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Amazon.co.uk Review
Hey Yeah Right Get a Life, Helen Simpson's third collection of short stories, is about the hectic day-to-day whirlpool of women's lives--women who want to improve their lot, women who yearn to "get a life" better than their own. When she writes about child care it is with a knowing honesty about the accompanying sacrifices and tribulations--from the highly efficient businesswoman who "had a beautiful house and she was never in it. She knew what the children were doing at every hour of the day and she wasn't there", to the stay-at-home wife who "would stand and wait for herself to grow still and the image was one of an ancient vase, crackle-glazed, still in one piece but finely crazed all over its surface". Simpson is superb at conveying the intense frustration and yet maddening love that children inspire.
Each story complements the others, even the rather macabre "Millennium Blues", as Simpson's characters bustle around, meaning well, and occasionally reappearing (Dorrie in the title story also features in "Hurrah for the Hols"). She doesn't waste a word and her ear for dialogue is acute--her description of a female banker's interpretation of a corporate Burns night in "Burns and the Bankers", for example, is both excruciating and hilarious--and she manages to blend both humour and poetry into the scurrying days of her characters.
In some ways, many of the stories feel more like a face-pressed-against-the-window peer into other people's experiences rather than finite stories and the reader longs to learn more about the characters and discover how things worked out. Hey Yeah Right Get a Life is a wonderfully written and involving collection of stories that will have a high-recognition factor for many readers. --Christina McLoughlin --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Review
"Helen Simpson's prose demands to be heard...audacious, imaginative writing...exceptionally perceptive." -"Independent on Sunday"
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
9 of 9 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
This is a marvellous collection of stories about what it's like to be a modern mother. Simpson writes wonderfully about the joy, anguish, frustration, humiliation and goodness of this life. I defy anyone who has had children not to recognise aspects of their own experience in it. It's even better than her first two collections - darker, sadder, funnier.
13 of 14 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
This woman just gets better, funnier and scarier with every book she turns out. The loathsome, callous Jade; Robin the adoring toddler; Dorrie, the heroine and nemesis of every thirty-something mother - Helen Simpson has been bugging your home and office again. Cafe Society had me in tears of appalled recognition; the title story made me laugh loudly enough to turn heads on a crowded train. Thank you, Helen, for putting into words so much more elegantly and truthfully than anyone else I have ever read, what mothers feel. I sometimes think I would love to write and then I encounter a masterpiece like this and think better of it. Phew.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Interesting short stories mostly about young mothers struggling
I do not read all that many short stories so am no expert in the genre. I found most of the stories interesting - once I got past the first couple which I found a bit depressing. Read more
Published 9 months ago by Latest Version
Changed My Point of View
This is Helen Simpson's fourth collection of short stories. This book contains nine interlinking stories which examine the role of the modern wife/mother from different... Read more
Published 21 months ago by Eileen Furze
I wanted to strange some of the characters in this book....
There are clearly a lot of readers out there who enjoy Helen Simpson's writing and connect with her characters, but I found almost every story in this small book a disappointment. Read more
Published on 17 Jan 2010 by Zarendy
domestic dullness
There is little doubt that Helen Simpson is indeed a very good writer but her subject matter - domestic life, women being stuck at home with children, giving up their careers,... Read more
Published on 23 April 2008 by farfalla
Therapy
These stories are worth reading for their literary merit alone -even if you are not interested in the subject matter. Read more
Published on 28 April 2006 by J PORTER
Yeah, its well written, but surely theres more to life
These short stories are extremely well written and there's a luscious, unrushed feeling about them, so often missing in short stories, but the subject matter is (for lack of a... Read more
Published on 20 July 2005 by maria1971
Funny, sad-the perils of modern motherhood
I bought, I read, I laughed, I cried, I recognised me, my friends and foes. Helen Simpson writes like an exocet missile to the heart of modern, middle class motherhood. Read more
Published on 4 April 2001 by janet@jclegg.demon.co.uk
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