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4.11 AVERAGE
4.11 AVERAGE
Watkins can certainly tell a compelling story, but all of these read less like a cohesive collection and more like a series of glass-damn-near-empty snippets connected sometimes only by their collective sense of hopelessness. Watkins seems to altogether forget the hope, and maybe that's an intentional omission, but in this optimist's opinion it's wholly detrimental to her collection as a whole.
I need hope in my stories. I need humor. Not because life isn't dark, our lots sometimes seemingly cast hapless and haphazardly. Not because creatures in the night can't be legitimately terrifying, can't remind us of how terrifying we can be to one another. Darkness, selfishness, emptiness, cruelty: it's all real. We've all seen and experienced and perpetrated it to various extents in our own lives. But real too is light, is laughter, is selflessness, contentment, hope.
I need hope and humor because they're as real as horror and hubris, just as pervasive, just as tangible.
[Three-point-five stars for the first story's shock value and for "The Diggings."]
I need hope in my stories. I need humor. Not because life isn't dark, our lots sometimes seemingly cast hapless and haphazardly. Not because creatures in the night can't be legitimately terrifying, can't remind us of how terrifying we can be to one another. Darkness, selfishness, emptiness, cruelty: it's all real. We've all seen and experienced and perpetrated it to various extents in our own lives. But real too is light, is laughter, is selflessness, contentment, hope.
I need hope and humor because they're as real as horror and hubris, just as pervasive, just as tangible.
[Three-point-five stars for the first story's shock value and for "The Diggings."]
When the stories are good, they're brilliant--I was particularly moved by "Rodine al Nido", "Virginia City", and "The Archivist"--but there were also stories such as "Ghosts, Cowboys" and "The Last Thing We Need", stories with little in the way of focused plot, where much of the action is so internal and meandering that I ultimately found them tedious and un-engaging. I recognize this reveals my own personal biases and tastes, and therefore might not be indicative of what other readers will experience.
Watkins is a talented and insightful writer, able to create a diverse cast of believable, rich characters against the backdrop of the desert southwest. Her stories practically sing when she marries the seedy, vulgarly fantastical world of Las Vegas to characters moving at breakneck speed towards something they should--but can't--prevent, and its in those moments that I found I couldn't put the collection down.
Watkins is a talented and insightful writer, able to create a diverse cast of believable, rich characters against the backdrop of the desert southwest. Her stories practically sing when she marries the seedy, vulgarly fantastical world of Las Vegas to characters moving at breakneck speed towards something they should--but can't--prevent, and its in those moments that I found I couldn't put the collection down.
I don't know how to honestly review a short story collection. I feel like I always want to give them one stars because short stories just will never move me the same a a full-length book will, but that's unfair. I did enjoy the stories here but this might be the last short story collection I read for a while (ever?). At least until Karen Russell comes out with another.
dark
emotional
slow-paced
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes