To be fair, maybe I am just not that well-suited to super short stories. Even in the aforementioned collections, my favourites tended to be those that were much longer than the rest, almost novellas. Panter-Downes' stories were all very short, so maybe that didn't help....more
Every Good Deed - 5/5 - A novella, really, and by far the longest story in the collection. A compelling story with a great villain and sympathetic chaEvery Good Deed - 5/5 - A novella, really, and by far the longest story in the collection. A compelling story with a great villain and sympathetic characters.
Miss Pratt Disappears - 5/5 - This one starts a very sad story about a “spinster” considered a burden by a family that doesn’t want her… but her fortune is about to change.
Susan - 5/5 - Very sad, very short story. You know what is going to happen but anticipating it is horrible. A snapshot of how shit it could be to be a woman in the early 20th century.
Bitter Sauce - 5/5 - Just fabulous. The guy in this reminded me of the husband in Whipple's The Closed Door. Whipple has no time for these men.
Exit - 2/5 - Bit of a pointless non-story.
Boarding-House - 4/5 - An enjoyable story about a couple opening a seaside boarding house and getting way more than they bargained for when a truly horrific guest arrives.
One Dark Night - 3/5 - A snobby woman learns her lesson during a wartime blackout.
Tea at the Rectory - 3/5 - Whipple does good "old maid" characters, but not the most interesting story in this collection.
The Swan - 5/5 - Very short, sad story about a literal swan. I’d been expecting a pub or something.
Sunday Morning - 5/5 - Whipple does love poetic justice....more
The Closed Door - 5/5 - Truly a horrific story about the worst parents. The mother was horrible, but the father probably made me even more angry. ThisThe Closed Door - 5/5 - Truly a horrific story about the worst parents. The mother was horrible, but the father probably made me even more angry. This was such an upsetting, claustrophobic story, but powerful because of it.
The Rose - 4/5 - A very short story about a wife’s jealousy, somewhat misplaced.
Youth - 3.5/5 - Another young woman being held back by a domineering guardian, which is a theme Whipple clearly likes to explore. This one resists.
The Handbag - 4/5 - A delightfully satisfying tale of a woman who gets back at her unfaithful husband. Hard not to read the ending with a smirk.
Family Crisis - 5/5 - Great story and a great lesson about a crisis making people realise what actually matters. While I do enjoy Whipple's shorts, the two longest stories in this collection were just so much stronger.
After Tea - 4/5 - quick satisfying story. Whipple loves a young woman breaking free. Dishes out lessons.
Wednesday - 5/5 - What a horribly sad story. A divorced mother gets to see her children only on the first Wednesday of the month. Whipple really does capture all the ways women could be controlled, restrained and just totally screwed by both laws and societal attitudes.
Summer Holiday - 4/5 - A story from the POV of a young girl, innocently observing her nurse’s affair with a man.
Saturday Afternoon - 3.5/5 - Probably the weakest, but still enjoyable to read. A dutiful husband turns out to be a (view spoiler)[long-term philanderer. (hide spoiler)]
Cover - 4.5/5 - About the hypocrisy of men “doing [a woman] a favour” by ignoring her sexual past.
These ratings may not average out at 5 but I'm rating it 5 stars because I can't remember ever liking every single story in a collection of shorts. Also, the 5 star stories were that good....more
Star ratings are an inadequate way of expressing my feelings for this book. It is perhaps best summed up in a single word: WOAH.
The first note I made Star ratings are an inadequate way of expressing my feelings for this book. It is perhaps best summed up in a single word: WOAH.
The first note I made while reading this was literally "yeah, wow, this is so good" which is funny and also a bit embarrassing next to the eloquence of Tulathimutte.
Rejection is a collection of depressing, intimate portraits largely about lonely, alienated people who just cannot get it right. The characters in the first three stories are desperate for love and connection-- emphasis on the "desperate" --but they keep being met with rejection. These people are cringe, pathetic, try-hard… and, even in their worst moments, somehow sympathetic. We meet people who get destroyed by rejection, allowing being a reject to become their entire personhood.
I feel for characters like this, I really do. Like, in a slightly different life I feel my very socially clueless self could have easily ended up one of them. They are like Sally Rooney characters x1000, super annoying and totally sabotaging their own happiness because they can't get out of their heads, yet there is something compelling about them.
