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voya_k's review against another edition
5.0
Equal parts hilarious and uh-oh. I get the feeling that Lindsay Hunter will write about anything. Her characters just out and say it. Like How I Came to Live at the P.O. if Eudora Welty knew a lot of sexually abused teenage girls. A fantastic source of dramatic monologues!
I wish I had it with me, so I could quote, but to paraphrase, one particularly batty lady says:
"I got my husband on the Internet. He was the only one I could find that was afraid of wind same as me."
Hahaaaaaaaaaaaaaahahahahahahahahhaaaaaaaaaa
I wish I had it with me, so I could quote, but to paraphrase, one particularly batty lady says:
"I got my husband on the Internet. He was the only one I could find that was afraid of wind same as me."
Hahaaaaaaaaaaaaaahahahahahahahahhaaaaaaaaaa
shinyandrea's review against another edition
2.0
This was so highly lauded I had to give it a try. Try I did but after three/four stories I just had to accept this wasn't for me.
milo_rose's review against another edition
4.0
(3.5)
A little hit-or-miss but worth it for the ones that *go there.* Ten stars to the title story.
A little hit-or-miss but worth it for the ones that *go there.* Ten stars to the title story.
caterina_x's review
3.0
3.5 stars
Some sentences in this book, some parts of the stories, cut me through like a knife.
Others had me wincing from too much rawness.
As with most collections, there were stories that stood out (I'm totally in awe of the 'RV people', for instance; I liked 'Dallas' and 'Leta's Mummy' and the one about Peggy Paula) and some that I wanted to skip and ended up skimming. ('Our Man', 'After') It was all raw and intense and real, whatever that means. I guess, thinking about it now, it means no sugar coating, life at its ugliest. Perhaps that's daring. But after a while, the similarity in voice and style made it like it was the same person narrating over and over; the stories blended in my head. Like another reviewer said, there wasn't a human face to latch on to. Just the ugliness.
It's a delicate balance: making a story collection that has the same theme or feel or at least a thread that runs through the stories and gives the book some sort of cohesion, but also ensuring each story stands out. I read a book a while back which was similar to this: that one had dark and apocalyptic and end-of-the-world stories and they were all the same. Some months down the line and I only remember one of the twenty-odd stories. Other books have great individual stories but they're all over the place thematically speaking. I can think of one, maybe two, collections that I've read in the last few years that achieve this balance: this wasn't one of them.
Some sentences in this book, some parts of the stories, cut me through like a knife.
Others had me wincing from too much rawness.
As with most collections, there were stories that stood out (I'm totally in awe of the 'RV people', for instance; I liked 'Dallas' and 'Leta's Mummy' and the one about Peggy Paula) and some that I wanted to skip and ended up skimming. ('Our Man', 'After') It was all raw and intense and real, whatever that means. I guess, thinking about it now, it means no sugar coating, life at its ugliest. Perhaps that's daring. But after a while, the similarity in voice and style made it like it was the same person narrating over and over; the stories blended in my head. Like another reviewer said, there wasn't a human face to latch on to. Just the ugliness.
It's a delicate balance: making a story collection that has the same theme or feel or at least a thread that runs through the stories and gives the book some sort of cohesion, but also ensuring each story stands out. I read a book a while back which was similar to this: that one had dark and apocalyptic and end-of-the-world stories and they were all the same. Some months down the line and I only remember one of the twenty-odd stories. Other books have great individual stories but they're all over the place thematically speaking. I can think of one, maybe two, collections that I've read in the last few years that achieve this balance: this wasn't one of them.
drewsof's review against another edition
4.0
This is a tough book to rate/describe – on the one hand, the technical ability on display is amazing. The way Hunter writes is immediate and potent and you can’t deny that. But I could imagine someone else – or even myself, at a different time or in a different place – reading these stories and being completely turned off by that ability instead of cautiously in awe of it. These stories are at times gross, sad, depressing, hilarious, frightening, confusing… but they’re all intensely refreshing. Take that as you will.
More at RB: http://wp.me/pGVzJ-LB
More at RB: http://wp.me/pGVzJ-LB
melanie_page's review
4.0
Even when I thought a character was in trouble or messed up, Hunter made the character appear surer than me, stronger than me. How did she do that?
