Both Ways Is the Only Way I Want It
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Product Description
Product Description
Caught between opposing forces - fidelity and desire, impulse and security, innocence and experience - these unforgettable characters have each reached a fork in the road. But what kind of fool only wants it one way? Funny, sly and sparkling with energy, BOTH WAYS IS THE ONLY WAY I WANT IT confirms Maile Meloy as an enthralling storyteller.
About the Author
Maile Meloy's first novel, Liars and Saints, was shortlisted for the Orange Prize, and was a Richard and Judy Summer Read. She is also the author of the novel A Family Daughter and the story collection Half in Love. Her stories have been published in The New Yorker, Granta, Prospect, and other publications. In 2007, she was chosen as one of Granta's 21 Best Young American Novelists, and her new collection, Both Ways Is the Only Way I Want It, was selected as one of the New York Times Book Review's Ten Best Books of 2009.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
'That was the thing that made him ache',
By
This review is from: Both Ways is the Only Way I Want it (Paperback)
In Travis, B, Maile Meloy's first story in this collection of eleven, Chet Morgan falls in unrequited love. 'He had wanted to practice, with girls and now he had gotten it, but he wished it had felt more like practice.' Meloy draws us into his lonely world, feeding horses in severe winter conditions, with her perfect choice of language and detail. In Red From Green, fifteen year old Sam Turner takes a camping trip which shakes her view of her father. In Spy vs Spy two brothers compete on a ski trip. In Lovely Rita, Rita enters herself as a prize in a raffle when her boyfriend dies in a work accident. Things almost happen in these stories and then they veer away to another path; not a Roald Dahl twist, a power shift in the characters.
The stories deal with these shifts in relationships and are set in ordinary, yet extraordinary landscapes. If Annie Proulx writes Wyoming Stories, these are Meloy's Montana stories; harsh winters, huge vistas, man and nature. Philip Roth, no less, is an admirer. He mentions her precision with language and her words have lingered with me. There isn't an unnecessary word in these stories. I'm a fan of the short story; Annie Proulx, Alison Lurie, Alice Munro are my heroes. Meloy looks fare to join them. For some reason we Brits are less keen on shorts stories than the North Americans. This is a fine collection and if it were a nove I'm sure it would be recommended more widely.
3.0 out of 5 stars
The Spring and the Horse,
This review is from: Both Ways is the Only Way I Want it (Paperback)
The collection starts off strongly with short stories that are beautiful and effective in two respects: first, the capacity of the writer, Maile Meloy, to wind up the reader into restlessness and tension. You can't put your finger on it, but something makes you worry about the characters and what happens next.
Second, her mastery of short, economically built, yet powerful descriptions. One description in particular - and this is subjective - made me stir with pleasure, it was such a feast for the senses: "He took the fat plastic bag of oats from his jacket pocket and held it open. The horse sniffed at it, then worked the oats out of the bag with his lips. 'That's all I got,' he said, shoving the empty plastic bag back in his pocket. The horse lifted its head to sniff at the strange town smells." Have you ever fed a horse? You don't need any more than what she writes to conjure images and senses: the oats lifting lightly under the horse's warm breath; the velvety, distrusting muzzle; the way, once it has established it's good to eat, it gently grabs the oats with the tips of its lips. Its disappointment when it's over. In the same way, elsewhere, the writer builds up tension not through what she says, but through what she *doesn't* say. This said, the internal deliberations of characters wanting it "both ways" were less convincing to me. The short story is too short a format for meaningful and strong questions on what to choose to be properly developed. The first few short stories are bare and subdued; the subsequent ones become more domestic and a bit more literal in trying to explore the issue in title of the collection. I personally can't be bothered with men who want both the wife and the mistress; especially when the writer takes these men seriously and when, as I was saying, we aren't given sufficient 'time' with the character so to get to feel that tension of the "both ways is the only way".
4.0 out of 5 stars
Eleven short stories in the great American tradition,
By Phil O'Sofa (England) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Both Ways is the Only Way I Want it (Paperback)
I doubt if I'm being very original if I say that Ms Meloy is a kind of female Raymond Carver or Richard Yates, but it seems to me that her short stories follow in the footsteps of those great American writers. They have a spareness; a directness that gets to the heart of the matter without messing around. Like Yates and Carver, she writes about the sadness and disappointment of ordinary lives.
The action is usually subdued; boy meets girl but it doesn't work out; the death of a friend changes everything; people leave home; a woman falls for her friend's husband. There is always the feeling that it might have been different, that something significant might have happened. We get a glimpse into these sad lives; we share the heartache. There is something about these little snippets of life (as there is with most good American short stories) that seems rooted in the size and the restlessness of the country; nothing is permanent, people move on, lives change, for better or for worse. I'd have given five stars but for one story that, for me, was way below standard, called Liliana, a supposedly dead grandmother who returns to life. But all short-story writers have their duds, even Carver, and nine or ten good ones out of eleven isn't bad going.
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