Reviews

A Man Jumps Out of an Airplane by Barry Yourgrau

noonis's review

3.0

While these are all great stories, I think they would have appreciated more if I'd read them in college. Might have also stopped me from writing about 75% of what I wrote. I prefer his collection, The Sadness of Sex.

stewreads's review against another edition

3.0

I read this one in between others on my breaks at work and I enjoyed most of it. Flash fiction probably just isn't my thing, but Yourgrau's got a great voice, and if you can stop trying to excavate meaning from everything (i.e. if you can stop being me), it's easy to get swept up in his dreamlike imagination. My favorite thing about this book (which I really should be rating 4 stars, I think) is just how much it reminds me of Barthelme's Sixty Stories, and how that collection drew me into worlds so absurd that everything started to make a surreal sort of sense, a cloudy clarity.

I think I'll be reading Yourgrau again, and I think I'll enjoy him even more next time, now that I know what I'm in for.