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toniclark's review against another edition
5.0
She practices what she preaches. Great short-short collection.
finfortess's review against another edition
4.0
Pamela Painters collection of “very short stories,” Wouldn’t You Like To Know is a brilliant book containing short stories of everyday “western” life, with an intense focus on the reality of life, portrayed through imagery and detail in language.
One of the main highlights about this collection of short stories is that it doesn’t drift into the fantastic. Every single story was perfectly believable. In every new story I felt that I had slipped into the narrator and was living this life that was painted in front of me, instantly. I believed every narrator, I believed every situation, and didn’t argue with a single one of them. Each one was a slice of a different life. The slices were short, to the point, and interesting. Pamela Painter had me at the very first story. I read it and thought, “What a beautiful way of talking about love, without talking about love.” I had different reactions to every story, which is good because some of the stories were happy and some were sad and some funny. However, the tone of each didn’t matter when it came to ending every piece with homerun sentence. The two that hit me the hardest was “I am alive- I am clean,” from Clean, and “If this were a ghost story I could count on knowing it would end,” from This Is Not a Ghost Story. It is not a coincidence that these two lines come from darker stories, which I tend to connect with much more than happier stories.
The stories are all written with an emphasis on imagery and diction. Many of the stories read like prose poetry, in that they are very short, with language that pays attention to tone and musicality, and they tell the reader just enough for them to “get” the story, without needing to spell out every single thing. On that note, there are stories that feel like a camera is following a person and showing us exactly what they see, and when necessary have the smallest amount of voice over so you can feel that you are inside of the person’s head. It seems as though some stories are told in first while others are told in third, but I heard a very definite voice in every single one, as if the narrator was in the story, even if the story focused on someone else. The first story that comes to mind that fits this description was Wyeth Drama: The Missing Scenes. We had a narrator that was so close to the action without being a part of the story, that it felt like a Third omniscient voice, but that this third omniscient had opinions and judgments for the characters. This served to make me feel that this third person narrator was present at every single event and simply telling me their take on each section of it. This is where the idea of a camera with a voice over comes in, but the voice over is omniscient god-like character that knows everything, and thinks it’s funny.
I think the most interesting part about the stories is that she never slips into the same voice twice. The voice is female often, but it is never the same as any other voice, and the stories differ just as much as the voices do. There are few things that are repeated, which make you wonder if they fall under the author’s own favorites or if each voice is a rounded character that she had thought through every like and dislike and a few of them just happen to like the same sort of wine.
I loved this book. It did not fall into the trappings of slice of life stories sometimes do. It remained interesting throughout, nothing was mundane, and yet it was all possible and plausible in everyday reality.
One of the main highlights about this collection of short stories is that it doesn’t drift into the fantastic. Every single story was perfectly believable. In every new story I felt that I had slipped into the narrator and was living this life that was painted in front of me, instantly. I believed every narrator, I believed every situation, and didn’t argue with a single one of them. Each one was a slice of a different life. The slices were short, to the point, and interesting. Pamela Painter had me at the very first story. I read it and thought, “What a beautiful way of talking about love, without talking about love.” I had different reactions to every story, which is good because some of the stories were happy and some were sad and some funny. However, the tone of each didn’t matter when it came to ending every piece with homerun sentence. The two that hit me the hardest was “I am alive- I am clean,” from Clean, and “If this were a ghost story I could count on knowing it would end,” from This Is Not a Ghost Story. It is not a coincidence that these two lines come from darker stories, which I tend to connect with much more than happier stories.
The stories are all written with an emphasis on imagery and diction. Many of the stories read like prose poetry, in that they are very short, with language that pays attention to tone and musicality, and they tell the reader just enough for them to “get” the story, without needing to spell out every single thing. On that note, there are stories that feel like a camera is following a person and showing us exactly what they see, and when necessary have the smallest amount of voice over so you can feel that you are inside of the person’s head. It seems as though some stories are told in first while others are told in third, but I heard a very definite voice in every single one, as if the narrator was in the story, even if the story focused on someone else. The first story that comes to mind that fits this description was Wyeth Drama: The Missing Scenes. We had a narrator that was so close to the action without being a part of the story, that it felt like a Third omniscient voice, but that this third omniscient had opinions and judgments for the characters. This served to make me feel that this third person narrator was present at every single event and simply telling me their take on each section of it. This is where the idea of a camera with a voice over comes in, but the voice over is omniscient god-like character that knows everything, and thinks it’s funny.
I think the most interesting part about the stories is that she never slips into the same voice twice. The voice is female often, but it is never the same as any other voice, and the stories differ just as much as the voices do. There are few things that are repeated, which make you wonder if they fall under the author’s own favorites or if each voice is a rounded character that she had thought through every like and dislike and a few of them just happen to like the same sort of wine.
I loved this book. It did not fall into the trappings of slice of life stories sometimes do. It remained interesting throughout, nothing was mundane, and yet it was all possible and plausible in everyday reality.
rmerrill0927's review against another edition
4.0
Great short short stories. I love Lydia Davis and this was in the same vain. Read on the bus on the way home for Christmas
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