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Amazon.co.uk Review
Smith has always been one of the most quirkily inventive and surprising of writers, with novels such as Only Forward and the remarkable Spares demonstrating an imaginative grasp all too rarely encountered these days. But his greatest achievement is his totally individual use of language and dialogue, and this highly diverse collection has 17 brilliant microcosms of his style. From terror in cyberspace to bizarre fusions of man and machine, through twisted manifestations of the artistic impulse to highly disturbing future sex, Smith has the measure of it all. And his gift for the bizarre image remains as acute as ever:
About a week afterwards, I noticed that my back was looking a little hairy. I figured, what the hey, maybe some hormonal thing. Then it started getting harder to hold things. My thumb seemed to be going a little weird, not as opposable as it used to be. There were a couple of days when it looked like there was some kind of tail deal developing.--Barry Forshaw
Review
‘Astonishingly distinctive short stories’
Independent
‘A story telling skill that can only be described as pure genius’
Venue
‘Very funny and decidedly surreal’
Empire
‘No one writes better than Smith about love: how it’s won, how it’s lost. No one writes better about being wasted – by drugs, by drink, by time. Nigh-on unique’
i-D
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Sigh...more money.,
By pupmup (UK) - See all my reviews
This review is from: What You Make It: Selected Short Stories (Paperback)
This, was very dodgy indeed. Lent to me by a friend and dubiously started, i finished the book in a day. Consdering school that was actually quaite an acomplishment. The book was incredible. Personally, I love the macarbre and the disturbing, and so this fitted me perfectly. The characters were ranging from the normal to the surreal, and the plots from the basic to the gasp out loud horror that makes you quirm in your chair. MMS is a great fan of one liners that sum up the story and leave you hanging, and it was over these that I pored at 3am, afraid to turn off the light. A fantastic book. You may wonder why the title for this review? As soon as I finished this book, I gave it back to the friend, ordered it, and every other book that MMS had written off Amazon. Brilliant. Buy it now.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
What have I let myself in for?,
By
This review is from: What You Make It: Selected Short Stories (Paperback)
The first story in this book "More Tomorrow" really made me start to wonder what I'd inadvertently bought - as it was an inadvertent purchase on my part. I was reading it in bed and I just lay there, staring at the last line of the story, images that I didn't need swirling around in my head just before I was about to go to sleep... I decided I didn't like it and I put it down.
The night after (suitably, it's a night book for me!) I was back... onto the second story. "Everybody Goes" was intriguing... on the first pass I will admit that I didn't truly 'get it'... so I read the last page and a half again and it clicked, "Oh yeah, kinda clever!" and I started to like it again. Each night I've read one, two or three stories and I must say there are larger number of hits in there than there are misses. There's been one or two that I didn't like... but you've, basically, got to almost steel yourself for the last line (more often the last page or last half page) 'cos it's about to turn you on your head and spin you around. I have bought several other books by the same author - novels as opposed to collections of short stories... so that's the effect an introduction to his writing has had on me... let's see how well he does with longer material.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Disturbing, Dark and Edgy,
This review is from: What You Make It: Selected Short Stories (Paperback)
At the start of this collection of short stories, Michael Marshall Smith is careful to alert the reader to the difference between a novel and a short story - and it is a warning that the reader would do well to heed.One of the strength of MMS's writing is in his honest and very raw dealings with human emotions. His novels often balance out the warmth of his central characters against some of the more brutal things that happen in the course of the story. There's just not enough time to build that warmth here in these stories so they inevitably end up very raw, very bleak and ever so slightly disturbing. That said, the stories are still expertly written (although his humour is something else that doesn't get much of a look-in in some of the stories) and they give a good idea of MMS's ideas pared down to their simplest forms and maybe a little better idea of what makes him tick. It's interesting, for instance, to speculate how "The Man who drew cats" was influenced by the writing of Stephen King for instance. All in all a very good book - imaginative, stylish and scary. Just don't read it if you're looking for something to cheer you up on a rainy afternoon. It's likely to make you wonder if the rain is ever going to stop.
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