Love and Obstacles: Amazon.co.uk: Aleksandar Hemon: Books

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Review

'New generation of American writers...is bringing about a paradigm shift in Anglo-American writing. Hemon is the brightest star.'
--The Times

'Such nimble control of register allows the stories to swing from the broadest comedy to the most painful tragedy' --The Guardian

'A dream sequence of endlessly shifting memories of sex, disappointment, violence, migration and ambition... a traumatised, exhilarating state of flux' --Metro (4-star review)

'In this book of sparse love and darkened humour, the surprising and innovative author makes new endings seem possible, negotiating some brutal obstacles along the way'
--TLS

'There really is something startlingly fresh and original about his prose... The writing is muscular and aggressive, and also tender and sentimental. This is the work of a man absolutely in his prime. Read and rejoice.'
--GQ

`I've written admiringly about him before, but he deserves more. If there is a more inspired writer of fiction than Aleksandar Hemon currently at work in English, I haven't read him. ...This new book is a treat and a tonic, and you should seek it out even though you don't read short stories. '
--GQ

`Aleksandar Hemon's short story collection is eccentric, witty, and alive with compassion... His wry, bathetic humour is one of Love and Obstacles's greatest pleasures'
--Observer

Review

'A dazzling collection of stories ...further cementing his position among the finest fiction writers working in English.'

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Customer Reviews

34 Reviews

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(12)
3 star:		(10)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(3)

Average Customer Review

3.3 out of 5 stars (34 customer reviews)

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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Small Pictures From A Mind's Eye, 10 Aug 2009

By	The Wolf (uk) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)

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Aleksandar Hemon has an insider's view on outsiders.
He is one himself.
Translocated from a disintegrating Bosnia to the USA
in 1992 he has made a new life and a new home there.

His new book of stories 'Love and Obstacles' demonstrates
a strong association with marginal characters. We encounter many
of them within these pages, vividly and sympathetically drawn.

The shady Spinelli, weaving a dark thread through the life
of a young aspiriring writer in 'Stairway To Heaven'.
Mobutu's Zaire in the early eighties is chillingly reimagined.

'Everything', the tale of a young poet's quest to appropriate
a new chest freezer for his family from a distant town is enchanting.
His journey becomes a small modern 'Odyssey' with its trials and
lucidly depicted grotesques. The old man drowning his sorrows in a
bar called 'Bar' is affectionately and movingly brought to life.

In 'Good Living' Mr Hemon juxtaposes the mundane with the
seedily dramatic in this condensed story of a door-to-door
magazine salesman in Chicago's Blue Island district.
The drunken priest with a dark secret is a powerfully
ambiguous and unsettling invention.

It is his eye for small human details which imbues this
rich collection with an aura of truth and vibrant reality.
One senses that Mr Hemon writes about what he has seen
and held in his mind's eye; lyrically transformed but
transcendentally whole.

A real feast of a read.

Recommended.

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7 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Love and Obstacles, 25 Jul 2009

By	B. Wright (Gloucester, UK) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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This book was the first by Aleksander Hemon that I have read, and, looking at the blurb, I was expecting something pretty good as he is a winner of the MacArthur 'genius grant'.

The book is a collection of short stories, told by an unnamed narrator who recounts anecdotes about his life. There is an obvious chronology due to this, as the 'I' is a teenager in the first story and gets progressively older throughout the book. It also means that there are recurring themes in the stories; love, migration, displacement in a different culture, and war being the main ones. At times you wonder whether the stories are autobiographical - the narrator's story seems so close to Hemon's own; he is a writer who relocated to Chicago due to the war in 1992, and there is even mention of a story that the narrator has written called 'Love and Obstacles'.

It was a quick read, but I was disappointed. I did not get on with Hemon's use of language in the early stories; as these are told by the young narrator, we are given a view of the world from the perspective of a teenager, one who has just started writing and is still at the stage of imitating other authors. The writing here is overly verbose and difficult to read at times; there is just too much imagery to take in. This is in part due to the fact that the narrator believes himself to be a poet, but it does not forgive the stilted use of language. As the narrator becomes older he finds his own voice and the excessive literary references and imitation disappears, showing a more mature view of the world that is occasionally humorous and insightful. The later stories are more interesting as they broaden the scope of the work, moving outside love and lust, and dealing with displacement caused by war and the splitting of families.

I found that most of the stories were insubstantial, not really moving towards a definite ending but just trailing off, leaving the reader to wonder if that is it. The longer stories are more complete, and I felt that 'The Bees, Part 1' was particularly poigniant as the narrator's father struggles to recount the history of the family in stilted English, gradually coming to terms with leaving his native country for America at the same time.