Some of Hunter’s strength came out in her ability to change one word and scare the crap out of me. The “we” (instead of “I”) from “RV People” become menacing. There are no individuals, only a mass that crashes in waves over newcomers to the RV. When “we” picks up a woman with a baby, “We take her baby from her, we pass it forward, we rock it in our arms.” Our arms removes the individual and turns people something monstrous, like a demon (or tarantula?). Perhaps “we” will feed upon this baby…but in a twist, “we” feeds upon the mother instead. The whole story felt like realizing there is a hair in your mouth…and finding that it is your hair…and then trying to pull it out and realizing you’ve swallowed most of it…and as your hair comes out of your throat, you find food still attached to the hair.
Hunter’s voice was consistent despite changes in narrator, which made me curious, but the slow drawl of each voice and the use of bad grammar lulled me into a familiar place, one I thought filled with simple people. Hunter crafts characters who say things like, “They’s biscuits and jam and shit in the kitchen, help yeself.” But I never knew of what those simple folks were capable. I realized one young female character’s attitude reflects the direction in which Hunter’s stories go: “Just think something up and then do it. That’s all.” Just as the motto works for the young woman, it works with Hunter, too.
One of the best stories, notably so for it’s style, voice, and it’s up and up and up anxiety-factor is “Birthday Luncheon.” One long run-on sentence, the story begins with the narrator’s brother’s pregnant girlfriend grinding on a food table and raises in intensity when we realize the guest of honor, the father of the narrator, is racist–in fact, vile. But in this very short piece, Hunter made me laugh, as if I were witness to this horrible cluster-fuck of a party. Imagine this: “…they was a pair, your daddy in his wheelchair and your step-aunt in her scooter, your brother told you they just rammed wheels and tallied that up as sex, the jostling was enough…” Hunter chooses her words carefully; notice how using incorrect subject/verb makes the tone of the piece read like chronic black-bottomed bare feet. There’s just something deliciously nasty there.
Prepare to read Hunter’s collection with a bit of attitude before you get going. Prepare to walk over her words as if they are shards of glass. Prepare to get lost in the wilderness. Prepare to be unprepared.
Some of Hunter’s strength came out in her ability to change one word and scare the crap out of me. The “we” (instead of “I”) from “RV People” become menacing. There are no individuals, only a mass that crashes in waves over newcomers to the RV. When “we” picks up a woman with a baby, “We take her baby from her, we pass it forward, we rock it in our arms.” Our arms removes the individual and turns people something monstrous, like a demon (or tarantula?). Perhaps “we” will feed upon this baby…but in a twist, “we” feeds upon the mother instead. The whole story felt like realizing there is a hair in your mouth…and finding that it is your hair…and then trying to pull it out and realizing you’ve swallowed most of it…and as your hair comes out of your throat, you find food still attached to the hair.
Hunter’s voice was consistent despite changes in narrator, which made me curious, but the slow drawl of each voice and the use of bad grammar lulled me into a familiar place, one I thought filled with simple people. Hunter crafts characters who say things like, “They’s biscuits and jam and shit in the kitchen, help yeself.” But I never knew of what those simple folks were capable. I realized one young female character’s attitude reflects the direction in which Hunter’s stories go: “Just think something up and then do it. That’s all.” Just as the motto works for the young woman, it works with Hunter, too.
One of the best stories, notably so for it’s style, voice, and it’s up and up and up anxiety-factor is “Birthday Luncheon.” One long run-on sentence, the story begins with the narrator’s brother’s pregnant girlfriend grinding on a food table and raises in intensity when we realize the guest of honor, the father of the narrator, is racist–in fact, vile. But in this very short piece, Hunter made me laugh, as if I were witness to this horrible cluster-fuck of a party. Imagine this: “…they was a pair, your daddy in his wheelchair and your step-aunt in her scooter, your brother told you they just rammed wheels and tallied that up as sex, the jostling was enough…” Hunter chooses her words carefully; notice how using incorrect subject/verb makes the tone of the piece read like chronic black-bottomed bare feet. There’s just something deliciously nasty there.
Prepare to read Hunter’s collection with a bit of attitude before you get going. Prepare to walk over her words as if they are shards of glass. Prepare to get lost in the wilderness. Prepare to be unprepared.
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