Review: STONE MATTRESS: NINE TALES, by Margaret Atwood

Stone Mattress: Nine Tales, by Margaret Atwood. Published 2014 by Nan A. Talese/Doubleday. Literary Fiction. Short Stories.

I don't know what I can say about the incomparable Margaret Atwood that hasn't been said already. She's probably the most prolific of my favorite living writers (A.S. Byatt doesn't publish that often; Ludmila Ulitskaya only has a handful in English, etc.) so not a lot of time goes by before there's a new opportunity to enjoy her wonderful storytelling. Stone Mattress is her most recent book, a return to the short-story form after a bunch of wonderful novels. It's also the first story collection of hers I've read; I'm not a big short-story reader generally. And it's a great collection, of course.

The first three stories are interconnected, focusing on a writer named Constance W. Starr whose fantasy series Alphinland has made her famous. The stories wind in and out of a group of artists and writers, telling events from different perspectives. Subsequent stories have the feel of fairy tales or nightmares, dark and by turns comic and ominous. "The Freeze-Dried Groom" was probably my favorite, about a man who wins an auctioned-up storage space only to be confronted with a nasty surprise. I absolutely love how this story ends, the final words. The title story is about a woman on a trip to the Arctic who takes revenge on the man who hurt her a long time ago. "Torching the Dusties" is an over-the-top dystopia that makes the final chapters of The Bone Clocks look optimistic. One of the stories acts as a sequel to her 1998 novel The Robber Bride, a bonus to long-time fans. Several of the stories touch on the dangers of underestimating a woman's power, whether that power be to create or destroy.

Atwood fans need to read this; I'd also recommend it to readers of dark fantasy and scary tales. I had a lot of fun with these stories. They're caustic, funny, disturbing and wonderful. They're classic Atwood, and maybe just plain classic.

Rating: BUY

FTC Disclosure: I did not receive this book for review.

There Once Lived A Mother Who Loved Her Children, Until They Moved Back In: Three Novellas About Family, by Ludmilla Petrushevskaya

There Once Lived A Mother Who Loved Her Children, Until They Moved Back In: Three Novellas About Family, by Ludmilla Petrushevskaya. Published 2014 by Penguin. Translated from Russian. Short stories. Literary fiction.

Despite the funny title, you need to know right away that Ludmilla Petrushevskaya's tales are anything but funny. These are not stories about people you're going to like very much. Petrushevskaya writes tough, relentless stories about women whose lives would be unimaginable if she did not imagine them for us. But she breathes such life into these sad people that they become real, and unforgettable.

It's almost hard for me to summarize the first story, "Time is Night". A woman's life spins around her like a centrifuge. Her elderly mother is being hospitalized for a mental illness and the narrator wants to spare her the slow suffering death of the wrong institution; her daughter is pregnant again; her son is a useless drunk; her grandson Tima is the light of her life but sets her aside for his mother, as useless as her brother. All of these unfortunates live in the same tiny apartment, making demands, taking up space, poisoning each other with anger and spite and bitterness.

In the second story the poisoning is more literal. "Chocolates with Liqueur" tells the story of a woman desperate to save herself and her children from murder at the hands of her husband. It's hard to say which of the three stories is the bleakest, but this one broke my heart with its nightmarish portrayal of lives gone horribly wrong.

Finally there is "Among Friends," about a mother who abandons her child to a group of friends including the child's father after being diagnosed with a fatal illness. She tries to convince us, and herself, that his future will be bright. But she doesn't quite manage it.

This is the third collection of Petrushevskaya's tales that Penguin has published in the last few years and has by far the darkest and most difficult stories. Other collections have dabbled in the supernatural and played with Russian folk tales. This collection is strictly realistic, each tale shot through with panic and inevitability. There is that little sliver of hope offered at the end, but only a sliver. Petrushevskaya has been described as a kind of Solzhenitsyn of the home- someone who doesn't write about politics, isn't a dissident writer in the classical sense but who exposes everyday horrors inside a way of life both oppressive and chaotic, which leaves people feeling out of control and therefore taking control the only way they know how- by acting out their rage and hopelessness on those closest to them. With the torments and brutality of everyday life she creates a searing and indelible lexicon with which to understand and imagine a country so much of whose history and stories are so familiar. She takes that familiarity and takes it apart, conjuring images and emotions sure to burn themselves into your memory and stay with you forever.

Rating: BUY

FTC Disclosure: I received this book for review from Penguin.

Review: BETWEEN FRIENDS, by Amos Oz

Between Friends, by Amos Oz. Published 2013 by HMH. Literary Fiction. Short Stories (Interconnected). Translation.

It's been a while since I completed reading a collection of short stories. They have a tendency to gather- they always seem like a good idea- but I usually never get beyond one or two. Not so with Amos Oz's quietly brilliant collection, Between Friends.

Between Friends is set during the 1950s on the fictional Israeli kibbutz of Kibbutz Yekhat, somewhere in the wilds of that young country. Its residents are a mix of young and old, from different backgrounds and experiences. There are young people and old, married couples, single people, parents, children, an orphan.

Kibbutzim (the plural of kibbutz) are collective farms established in the early days of the Israeli state to promote the growth of the country and its agriculture under collectivist principles and are often secular rather than religious in orientation. Kibbutzniks, as they are called, live communally or nearly so, participate in all aspects of running the community including farm work, industrial tasks and whatever else is needed. They are united by their commitment to the kibbutz and the principles that back it. Or at least, that's the theory. Oz shows that there are very distinct individuals running this collective farm, each with his or her own dreams and aspirations, which sometimes conflict with the overall mission of the place.