As you move through the stories, it becomes clear they are all interlinked by more than just the theme of rejection. And it also becomes clear that the author is spinning an overarching metanarrative, one that somehow feels both serious and satirical at the same time.
There was a point, I will admit it, when I thought maybe this book was just a bit too mired in pretentious navel-gazing narcissism for me (probably right around the point I was shamed into googling some of the vocab) and I was thinking maybe four stars because, come on, Mr Tulathimutte, you're good, but it's all a bit cringe, a bit desperate and try-hard, isn't it?
And then I read the last story and I had to laugh at myself. Well played, sir. Well played....more
Fourteen Days is essentially a short story collection with a twist-- all the stories are fed to us via cThis was more or less exactly what I expected.
Fourteen Days is essentially a short story collection with a twist-- all the stories are fed to us via characters in a New York apartment building, and each one is written by a different author. Set during the COVID lockdown, the cast of characters gather on the roof of their building to exchange stories.
Like virtually every single short story collection I have read, this book has its stronger stories and weaker stories. Some kept my eyes glued to the page, while others I have already forgotten. The stories are all spoken aloud to a group and while some authors adapted well to this, other stories contained too much detail or were so overly weird that they did not feel realistically like spoken word.
Ironically, some of the big names that most attracted me to the book did not write the best characters. I guess this project may have been pretty low priority for them. Atwood's short contribution, for example, showcases one of my favourite authors at her weirdest (and not in a good way). They tried to give her an odd character to accommodate her eccentricities but, even so, it felt totally bizarre and unbelievable to me.
Also, I found the chitchat and set-up between the stories quite tedious. Because they chose this specific framing, it made it necessary for the narrator to introduce each day, scene and character before launching into the next story. It was mostly filler.
An ambitious experiment that didn't quite work, in my opinion. So many stories, characters and voices led to a book that was uneven and incohesive. And I didn't like the ending....more
I read this as a kid and remembered it being super scary so I recently decided to read it with my kids who tell me everything is "not very scary" (to I read this as a kid and remembered it being super scary so I recently decided to read it with my kids who tell me everything is "not very scary" (to be fair, they are usually the scariest thing in any room). There's a couple of duds, but some of the stories are genuinely very good. I'm Not Martin is one I remembered in detail even after all these years. Such a simple, yet deeply unsettling, tale....more
I was convinced to read this by a few reviews and-- being honest --the low page count, but it is exactly the kind of book I don't like: disjointed vigI was convinced to read this by a few reviews and-- being honest --the low page count, but it is exactly the kind of book I don't like: disjointed vignettes that read almost like stream-of-consciousness, no emotional connection to anyone including the narrator who writes in a dispassionate yet overly purple voice. It's got that "I'm trying to be poetic for my Creative Writing 101 class" vibe....more
The Machine Stops was a really good short story. Forster, writing in 1909, predicts Facetime / Zoom, amongst other things, though he sets it in a creeThe Machine Stops was a really good short story. Forster, writing in 1909, predicts Facetime / Zoom, amongst other things, though he sets it in a creepy nightmare future where humanity lives underground and everything they need is controlled and delivered by the Machine.
There are certainly parallels with our own world and concerns. The Machine is perhaps best likened to the Internet-- it connects people (who live in solitude) with others around the world, plays music, caters to their every need and whim. In this world, people view mountains, nature and people through the machine, but rarely, if ever, have any direct contact with any of them. People worship the machine and cannot imagine life without it. While we're not exactly living in Forster's dystopia, some aspects of it are eerily prescient.
In my copy of this book, it also came with the short story 'The Celestial Omnibus', which I didn't care for. It was silly and, maybe because it came so soon after my reading of The Machine Stops, it lacked impact. My rating is for The Machine Stops only....more
Had my body really betrayed me? Or, by accepting the standards expected of me and by pushing my body so hard to surpass them, had I betrayed my bod
Had my body really betrayed me? Or, by accepting the standards expected of me and by pushing my body so hard to surpass them, had I betrayed my body?
I really do love these books. Here We Are, Don't Call Me Crazy, and now Body Talk... I've loved each one of them with a fiery passion. I love the diverse array of voices represented; the way they are somehow light and funny, but also serious; the way they make me feel better, but also make me cry. I don't know it it's partly to do with the time this book found me at, but Body Talk made me sob cathartic tears.
You can never represent everyone, but I admire how much these books try. This one covers scoliosis, dwarfism, fat, facial hair, teeth, cultural differences in fat/body shaming, black bodies, trans bodies, cancer, periods, sex, endometriosis, modelling, urological and endocrine disorders, amongst other things.
