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maree_k's review against another edition
5.0
Tania Hershman is another writer I stumbled onto thanks to twitter. I'd read a few of her flash fiction pieces and short stories published on various websites, and loved her quirky originality, so I was looking forward to reading a full collection of her work.
The thing I love most about Hershman's writing is its fearlessness. She manages to convey emotions through the most unlikely combination of words, in the most unlikely settings. Some of her sentences are absolute perfection.
Many of the stories in this collection would fall under flash fiction, as they are mostly very short. Some of them are more like fragments. But that doesn't mean that they aren't packed with layers of nuanced meaning. A few of her stories almost made me cry (one did bring tears to my eyes but I was on a bus so I had to hold it together). Standout stories for me were Her Dirt; Trams and Pies; Screens; Colours Shift and Fade; and My Mother was an Upright Piano. Hershman does madness extremely well, with a lightness of touch that shows the humanity of the mad person and views the bewildering behaviour of the world to those trapped inside their own heads with their own non-conformist world view. Some of her pieces veer towards horror, not in the blood and guts sense but in the strong sense of unease and discomfort they suggest.
Not every story worked for me but that is also something I can admire about this writer: she is not afraid to experiment, to bring a fresh approach to a thought, a feeling, a moment in time. She shows the world not how it is on the surface but the overlooked and unseen.
If you love short stories, and writing that makes you think and feel, and exposes parts of you that you'd rather keep hidden, you'll love this collection. Just avoid reading it on public transport if you can.
The thing I love most about Hershman's writing is its fearlessness. She manages to convey emotions through the most unlikely combination of words, in the most unlikely settings. Some of her sentences are absolute perfection.
Many of the stories in this collection would fall under flash fiction, as they are mostly very short. Some of them are more like fragments. But that doesn't mean that they aren't packed with layers of nuanced meaning. A few of her stories almost made me cry (one did bring tears to my eyes but I was on a bus so I had to hold it together). Standout stories for me were Her Dirt; Trams and Pies; Screens; Colours Shift and Fade; and My Mother was an Upright Piano. Hershman does madness extremely well, with a lightness of touch that shows the humanity of the mad person and views the bewildering behaviour of the world to those trapped inside their own heads with their own non-conformist world view. Some of her pieces veer towards horror, not in the blood and guts sense but in the strong sense of unease and discomfort they suggest.
Not every story worked for me but that is also something I can admire about this writer: she is not afraid to experiment, to bring a fresh approach to a thought, a feeling, a moment in time. She shows the world not how it is on the surface but the overlooked and unseen.
If you love short stories, and writing that makes you think and feel, and exposes parts of you that you'd rather keep hidden, you'll love this collection. Just avoid reading it on public transport if you can.
bookdancing's review
5.0
http://www.thebookbag.co.uk/reviews/index.php?title=My_Mother_Was_An_Upright_Piano:_Fictions_by_Tania_Hershman
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