Oz's series of interconnected short stories focus on characters both at the core of the life of this kibbutz and its periphery. David Dagan is a teacher and ersatz spiritual leader, who tries to maintain the status quo among the people while answering to no one himself. He takes up with a 17 year old former student, much to the chagrin of her father, the kibbutz's electrician. He appears in nearly every story and has a profound influence on the lives of the kibbutzniks. Zvi Provizor is a bachelor in late middle age, works as the kibbutz's gardener and repository of bad news. Osnat deals with her husband's infidelity by writing letters to his lover, for whom he leaves her. Little Oded struggles with bullies and bedwetting and the harshness of collective life for children who don't fit in. Yotam dreams of making a life in Italy with a rich uncle, far from the kibbutz, but he can't quite bring himself to openly rebel. Or can he?

Oz tells the stories of these and other characters with delicacy and beauty. Each story stands on its own but together make for a lovely novel-in-stories about a time and a place that stand alone in recent history. To be honest I could not tell but for the blurb when the stories took place; the where is definite down to the smallest physical details but the lives of the kibbutzniks are disconnected from popular culture or even current affairs, save for Zvi's obsession with tragedies far away. That said, landscape is the real star of this show, both geographic and psychological. I felt like a member of this community by the time the book was finished. Pick it up; you will, too.

Rating: BUY

FTC Disclosure: I borrowed a galley copy of this book from the bookstore.

REVIEW: In a Strange Room, by Damon Galgut

In a Strange Room, by Damon Galgut. Published 2010 by Europa Editions. Short Stories. Literary Fiction.

"There is a moment when any real journey begins. Sometimes it happens as you leave your house, sometimes it's a long way from home."

I've been reading Roger Ebert's memoir Life Itself lately, and Ebert describes his early days as a film critic and his education in the art of film- time spent visiting sets, talking to stars and directors, etc., learning how to understand and evaluate a film on technical grounds. But in the end, what he had to talk about was what did the film do to him. It's something I'm trying to think about more consciously as I read and review books. What did this book do to me?

In a Strange Room scarred me. Composed of three almost independent novellas, Galgut tells the story of an itinerant South African man named Damon and his travels in Africa and India with various companions. Each of the three chapters is titled after Damon's role in relation to these companions. In one, he's a follower, trailing behind a vain and self-contained German who poses more and more difficult physical challenges as the mens' amiable relationship breaks down. In the second, Damon is the admirer of a man who is part of a boisterous group of tourists he encounters in a neighboring country and follows all the way to Amsterdam. But it's the final story that will haunt me. Here, Damon is companion and caretaker to the mercurial and volatile Anna, mentally ill and suicidal. His time with her, in India, is horrific- a nightmare that challenges his endurance, his patience, his love and his sense of himself.

The first two chapters are luminous, moody and full of description; the third is all action and plot until it quiets down after the maelstrom in India ends and Damon returns to South Africa alone. When I picked it up to start the third chapter, I didn't expect to be unable to put it down. I picked In a Strange Room as my first Europa of 2013 because I'm on a bit of a South Africa bender right now, but most of the book takes place elsewhere. And Galgut has several lovely passages on the traveler's state of mind, the particular kind of alienation and impermanence peculiar to the wanderer:

A journey is a gesture inscribed in space, it vanishes even as it's made. You go from one place to another place, and on to somewhere else again, and already behind you there is no trace that you were ever there. The roads you went down yesterday are full of different people now, none of them knows who you are....Things happen only once and are never repeated, never return. Except in memory.

And in writing. Damon is always alone, even though he is almost always in the company of others. He is alone in crowds, on bus rides and at checkpoints, and most particularly he is alone with Anna, locked in her disease and her manias. Her voracious need fills every available space, every nook and cranny of Damon's consciousness as he struggles to care for her. Her needs give his life a purpose, at least for a time. But it can't go on like this forever.

What a beautiful, heartbreaking book, a study on solitude and relationships and how to coexist with others and the world and sit apart at the same time.

It's my first book for the 2013 Europa Challenge and I loved it! Short listed for the 2010 Booker Prize, it also counts towards The Complete Booker Challenge.

Rating: BUY!

FTC Disclosure: I did not receive this book for review.

REVIEW: Ivan and Misha, by Michael Alenyikov

Ivan and Misha, by Michael Alenyikov. Published 2010 by Northwestern University Press. Literary Fiction.

Ivan and Misha is a novel composed of interrelated short stories, about two Russian-American men and their father. Ivan and Misha are fraternal twins, born in the Soviet Union, who came to America with their father as small children. Their mother is dead. Now, the brothers are approaching middle age and their father is elderly and dying. Both brothers are gay and Ivan has mental health issues as well. When the book opens, Misha has a live-in lover, Smith, and Ivan is struggling to earn a living as a taxi driver while their father approaches the end of his life along with his friend and neighbor, a fellow ex-Soviet Jew.

Each story is told from the perspective of a different character, so we learn a lot about what each man thinks and how he sees the world. The stories also shuffle back and forth in time so we don't get a straight narrative so much as a series of impressions and scenarios. Characters come in and out of the story, and they don't always say what you expect. There is a mystery around the boys' mother's death, and much uncertainty about their future, but there is also a strong undercurrent of love and loyalty in the family. They might not understand each other, but they will be there for each other no matter what.