Hemon has lofty ambitions but he doesn't quite achieve in this collection. There is an overabundance of ideas, far too many for such a short book, and at times the language and literary references seem self-indulgent. I found it hard to really care for the narrator or the characters within the book as there is such a fleeting glimpse of their lives; I thought that the narrator in particular was difficult to like. Despite this, the book is solid, if not spectacular, and I will be looking out for Hemon's future work.

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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Uneven stories about a Bosnia author living in Chicago, yet again., 14 Aug 2009

By	Useless Article - See all my reviews

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Written at the same time as his novel, The Lazarus Project, they both share the same defects.
He's undoubtedly a gifted writer...But... He needs to write about something that doesn't involve a thinly disguised character who is a Bosnian author living in Chicago. He needs to stretch his abilities beyond recounting anecdotes from his life, piling them up to make a story of details. He obviously having a love affair with the English language, creating some beautiful prose. The next sentence will be convoluted and sounding like the author swallowed a thesaurus and vomited up on the page. It's an uneven collection of a youthful author still finding his feet; he will write some brilliant work, but this isn't it yet. It's seems like gifted juvenilia. It treads such similar ground to his previous work, I can imagine a bookseller remarking them as a trilogy. I loved his first book "The Question of Bruno" and feeling disappointed by The Lazarus Project. A large problem, more annoying in The Lazarus Project, is the 'metafiction' aspect. It's all so precious, pretentious and mostly puerile. Hemon seems to be indulging himself too much in writing and it comes across as being a show-off. I felt like I was being forced to acknowledge how clever his writing was, an air of smugness whilst he was still staying within his comfort zone.
One author he began to remind me off, was B.S. Johnson. They share familiar flaws of being too self-regarding, both limited by only being able to use anecdotes from their own life. For B.S. Johnson it became a limiting mantra that everything had to come from his life, that it had to be based on autobiography. Both writers can come across as selfish bores, writing for themselves and expecting everyone to acclaim them as geniuses. I worry that Hemon will paddle in the similar shallow pool of self-regard that eventually trapped B.S. Johnson. Jonhson was a genius, but crippled by flaws, he just couldn't escape from himself when writing; and this made him and his work dull and miserable. Saying all that, I've read most of Johnsons work and will probably read all of Hemons too. Despite all the frustration and disappointment it causes, it's worth the effort for moments of genius that can't be denied... And Hemon still has a long career ahead of him and he has the ability to write a masterpiece. Maybe: "The Lazarus Project" was awful.

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Most Recent Customer Reviews

3.0 out of 5 stars Good writing
This is a brilliantly written book and the descriptive language and energy in it was superb. However, I felt that the short stories were more like taster chapters of a novel,... Read more

Published 1 month ago by A. Taylor

4.0 out of 5 stars Like Marmite... you'll love it or hate it
Each of Hemmon's short stories - loosely connected by theme, atmosphere and the author's tendency to create characters that appear autobiographical, but are not - is a gem. Read more

Published 1 month ago by Stephen Newton

3.0 out of 5 stars Artbiography
Ah, the green eyed demon of the frustrated writer. Every novel that is published is a victory for one writer, and a defeat for another - with only so much space and time in the... Read more

Published 1 month ago by Mr. M. A. Reed

2.0 out of 5 stars Hard going and verbose
I did not enjoy this book very much. "Love and Obstacles" is a series of short stories all making up part of the life of an un-named narrator and all revolving around the general... Read more

Published 1 month ago by Dr. Rich Boden

4.0 out of 5 stars Stimulating collection of stories
This is a curious book. In it, Hemon presents a series of short stories narrated by a single character, an aspiring writer from Bosnia. Read more

Published 1 month ago by M. V. Clarke

4.0 out of 5 stars Fragments of the past

This collection of short stories varies more in style than in content, as all the narrators - raised in Yugoslavia and �migr�s to the US - appear to be one narrator, who... Read more

Published 2 months ago by Laura

4.0 out of 5 stars short stories full of love and obstacles!
Overall, all the stories are written in such a way that you can empathise with the character and situations he finds himself in. Read more

Published 2 months ago by Eleimon Gonis

4.0 out of 5 stars Love, loss and bees
"Love and Obstacles" charts the misadventures of an unnamed narrator, covering episodes from his adolescence through to early middle-life, encompassing locations ranging from the... Read more

Published 2 months ago by Mr. T. COLEMAN

5.0 out of 5 stars An enjoyable short stories book
A very enjoyable short stories book. Perfect for reading on holiday. This is for you if you are open to other cultures and enjoy reading narrative stories from someone of a... Read more

Published 2 months ago by Lova

3.0 out of 5 stars Love and Obstacle
These crafted, darkly witty and almost self-consciously literary short stories tackle loss, displacement, exile, and love, but read often more as clever exercises in style... Read more

Published 2 months ago by martinblank

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