Some of it is gory and discomfiting, though necessary, like Anna-Marie McLemore's piece about their misshapen uterus and the subsequent medical failures they had to endure. Some of it is heartwarming, like Sara Saedi's touching story of her immigrant parents who left a country they loved, worked long hours at jobs they didn’t love, to pay for her healthcare and dental care.
Obviously, Body Talk has a lot to say about the physical aspects of the body, disability, and illness, but it is also at least as much about the emotional impact of living in a society that only caters for, and desires, certain types of bodies. You cannot talk about the human body without also addressing body-shaming and body anxiety, both of which feature heavily throughout this collection. Though, while shame, anxiety and pain are major themes, I found the book to be ultimately very uplifting and affirming.
As with the other books that came before it, Body Talk contains a fun mix of prose, graphic stories, interviews, gorgeous artwork, playlists and Q&As with an endocrinologist and urologist. Another diverse, inspiring collection that was a pleasure to read!
Loved the first horrible story - "1922" - and the suggestion that greed and cruelty always come back to haunt you. Literally. The rest were just okay,Loved the first horrible story - "1922" - and the suggestion that greed and cruelty always come back to haunt you. Literally. The rest were just okay, though I did enjoy the overarching theme of exploring the darkness that lurks beneath the surface of everyone....more
Ark was my second read from the Forward collection and my second least favourite. To be fair, I think I liked it more than a lot of other readers did,Ark was my second read from the Forward collection and my second least favourite. To be fair, I think I liked it more than a lot of other readers did, judging by the reviews, but it was very slow for such a short story.
I like this story more when looking back over it than I did while I was reading. It's a very slow, quiet tale, exploring the beauty of Earth through horticulture. Samantha is a scientist, cataloging plant samples to take on the Ark when the final people leave Earth. Most have already been evacuated and Earth's last days are rapidly approaching in the form of an asteroid.
There's some understated beauty to it, but the lack of connection with the characters or any real emotional drive to the story kept me at a distance. The idea itself is very simple and it presents a sad nostalgia for Earth and all still left to discover about it. After I had read it and given it some thought, it struck me as a kind of love letter to our planet. It's just too bad that the story itself was not as compelling as the idea suggests.
Summer Frost was so good. Probably my second favourite of the Forward collection because Jemisin's Emergency Skin just really did it for me, but they Summer Frost was so good. Probably my second favourite of the Forward collection because Jemisin's Emergency Skin just really did it for me, but they are so different that it's hard to compare them. Jemisin's was shorter and snappier with a very hard-hitting concept. Crouch's was longer, with way more character development and a touch of what seems to be his trademark doomed romance.
Crouch really is quite the romantic, I think. Not in a bad way. It adds a much-needed layer of humanity to his sci-fi novels. This mini-epic spans years as it looks at artificial intelligence, gender binaries, playing God, and the nature of reality and consciousness. You know, light stuff.
Though if it seems like a single story might get bogged down by all those big themes, I don't think it does. I am glad he wrote a longer story than all the others and didn't scrimp on character development because I think that was really important here. Becoming attached to Riley and Max was necessary for the story to have the impact it does.
It's a smart story that is about many things, but all of them seem to come back to the same thing: Technology is amazing, but don't let it take over your life.
I went back and forth on this rating because I seriously loved the story, but there was this cynical little voice in my head questioning whether it waI went back and forth on this rating because I seriously loved the story, but there was this cynical little voice in my head questioning whether it was too oversimplified. In the end, though, I rate based on personal enjoyment and I enjoyed Emergency Skin so much. It was my personal favourite from the Forward collection.
When I started to see where this story was going, I think I actually let out a little delighted laugh!
Many years into the future, a small group of humans have fled a dying Earth and built a new (and very different) society on another planet. However, something from old Earth is of utmost importance to them, so one soldier is sent on a mission to find it. He will have to brave the Earth's destroyed atmosphere and - worse - deal with the devolved humans that were left behind.
It's told in second person, which worked really well for me. I don't want to say too much about the story or its themes - (view spoiler)[racism, sexism, classism, ableism, body-shaming, etc. (hide spoiler)] - because it is told very well and you deserve to find it out on your own. I think it was a very clever approach to a simple idea. Yes, again, maybe too simple. But I thoroughly enjoyed it.
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