The book is also a bit of a love song to New York City; from the moment they arrive, New York is a land of wonders:

And on their first night in New York, Papa said there was only one way to start this new life: in Central Park, seen before only in movies, he rented a horse and buggy. Clippety-cop, clippety-clop, the horse trotted on roads covered with yellow leaves. Wherever he looked Misha saw trees, branches barren of leaves, coated white with snow that fell from a bright gray sky, rose colored along its edges and pierced by unimaginably tall buildings. Once, the horse lost its footing in the leaves and slush and Misha felt his heart clenched as if in a handgrip- now I will wake up from this dream.

The whole book has this dream-like, lyrical feel, driven by the characters and their feelings more than plot per se. Highly recommended for readers of literary fiction, Jewish fiction, LGBT fiction and any fiction, it's a wonderful, moving and emotional story about brothers and fathers, love and family, alienation and belonging.

Rating: BUY

FTC Disclosure: I did not receive this book for review I won it in a giveaway from Dolce Bellezza.

REVIEW: Stay Awake, by Dan Chaon

Stay Awake, by Dan Chaon. Published 2012 by Random House.

I received a copy of Stay Awake via LibraryThing's Early Reviewer program.

Dan Chaon's latest book, a creepy, crackling collection of short stories, will definitely keep you up past your bedtime. Chaon's novel Await Your Reply (link is to my review) was one of my favorite reads last year; a breathtaking, page-turning, stomach-churning suspense fest, I flew through it in about two days, and I had high expectations for his new book.

And those expectations were by and large met. If you were a fan of Await Your Reply you'll love this collection of edgy and just plain messed-up tales filled with dysfunctional, haunted, sad, confused and unhappy people in unhappy situations. It sounds miserable, I know, but Chaon's pared-down, just-enough style makes these stories riveting. My favorite stories were the first and last; in the first, "The Bees," Gene is a man with a secret who tries to make a go of traditional family life in the suburbs. When his past keeps bubbling up, an unwitting tragedy engulfs the family. In the last story, "The Farm. The Gold. The Lily-White Hands," an omniscient narrator alternates between a solitary man and the adult children he once tried to kill. It's haunting and written like a poem; it gives me chills.

Chaon's writing is so hard to define; it's not quite horror but it's more than literary suspense. He creates vivid characters and settings, sometimes with terribly unsympathetic figures at the center of twisted and strange narratives- but no stranger than real life. In the story "I Wake Up," a young man named Robert is contacted by a woman calling herself Cassie and claiming to be his sister. She tells him bizarre tales of their childhood and other siblings but refuses to meet in person or send a photograph. Something about her stories doesn't quite add up, but Robert gets drawn in anyway and she forces him to think about the one person he wants to forget. Who needs caffeine with writing like Chaon's?

Rating: BUY


FTC Disclosure: I received this book for review from LibraryThing.com.

REVIEW: Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self, by Danielle Evans

Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self, by Danielle Evans. Published 2010 by Riverhead. Literary Fiction. Short Stories.

Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self, Danielle Evans' debut collection, knocked my socks off, spun them around in the laundry and hung them out to dry.

Need to know more? Evans' book is a collection of eight stand-alone stories told by very different people in very different walks of African-American life. "Virgins" is about teenage girls playing with their fire of their burgeoning sexuality and getting themselves mixed up in dangerous territory; it's as scary and thrilling as the girls' own adventures. In "Harvest" we get to know undergraduate who envies her white friend Laura, who makes a lot of money selling her eggs. "Snakes" is about Tara, nine years old and mixed-race, visiting her white grandmother for the first time. Her grandmother favors Tara's cousin Allison and scares Tara with stories about giant snakes running loose through the woods.

But the story I'll always think of when I think about this collection is "Someone Ought to Tell Her There's Nowhere to Go," about Georgie, a veteran returning from overseas to an ex-girlfriend and her little girl named Esther, not his, but whom he loves like she was. He starts taking care of her- taking her to the mall mostly- while her mother is working. They're poor but Esther wants to go to a tween pop star's concert, a ticket to which costs over two hundred dollars. Georgie enters her in a contest under false pretenses, with disastrous results.

Reading Before You Suffocate wasn't like reading stories- it was like reading eight miniature novels. Words like "vivid" and "detailed" are often used to describe well-crafted short stories and these are both, but what really makes this collection stand out is the emotional immediacy that Evans creates, the way she makes such believable, relate-able and sympathetic people often in very difficult-to-fathom situations. As appalling as Georgie's actions are, they're also completely understandable; I pitied him but I could see exactly how he ends up where he does, and why Esther's mother reacts the way she does, too. All of the stories have these flawed, richly drawn characters struggling alone through some kind of morass, mostly of their own making. It's an incredible collection, highly recommended. You can bet I'll be first in line for her novel. If you read just one volume of short stories this year, better make it this one.

Also, please check out my friend King Rat's review here. His review sold me on the book.

Rating: BUY

FTC Disclosure: I received this book for review from Penguin.

REVIEW: Quarantine: Stories by Rahul Mehta

Quarantine: Stories by Rahul Mehta. Published 2011 by Harper Perennial. Literary Fiction. Short stories.

I got Quarantine a while back and in an effort to catch up on my short story reading (and some review obligations) I've taken to reading a short story every day that I work on my own writing. Doing so has been very useful in getting me back into the habit of reading short stories and it was nice to start with this enjoyable collection.

