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4.11 AVERAGE
4.11 AVERAGE
dark
emotional
reflective
medium-paced
ik ben fan.
http://winterlief.blogspot.nl/2014/03/battleborn-korte-verhalen-relieken-en.html
http://winterlief.blogspot.nl/2014/03/battleborn-korte-verhalen-relieken-en.html
Trying to learn to appreciate short story collections - and this was a good one. Claire gives us ten different stories set in the American West from the Gold Rush to the present day. I read this in pieces - a story here - a story there. Kind of like intermission from other books.
dark
emotional
funny
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
"Sometimes a person wants a part of you that's no good. Sometimes love is a wound that opens and closes, opens and closes, all our lives" (claire vaye watkins, "the last thing we need")
it's a collection, so of course some of it was amazingly excellent, and some was just extra meat clinging to the bones. there's a refreshing use of language, really clean and beautiful. the sentences all slide past effortlessly, even as the content snares and twists. the opening story alone ("ghosts, cowboys") makes the collection worth it. also notable: "the diggings," a typical gold rush story, made haunting by its fallout, and compelling for its allegorical quality; "graceland," which was surprisingly funny off to the side.
it's a collection, so of course some of it was amazingly excellent, and some was just extra meat clinging to the bones. there's a refreshing use of language, really clean and beautiful. the sentences all slide past effortlessly, even as the content snares and twists. the opening story alone ("ghosts, cowboys") makes the collection worth it. also notable: "the diggings," a typical gold rush story, made haunting by its fallout, and compelling for its allegorical quality; "graceland," which was surprisingly funny off to the side.
Rough, tight, clear, regional, spanning decades, these stories about Nevada, the mix of glitz and staunch individualism, poverty, and class vary in tone and structure but definitely belong together in a collection. Inside, we meet prostitutes and single women, married couples questioning their choices, families watching practice Atom bombs and then living in the fallout, teenagers and even a grizzled rock collector. As a girl of the west myself, I see parts of my family history in these stories, and in the lives of the women characters. I'm glad I finished off what was kind of a terrible year with a good book.
dark
emotional
reflective
medium-paced
One of my favorite lines from this book is “Like all our memories, we like to take it out once in a while and lay it flat on the kitchen table, the way my wife does with her sewing patterns, where we line up the shape of our lives against that which we thought it would be by now.”
I received an advance reader copy of Battleborn with Indiespensable #32. The book jacket would have me believe that Claire Vaye Watkins is on par with Cormac McCarthy and Annie Proulx, to name a few. This is only Watkins' first collection of short stories, but I would tend to agree that this relatively new (she's published short stories before in the Paris Review among others) author has more than just the makings of something good.
Each of the stories in this collection deals with some aspect of people who are connected to Nevada. People in different times through Nevada's history, or dealing with histories they have brought with them; people in various stages of becoming and being parents; whores and pimps, runaways, prospectors, and immigrants all feature somewhere in connection to not only the state of Nevada but also an idea of the American West. This collection also avoids playing into cliches of what the American West must be like from other media, and instead draws on the time and place as a way of setting how characters connect.
Only one story in particular dragged for me. Otherwise this collection of stories fit together as a well written and chosen portrayal of life out West, both past and present. Once I started, the characters as well as the distinctive and interesting style kept me reading through to the end. The first few stories especially are intense and diverse, so much so that I read the first few straight through.
I am hesitant to gush as this is a first collection. However, the outright skill displayed in this collection makes me eager to read more by the same author.
Each of the stories in this collection deals with some aspect of people who are connected to Nevada. People in different times through Nevada's history, or dealing with histories they have brought with them; people in various stages of becoming and being parents; whores and pimps, runaways, prospectors, and immigrants all feature somewhere in connection to not only the state of Nevada but also an idea of the American West. This collection also avoids playing into cliches of what the American West must be like from other media, and instead draws on the time and place as a way of setting how characters connect.
Only one story in particular dragged for me. Otherwise this collection of stories fit together as a well written and chosen portrayal of life out West, both past and present. Once I started, the characters as well as the distinctive and interesting style kept me reading through to the end. The first few stories especially are intense and diverse, so much so that I read the first few straight through.
I am hesitant to gush as this is a first collection. However, the outright skill displayed in this collection makes me eager to read more by the same author.
This is a book that made me feel like I wanted to read it side by side with someone, story by story, so that we could turn to the other after each story and say, "Do you feel that? From the story?" Each story has a completely different emotional tenor; it is this, more than differences in setting or character or plot, that differentiates each story from the next.
Really beautiful stories set mostly in Nevada. "The Diggings" was my favorite.