart --
*Yours --
Falling Away --
*In Jewel --
The Nature of Almost Everything --
Nothing's It --
Look at Me Go --
***
I Get By
Pretty Ice
Souvenir

[Dayna Lorentz · Rating 3 out of 5]

I know many of my mentors think the world of Mary Robison, but I was not moved by her stories. I think she has a unique style and a great eye for the strange, but all of these stories left me wanting.

[Symphony Space]

Week of December 9, 2010 - December 15, 2010
Great Expectations
"An Amateur's Guide to the Night" by Mary Robison, performed by Patricia Kalember
From: Tell Me: 30 Stories (Counterpoint)

[patty · Rating 3 out of 5]

Enjoyable set of short stories, but overall the writing is lacking something I cannot quite put my finger on. Looking forward to reading more from this writer.

[Derick · Rating 3 out of 5]

"hey! why am i yelling at wood here?"