Granted, the subject matter of Quarantine is not exactly light. Rahul Mehta writes with grace and suppleness about the lives and conflicts of various Indian-American, gay male characters both in the United States and India. One story is about a man on vacation in India with his boyfriend and their adventures with another young man who claims to be an artist and wants to sell them his work. In another story, a young man tries to help his grandmother qualify for U.S. citizenship. In another, a man takes his boyfriend home to West Virginia to meet his family, including an abrasive grandfather and put-upon mother. Each story represents a slightly different niche in the Indian-American immigrant and gay experience.

I enjoyed most of the stories, but I didn't love them. Sometimes the characters seemed a little bland or indistinct; it wasn't always easy to tell what distinguished one narrator from another apart from geographic movements or particular relationship status. A theme throughout the collection is deception- how the characters lie to each other and to themselves. In "What We Mean" a young man recounts a failed relationship and the lies that are left behind:

The letter is all lies, especially the last part. If it were true, if it isn't me, then why didn't he leave the note somewhere else: on the kitchen counter, where the muffins should be, or taped to the screen of the television set, the one we bought when Sangeeta didn't give us hers? Why did he leave it in the bathroom for me to read and have nothing to look at except myself in the mirror? Why has he left me alone?

The reason to read this collection is to get to the last, luminous story, "A Better Life," about a young man named Sanj from a Virginia town. He's well-off; his best friend from high school, Sylvie, hoped her beauty would take her to New York and a modeling career. Now, she's older and living in sweatpants, and her dreams are just dreams. Sanj made the move to New York but he hasn't amounted to much, either, but he can't admit it. Their friendship is this delicate thing fraught with tension and disappointment, two people who have let themselves down and can face neither each other nor others in their life. It's enough to make me want to read Mehta's debut novel, which will be published by Harper in 2014. In the mean time, this collection is well worth checking out.

Rating: BACKLIST

FTC Disclosure: I received this book for review from HarperCollins.

REVIEW: The Woman with the Bouquet, by Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt

The Woman with the Bouquet, by Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt. Published 2010 by Europa Editions. Literary fiction. Short stories. Translated from the French by Alison Anderson.

A collection of five short stories by French writer Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt, The Woman with the Bouquet deals in secrets and mysteries and with people searching for meaning in their lives, often by trying to ferret out the secrets of others.

Most of the stories deal with love affairs, and often, a crime. In one, a writer listens to an elderly invalid tell an implausible story about a passionate affair she had with a prince; could it be true? But how? In another, an average-looking woman who finds herself ugly, falls for a blinded photographer, who, in finding her attractive, teaches her to love herself. Another woman kills her husband only to have second thoughts, and yet another waits at a train station every day, titular bouquet in hand. But for whom?

My favorite story though was the only one without a love affair at its center, "Trashy Reading," about a cynical professor who reads only highbrow nonfiction until he finds rapture between the covers of a potboiler detective story. On vacation with his beloved cousin, he steals her grocery-store page-turner and becomes engrossed in the adventures of a certain fetching, fictional lady detective, but the story transmits to him a growing anxiety, leading him to a tragic error of judgement and a terrible outcome for his innocent cousin. I liked the suspense built into this story; Schmitt had me turning the pages as fast as the luckless protagonist turned the pages of his fat thriller.

The rest of the stories are delightful, if somewhat similar to each other; "Getting Better," about a nurse infatuated with her blind patient, was also wonderful. It's a personal-transformation story about someone learning to see herself through someone else's eyes, until that viewpoint becomes her own. All of the stories have about them a sort of wistful romantic quality, and except for the poor leads of "Trashy Reading," there are lots of happy endings, too. The collection is a quick read; a story or two a day was a very doable pace for me and considering there are only five stories, I went through it in under a week. Europa fans and readers of short stories will want to add this one to their piles!

It's book one of fourteen towards my challenge goal of Europa Amante!
This book counts toward the 2011 Europa Challenge.

Rating: BACKLIST

FTC Disclosure: I did not receive this book for review.

REVIEW: The Madonnas of Echo Park, by Brando Skyhorse

The Madonnas of Echo Park, by Brando Skyhorse. Published 2009 by Free Press. Paperback.

Winner of the 2011 Hemingway/Pen Foundation Award, The Madonnas of Echo Park is a novel of interconnected short stories about Mexican and Mexican-American men and women in Los Angeles. The characters include a day laborer, a maid, a teenage girl or two, a woman who collects coats, a bus driver, and more.

Each of the characters occupies a slightly different niche in the community in and around Echo Park, a traditionally-Mexican area on its way to gentrification. Felicia, a hardworking housecleaner, has a strange relationship with her lonely employer, a woman who wants to bond with Felicia and keep her at a distance at the same time. Efren Mendoza is a rule-abiding bus driver whose narrative starts off crisp and contained, then gradually becomes angrier and more chaotic as he slowly loses control. His story was one of my favorites because he undergoes such a dramatic transformation- or maybe he doesn't. I also loved the final story, "La Luz y La Tierra," about Aurora Esperanza, a young woman trying, like everyone in the book, to find her place in the world. I think this story is the most successful in creating a wonderfully sympathetic character and weaving together stories of the other characters in the book.

