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Product Description
Book Description
Wonderful collection from one of the most acclaimed and influential writers of her generation.
Product Description
Since the publication of Self-Help, her first collection of stories, Lorrie Moore has been hailed as one of the greatest and most influential voices in American fiction. Her ferociously funny, soulful stories tell of the gulf between men and women, the loneliness of the broken-hearted and the yearned-for, impossible intimacies we crave. Gathered here for the first time in a beautiful hardback edition is the complete stories along with three new and previously unpublished in book form: Paper Losses, The Juniper Tree, Debarking.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
18 of 18 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
'Although Kit and Rafe had met in the peace movement, marching, organizing, making no-nukes signs, now they wanted to kill each other.'
The opening lines of the opening story remind us of some of Lorrie Moore's attributes; the ability to set a scene concisely and with wit and to explore how people and relationships change. She is right up there with the very best of short story writers such as Carver, Munro or Updike. Her dialogue is superb and spare. She writes about people and situations we instantly recognise with the impact of an observational stand up comic - but with compassion and humanity also. Superb.
The opening lines of the opening story remind us of some of Lorrie Moore's attributes; the ability to set a scene concisely and with wit and to explore how people and relationships change. She is right up there with the very best of short story writers such as Carver, Munro or Updike. Her dialogue is superb and spare. She writes about people and situations we instantly recognise with the impact of an observational stand up comic - but with compassion and humanity also. Superb.
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I've never been a fan of short stories but if anyone can bring about a conversion in me, it's Lorrie Moore.
This collection features some outstanding short stories achieving the emotional depth of full-blown novels, notably `People like them are the only people here', `Terrific Mother' and the hilarious `You're Ugly Too'.
`Terrific Mother' deals with the emotion that descends on all mothers before they leave the delivery room - guilt. For Adrienne the guilt is engendered by experiencing motherhood vicariously, when holding a friend's baby, and from the random, accidental yet traumatic event that follows. Thereafter Adrienne subconsciously renounces her right ever to love or to be loved, with devastating consequences for her marriage ("I married my husband because I thought it would be a great way to meet guys") and the social situations she is thrust into as the result of her husband's secondment amongst the academic fraternity of Italy. Here she inhabits the uncomfortable cloak of `spouse' and endures some excruciating and hilarious conversations, where no one speaks to her directly and Moore observes: `at times like this, she thought, it was probably a good idea to carry a small hand puppet'.
Deeply moving, witty and tragicomic.
This collection features some outstanding short stories achieving the emotional depth of full-blown novels, notably `People like them are the only people here', `Terrific Mother' and the hilarious `You're Ugly Too'.
`Terrific Mother' deals with the emotion that descends on all mothers before they leave the delivery room - guilt. For Adrienne the guilt is engendered by experiencing motherhood vicariously, when holding a friend's baby, and from the random, accidental yet traumatic event that follows. Thereafter Adrienne subconsciously renounces her right ever to love or to be loved, with devastating consequences for her marriage ("I married my husband because I thought it would be a great way to meet guys") and the social situations she is thrust into as the result of her husband's secondment amongst the academic fraternity of Italy. Here she inhabits the uncomfortable cloak of `spouse' and endures some excruciating and hilarious conversations, where no one speaks to her directly and Moore observes: `at times like this, she thought, it was probably a good idea to carry a small hand puppet'.
Deeply moving, witty and tragicomic.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
The collection is vast - 37 stories, an average length of 28-30 pages a story - Lorrie Moore doesn't do many short short-stories, this will take a while to wade through and you have to like the genre, which I know many don't. But the thing about Lorrie Moore is how marvellously alive and buzzing her people are, even when they are like Boy 2, in Two Boys, mournful, serious, clinging - you see completely what Moore is doing. I must admit, I don't usually like stories where no one has a name - if you can't be bothered to name your protagonist how can his or her human properties resonate properly? In the better stories, names are given. A favourite for me was What You Want To Do Fine, which is about Quilty, a blind lawyer who falls in love with Mack, a young painter and decorator - their road trip across America is an absolute delight. Another favourite is People Like That Are The Only People Here: Canonical Babbling in Peed Onk (long, rather silly titles are maybe an affectation the reader could do without) is an immensely moving story about a child with leukaemia and his parents. Children feature more in the later stories and one can see the development of Moore's art take that turn, especially as the stories about children (and about parents remembering childhood) become a feature of her fine and delicately-strung sensibilities. There is some beautiful writing. This is from the above-mentioned Peed Onk:
"Pulling through is what people do around here. There is a kind of bravery in their lives that isn't bravery at all. It is automatic, unflinching, a mix of man and machine, consuming and unquestionable obligation meeting illness move for move in a giant even-steven game of chess - an unending round of something that looks like shadowboxing, though between love and death, which is the shadow?"
I love her writing unreservedly - yes, she sometimes over-reaches - but show me someone who is doing anything close to this deeply empathetic and honest exposure of the fine bones, the grit and gristle, of human existence in `the Land of the Free' today and I'll bow to your superior mental radar.
"Pulling through is what people do around here. There is a kind of bravery in their lives that isn't bravery at all. It is automatic, unflinching, a mix of man and machine, consuming and unquestionable obligation meeting illness move for move in a giant even-steven game of chess - an unending round of something that looks like shadowboxing, though between love and death, which is the shadow?"
I love her writing unreservedly - yes, she sometimes over-reaches - but show me someone who is doing anything close to this deeply empathetic and honest exposure of the fine bones, the grit and gristle, of human existence in `the Land of the Free' today and I'll bow to your superior mental radar.
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