I thought overall Skyhorse's greatest strength in the book is his setting. The Madonnas is like a lot of interlinked-short-stories books (think Olive Kitteridge among others) in the way he weaves his characters in and out of the stories; there's always at least one connection between the focal character of a given story and the larger narrative and I came away with the sense of a complex community populated by lots of different kinds of people. I liked his characters too but some were definitely more memorable than others. The teenage-girl characters have a kind of sameness about them, all obsessed with this or that pop star; I wish there was a little more variety there. Efren the bus driver is a scary creation, and Beatriz, the woman who thinks she sees the Blessed Virgin, was unforgettable. I liked Skyhorse's use of Catholic mysticism in her story and others.

I'd recommend The Madonnas to book clubs and to people interested in contemporary immigrant fiction and stories about California. It was a pretty quick read for me and one that I enjoyed, although I can't say I loved it. But it's the kind of book that I think lots of readers will enjoy and find moving and memorable.

Rating: BACKLIST


FTC Disclosure: I received this book for review from the publisher.

REVIEW: Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk, by David Sedaris

Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk: A Modest Bestiary, by David Sedaris. Published 2010 by Little, Brown.

I first experienced David Sedaris's new collection of short stories, Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk, via audiobook, which is somewhat unusual for me. I listen to very few audiobooks but I was offered this one by a friend and figured, why not. Later I read the print version and while I enjoyed both, I think this is one book that was practically made to be read aloud.

If you know Sedaris's work, you know the subtitle, A Modest Bestiary, is ironic at best. Sedaris writes both fiction and nonfiction but this collection is purely fictional, animal tales of his own creation about cats, dogs, birds, insects and other creatures great and small, but for the most part, not really wise or wonderful. Sedaris's animal world, like the world he portrays in his other fiction, is cruel, heartless and often undignified. A hippo has a problem with his rectal residents; a crow works to hoodwink a lamb out of something precious; a narcissistic bear learns what it really means to be pitied, and so forth.

I enjoyed this book very much but I think you either have to be a die-hard Sedaris fan or have a really twisted sense of humor to enjoy it, too. It's definitely not going to be for everybody; there's not a lot of lightness or sweetness to Sedaris's animal tales- they're raunchy, ribald and heartless, just like his other fiction. In the past I've always preferred his memoir to his fiction for this very reason; his fiction has always struck me as formulaic and filled with cruel characters lacking self-awareness who behave with utter selfishness towards their fellow human beings. And this book is no different but when these behaviors are placed among animals they lose much of their sting. Nature is cruel; animals are heartless; they do lack empathy in a way that would be psychotic if we were talking about humans. So it doesn't bother me that that's the way Sedaris portrays them.

And like I said, this was made to be an audiobook. Narrators like Elaine Stritch and Sedaris himself make the biting dialogue and occasionally shocking plot twists come to dark, sinister, hilarious life. Reading these stories on the page paled to hearing them read aloud. If you're not an audiobook person but you're interested in this collection I would really urge you to at least check the audio version out of the library and give it a try alongside the print version, which I would urge you to buy in any case. (The audio version also has a bonus story unavailable in the print version and downloads of Ian Falconer's equally twisted illustrations.) At least, that is, if you have that aforementioned twisted sense of humor.

Rating: BUY


I'm a Powell's partner and receive a small commission on sales.


FTC Disclosure: I did not receive either the print or audio version of this book from anyone for review.

REVIEW: There Once Lived a Woman Who Tried to Kill Her Neighbor's Baby: Scary Fairy Tales, by Ludmilla Petrushevskaya

There Once Lived a Woman Who Tried to Kill Her Neighbor's Baby: Scary Fairy Tales, by Ludmilla Petrushevskaya. Published 2009 by Penguin.

Nominated for a Shirley Jackson Award last year and written by one of the most important living Russian writers, There Once Lived a Woman Who Tried to Kill Her Neighbor's Baby: Scary Fairy Tales, by Ludmilla Petrushevskaya, should be required reading for anyone with an interest in either Russian literature or modern fairy tales.

These fairy tales combine a modern-day setting in a Russia defined by social and economic chaos, fractured families, poverty and disappointment, and traditional fairy tale elements- magic, mysterious visitors and the thin line between the land of the living and that of the dead. Petrushevskaya talks about universal fears- dying, losing life, life, home and family, going to war, disease- through the lens of the supernatural. The stories themselves are short and weird rather than scary; her deadpan style and matter-of-fact tone resist put-on atmospherics. Sometimes what she recounts seems almost banal, until the reader remembers what it is she's recounting.

People come back from the dead, often in dreams, to guide left-behind loved ones; spells are cast; lovers are disappointed or defeated. The title story is truly bizarre and frightening and there are lots of scares, twists and chills to be had. But sometimes the stories are happy, in their way. In "The Cabbage Patch Mother", a lonely woman whose child has died finds someone to love in a mysterious little girl she names Droplet. In "Marilena's Secret", my favorite story, an obese circus performer who's been cursed by a disappointed beau finally finds redemption. And "My Love" is a complex, subtle and sad tale of adulteries layered on adulteries.

Part of Russo-Biblio-Extravaganza

Politics are largely absent from Petrushevskaya's stories, at least on the superficial level; they could be taking place in any time or place, and seem to take place on the margins of history, in ordinary life. Fans of Mikhail Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita, the fiction Kelly Link or Neil Gaiman, and fantasy and modern fairy tales are the obvious audience for There Once Lived a Woman Who Tried to Kill Her Neighbor's Baby but I think readers of literary fiction and some YA readers would enjoy this collection, too. Petrushevskaya is a really wonderful writer who I wish I knew better and who I wish was better known generally. It's a really neat and a really unusual book,  and really rewarding, too.

Rating: BUY


FTC Disclosure: I did not receive this book for review.

REVIEW: The Ladies from St. Petersburg, by Nina Berberova

The Ladies from St. Petersburg, by Nina Berberova. Published 2000, New Directions. Literary Fiction. Short stories. Translated from the Russian.

A mere 144 pages, The Ladies from St. Petersburg is a collection of three short stories, the title story being the longest, almost a novella. Taken together, the three stories track the progress of the Russian Revolution from the days before it was even called that to the life of an emigre living in New York City after having fled its aftermath.

But writer Nina Berberova packs a lot into this slender volume despite the low page count. All three stories are beautiful, evocative and emotional; the first tells the sad story of young Margarita, whose mother dies while the two are on vacation at a boarding house in the country. All at once her world collapses, because her country and way of life fall apart at the same time that her family does. The second story, "Zoya," is the harrowing tale of an aristocratic woman taking shelter from the violence of the revolution in a boarding house where she faces the mocking hostility of everyone around her. "Zoya" is truly chilling and far more frightening to me than anything I've read in any so-called horror story; it's the horror of cruelty and indifference. The final story, "The Big City," is set in New York and tracks the attempts of an immigrant man to find friendship and community when it seems he's lost everything. "The Big City" brings the collection full circle when he strikes an unlikely friendship.

Read as part of Russo-Biblio-Extravaganza

Berberova has written a series of realistic short stories in which the chaos of the revolution is played out in small ways in the lives of ordinary people. She shows us how a young woman tries to find a casket for her dead mother, and how another tries to find a little peace and quiet in her rented bedroom- and how social upheaval gives licence to shocking cruelty. Finally she shows how one man finds peace in the appearance of the miraculous and surreal. The Ladies from St. Petersburg is a short, lovely book that would be a marvelous choice for readers of literary fiction and short stories. I have three more books of hers waiting to be read and I can't wait to step back in her strange, difficult and ultimately magical world.

Rating: BUY

FTC Disclosure: I did not receive this book for review.

REVIEW: The Shadows of Berlin, by Dovid Bergelson

The Shadows of Berlin, by Dovid Bergelson. Published 2005 by City Lights Books.

The Shadows of Berlin is a small, slim book of short stories by one of the Soviet Union's most important Yiddish writers, Dovid Bergelson, who wrote several novellas, novels and essays before his execution by Stalin in 1952 as part of Stalin's purge of Yiddish culture.

The book is made up of six short stories, each one sort of dark and modernistic, covering the lives both secret and public of emigres in a colorless and flat Europe. Two stories that stand out for me are the first, "Two Murderers," about a man who comes to board with a woman whose dog has killed a child, and who is himself responsible for a pogrom in Ukraine, and "Among Refugees," about another young man who is in Berlin looking for an infamous pogromist who he believes is living nearby.  The third, "Blindness," is about a man who finds a diary written by an unhappy wife as she relives a youthful infatuation; the reaction of her husband at the very end is chilling.

Part of Russo-Biblio-Extravaganza

All of Bergelson's stories here are dark and moody and challenging, all the more so for being so brief. Bergelson creates tight, tiny worlds in his pages, and there's never a happy ending or even much sign of hope for his characters. Set exclusively in Europe but dealing with the inner turmoils of refugees and emigres, there is a sadness that permeates this volume and a nostalgia for better times. Definitely not casual or light reading, I'd recommend The Shadows of Berlin for readers with a serious interest in Soviet-era Yiddish literature; although I enjoyed them and think they're very accomplished, I don't think this book will appeal to most general readers.

Rating: BACKLIST

FTC Disclosure: I did not receive this book for review.

REVIEW: Yom Kippur in Amsterdam, by Maxim D. Shrayer

Yom Kippur in Amsterdam, by Maxim D. Shrayer. Published 2009 by Syracuse University Press. Literary Fiction. Short stories.

Yom Kippur in Amsterdam, Maxim D. Shrayer's collection of short stories, was yet another impulse purchase from one of my favorite local indie bookstores, Porter Square Books, and just the sort of slightly unusual, idiosyncratic thing I look for in indie bookstores.

Shrayer, a professor at Boston College, is local to the Boston area and this collection of eight stories, many set in or around college campuses, uses various kinds of love stories to cover themes of identity, immigration and religion. Interfaith relationships figure prominently in these stories as various Russian Jewish characters try to figure out where they fit in America. My favorite story, "The Disappearance of Zalman," about a young man experiencing problems with his non-Jewish girlfriend while at the same time learning Hebrew with a young Hasid by the name of Zalman, ends with a surprising twist; others, like "Horse Country" and the titular story "Yom Kippur in Amsterdam" have a mystical quality. "Sonetchka" and "Last August in Biarritz" are darker and more violent.

I liked Shrayer's careful, detailed writing and emphasis on character over plot in much of the book. At least, having finished it, the characters have stayed with me more than what happens to them. I think this is a great collection for the reader of literary fiction and readers of Jewish fiction and books on the Russian-Jewish experience in America will certainly want to add it to their TBR pile. It fits in nicely with other recent collections such as Sana Krasikov's award-winning One More Year and Ellen Litman's wonderful and under-appreciated The Last Chicken in America. Like Litman's book, Shrayer's takes place almost entirely in the United States and although the stories don't focus on the same characters the way hers does, the stories fit together nicely and I almost felt like I was reading a novel in stories even though I really wasn't. It's a very thoughtful, satisfying read and one I'm glad to have pulled off the shelf.

Click here for my interview with Dr. Shrayer.

Rating: BUY

FTC Disclosure: I did not receive this book for review.

Persephone Reading Week: Good Evening, Mrs. Craven: The Wartime Stories of Mollie Panter-Downes

I heard about Persephone Reading Week, a week devoted to reading books published by Persephone Books, from Frances at the great literary blog Nonsuch Book. It's hosted at the blog Paperback Reader. Since I have a number of Persephone titles waiting to be read, I decided to make a concerted effort to participate.

For my week of Persephone reading, I chose the wonderful Good Evening, Mrs. Craven: The Wartime Stories of Mollie Panter-Downes. Panter-Downes was a prolific journalist and short story writer who was published regularly in the New Yorker magazine during the first part of the 20th century; the stories in this book appeared there October 1939 and December 1944. All of the stories take as their subject domestic life in Britain during World War 2.

Reading this collection was a pleasure, albeit often of the bittersweet kind. Tinged with sadness and irony, the stories feature many types of people- single, married, mistresses and adulterers, children, the poor and the wealthy and the middle class. The characters experience loneliness and brief moments of connection as they manage the isolation, privation, anxiety and more- all the many disruptions and chaos and helplessness of English life during the war. A young working woman living alone tries to reach out to a neighbor for companionship; a well-off woman cheerfully rids herself of a boarder who no longer needs her, only to feel an unnameable remorse at rebuffing another woman who does; an upper class woman simply cannot understand why the poor mother she tries to help can't seem to keep herself or her children in tolerable order. In the title story, a young woman having an affair with a married man who's left for the war must decide whether to contact his family to find out if he's still alive.

Good Evening, Mrs. Craven is a tender, affectionate portrait of people doing their best in difficult times- even if their best isn't the best. Panter-Downes shows loving empathy for her characters and writes with impressive economy. Each story is no more than six or seven pages but she creates vivid characters and immersing worlds. Of course, reading it straight through, the mood from one will shadow the next and what emerges is more than the sum of its parts. The collection reminds me a lot of Elizabeth Strout's wonderful novel-in-stories Olive Kitteridge; this book isn't a novel in stories but detail and emotion slowly accrete as each story acts as a mosaic piece in a larger picture of wartime English life. It's a beautiful collection from a skilled craftswoman from whose work I hope to see more collections in the future.

Rating: BUY

FTC Disclosure: I did not receive this book for review from the publisher.

REVIEW: Olive Kitteridge, by Elizabeth Strout

Olive Kitteridge, by Elizabeth Strout. Published 2008 by Random House. Short stories. Literary fiction.

Olive Kitteridge is a novel in short stories centering on the eponymous Olive, an elderly married woman living in the small town of Crosby, Maine- a retired teacher, wife of the town pharmacist and mother to a troubled son. The stories themselves don't all focus on Olive, although she appears in all of them in one way or another; sometimes, she's only present for a moment but in a book where her character is studied and revealed by the whole, even a moment can be illuminating.

I loved Olive Kitteridge. I didn't always love the woman but author Elizabeth Strout's ability to make this complicated, difficult and eccentric woman human and whole is the reason to read this luminous book. I read it over five days last summer when I was sick and staying home a lot (along with a couple of other books) and I think having that compressed time with it helped me savor the details and nuances of Strout's careful portrayal of this woman and her community. There were moments of ugliness- when Olive vandalizes her daughter-in-law's closet, for example, or when she and Henry are attacked- and moments of beauty, when the reader gets inside her private world and the feelings she never shares with anyone. My favorite story was the last one, a moving paean to love lost and found. My eyes were more than a little moist by the end of this lovely book.

All the stories share Strout's careful attention to detail and craft. The writing is literary and accomplished and Strout creates a vibrant community full of secrets and dysfunction as well as love and redemption- in other words, a place both real and believable. I particularly admire the way Strout contrasts the public tranquility of the Kitteridges' lifelong marriage with the chaos of this woman's private inner world. Olive Kitteridge is one of those books I hope everyone reads at some point; it's that special. It will certainly be among my top picks for the year. I hope you get a chance to read it!

Rating: BUY

FTC Disclosure: I did not receive this book for review from the publisher.

REVIEW: Going Away Shoes, stories by Jill McCorkle

Going Away Shoes, stories by Jill McCorkle. Published 2009 by Algonquin.

Going Away Shoes is an elegant and moving collection of short stories by writer Jill McCorkle. The stories all focus on women in middle age, trapped or stuck in some kind of relationship- with a dying mother or ex-lover, a misbehaving granddaughter or even an ex-therapist who still has an emotional hold over his patient.

Personally, I found the book to be a little bland. No doubt well-crafted and absorbing, it would appeal to readers of popular fiction and light literary fiction with a taste for books about women and I like the way McCorkle elevates everyday lives through her excellent writing and respect for her characters. Even the funniest story, "PS," which consists of a letter by an ex-wife to her ex-therapist, just pokes gentle fun at therapy and even divorce.

I think though that for me, stories about everyday people just often lack the snap I look for in literature. When I read, I want to read about something outside my life, something that takes me away- to a different time, culture or setting. There are a number of really excellent writers who write very movingly about ordinary life (Roland Merullo, Stewart O'Nan, and McCorkle, among others) but although I admire their craft the work itself just doesn't get me going. Such is the case with Going Away Shoes. I do think a lot of readers would enjoy it and that it might even make a great book club pick, the stories being primarily character- and relationship-driven. There's certainly a lot to talk about- thorny dilemmas, difficult families and complicated lives. It's a thoughful and thought-provoking collection- if, for me, just not very exciting.

Rating: BACKLIST

FTC Disclosure: I received this book for review from the publisher.

"Summer is short- read a story." -Ann Patchett

Harper Perennial is putting out some "public service announcements" to advocate for reading short stories. You may have seen this around already, but here is short-story writer Simon Van Booy's take on why you should choose this form for your summer reading:



But what's out there? I hear you ask. Here are some of my favorite short story picks, with links to reviews where applicable.

Magic for Beginners, by Kelly Link. Like Neil Gaiman? You will love Kelly Link.

The Djinn in the Nightingale's Eye, by A.S. Byatt. Literary fantasy your thing? Look no further.

New Stories from the South 2009, edited by Madison Smartt Bell. Out in August. Great collection of recent fiction from top writers.

The Last Chicken in America: A Novel in Stories, by Ellen Litman. My personal favorite book of short stories from last year, about the Russian-Jewish immigrant experience.

The Idol Lover and Other Short Stories of Pakistan, by pal and fellow librarian Moazzam Sheikh. Literary armchair travel, sexually and politically charged and skillfully crafted.

Jesus' Son, by Denis Johnson. Read it in college; loved it. Rough-around-the-edges fiction from the celebrated author.

The New York Stories of Edith Wharton, by Edith Wharton. By the author of classics like Ethan Frome and The Age of Innocence.

The Best American Non-Required Reading, any year, various editors. A series of anthologies of off-the-beaten-path fiction, journalism, comics and more.

This is Not Chick Lit: Original Stories by America's Best Women Writers, edited by Elizabeth Merrick. Curtis Sittenfeld and Judy Budnitz are among the many talented writers featured.

And of course, Love Begins in Winter, by Simon Van Booy. Literary, beautifully written stories. The title story made one librarian tear up and call his husband to say "I love you" in the middle of the day. What better endorsement is there than that?

I keep a stack of short story anthologies on my nightstand and sometimes it's just the thing. Anthologies are also a great way to sample lots of new-to-you writers and collections allow you to get to know a writer's style in depth. Lots of writers use short stories as a run-up to writing a novel, but for some, it's an art form in and of itself. I hope you find something great this summer- and I hope you'll come back and tell me!

REVIEW: The Last Chicken in America, by Ellen Litman

The Last Chicken in America, by Ellen Litman. Published 2008 by W.W. Norton. Literary Fiction. Short Stories.

The Last Chicken in America, which author Ellen Litman bills as "a novel in stories," is a lovely collection of interrelated tales focusing on the Russian-Jewish immigrants in the Squirrel Hill neighborhood of Pittsburgh. Her characters are teenagers, young and old men and women from different walks of life, recent arrivals to the United States, American and Russian, Jewish and not; together they people a dense, close-knit and slightly claustrophobic community. Some want to leave and some want to stay, but they all work to survive and find love and meaning under challenging circumstances.

The stories follow a whole cast of characters but several center around one young woman, Masha, a teenager applying for college, working a series of unsatisfying jobs and yearning for something better. I could almost feel her trying to push her way through the world, looking for someone to understand her suffocation and her need for freedom. Her parents, whose problems are addressed later, in their own story, want to keep her close; a wealthy woman for whom she works wants to make Masha her kind of Jew without bothering to understand Masha for herself, and her teacher, a non-Jewish Russian, can't deal with who she is either. Masha's stories form the heart of the book; they bring to the surface rifts in understanding and missed connections, but ultimately her story is optimistic and hopeful.

Other characters, like Natasha, who tries content herself with what she finds easily attainable, like an uncomfortable (but readily proffered) friendship with a coworker, or an unsatisfying but available boyfriend, or Tanya, who lives vicariously through her boyfriend's glamorous friends, speak to the theme of alienation and discomfort and bring a range of emotions to life. The characters appear and reappear in each others' stories, so the star of one, like Vika in "When the Neighbors Love You," might show up as a background character in others. When Vika reappears in the last story, her appearance has the feel of a throwaway line until you remember how economically that throwaway line works to resolve her story and her fate. Major themes include immigration, adjustment to a new world with new rules, post-Soviet life outside the Soviet Union, and the harmonies and dissonances of everyday life.

With a good number of stories and a variety of characters, Litman has created a vivid little world inside her slim volume of stories. I loved her fluid prose and her gently literary style. She describes the Squirrel Hill neighborhood so vividly I felt like I was walking down its crowded sidewalks with her characters, past its shops and restaurants. I could see them right down to their clothes and hairstyles, to their cigarettes and lipstick. It was a world I could engage in right away, even if I put the book down for a few days here and there; it was a pleasure to savor these lovely stories. I hope that she has a novel in the works but it doesn't matter- I think I would read anything she writes, I enjoyed this book so much. I'd recommend it to readers interested in sensitive, character-driven short prose, to readers who like solid writing on Jewish and Russian topics, and really to anyone. The Last Chicken could be read as a companion piece to Sana Krasikov's fine debut One More Year, another volume of short stories about Soviet immigrants, which came out earlier this year as well, but it stands beautifully on its own. It's a wonderful little book.

Rating: BUY

FTC Disclosure: I did not receive this book for review from the publisher.