 | Summaries and Customer Reviews are supplied by Amazon.com In the grand tradition of Neapolitan ice cream, ZZ Top, and Cerberus, the tri-headed guardian of Hades, this set combines individual, short fiction collections by three talented practitioners of the short-short form. Manguso’s Hard to Admit and Harder to Escape is a series of crystalline recollections of her childhood misadventures; Eggers’ How the Water Feels to the Fishes brings a deadpan absurdism to the intimacy and vision of his earlier work; and Unferth’s rollicking Minor Robberies unleashes a horde of off-kilter characters and their indelible misadventures. Each author’s work comes in its own hardcover, foil-stamped volume, and the three volumes are housed in an elegant slipcase. Average Customer Rating:  
3 stars-DE, 2-SM, 1-DOU: trio of talesters' short-shorts fall short of high expectations based on their bigger, better books
| Customer Rating:  | As a huge fan of short stories, and someone who thoroughly enjoyed both Manguso's (The Two Kinds of Decay) and Eggers' (A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius) memoirs, I had high expectations for these One Hundred and Forty Five Stories in a Small Box. The 6.5"x 5.0"x 0.5" volumes are lovely, but the ultra-short stories are mostly disappointing.
Of Deb Olin Unferth's (the thickest of the three, with the longest stories), I liked only two: Frank Lloyd Wright and Minute Lives of Great Composers, and abhorred one, the absolutely sick "Sickos." The style of many of them is much like this excerpt from page 94 of Twice, "Did both letters have to come from the bank? Or could one come from him? If one did come from him, would two come from him? Or if nothing came from him, would nothing come twice before something? How long is nothing? Is it this long? Is it this long?" And she uses the word "or" more than any author I've ever read. What's up with that? Although I disliked her stories the most, I put her novel Vacation, published in September, on my reading list, hoping that as with the other two writers, I'll find that she does "bigger" better. Couldn't be worse.
Sarah Manguso's middle-sized book contained the shortest stories, each one under a page in length. Most are mini-anecdote snippets of her life (Brownies, science class, piano lessons). Only one, Sickness, refers to the long debilitating illness that makes up most of her wonderful memoir, The Two Kinds of Decay. They are little different than childhood stories one might hear from a friend.
Dave Eggers' title story, How the Water Feels to the Fishes, is excellent. The surprising Alberto is also pretty good. But his collection, the smallest of the three, can probably best be described as a mixed bag. The first story, Once a Year, and the fourth, She Needs a New Journal, are only two sentences long. The second, Runaway, is so familiar that I suspect it came straight from his memoir. And although his are the most varied in length and content, they rarely rise above so-so.
In summary, skip this esthetically pleasing but unimpressively written set for their memoirs (in the case of Eggers and Manguso). Or, do as I should have, check them out (at least How the Water Feels to the Fishes and Hard to Admit and Harder to Escape, available separately) from your local library. Better: The Two Kinds of Decay by Sarah Manguso (my rating - five stars), A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers (my rating - four stars), or New Sudden Fiction: Short-Short Stories from America and Beyond edited by Robert Shapard and James Thomas (my rating - four stars). |
Wish There Were More
| Customer Rating: | I enjoy the increasingly popular and demanding form of the short-short and flash and wish there were more collections like these. Deb Olin Unferth's "Minor Robberies" is, far and away, the strongest book of the bunch, and it's this collection I'm focusing on and awarding 5 stars. The other two have their merits, but having read Manguso and Egger's other work, I don't think the flash is their forte.
Deb Olin Unferth's pieces are strange, cubist, experimental, funny, frightening. Some of them aren't stories at all, but assemblages of mercurial thought. Others evince the clear influence of Diane Williams and Lydia Davis, among others, but that's not a bad thing. The best of the bunch, in my opinion, are the more narrative-oriented stories, such as The Container, Soap, Managing, and---my favorite---Juan the Cell Phone Salesman.
I award the box five stars for Unferth's book alone. It'll be a collection I return to every now and then in the future. |
Unferth's Minor Robberies
| Customer Rating: | | Unferth's Minor Robberies is a rare treat: at times metafictional, at times formally experimental, at times just plain wacky, these short-short stories delight without becoming glib. Standout stories include "Sickos" which features a "very vaguely, very religious" sex worker, "Give Them the Bag" a funny and strangely heart-breaking tale of sisters traveling together, and "Single Percent" a mathematical analysis of romantic commitment. Bring this lovely book with you everywhere so you can catch a story whenever you have a few minutes. |
tiny wonders
| Customer Rating: | | These stories are small, sharp, lovely, and giving. Read Deb Olin Unferth's "To Be Honest". Then read it again. And again. Each time it expands, contracts, twists into a tiny ball, then grows giant. This is an amazing trio of books in the prettiest of mcsweeney's packages. the perfect present (who isn't psyched for dave eggers in their stocking) if there are still any left. i bought 3. |
A gem
| Customer Rating: | | The three books in this set complement each other well. Although I enjoyed all three, Deb Olin Unferth's Minor Robberies stands out in this group. It is delightfully humorous, adventurous, and with a touch of mystery at times. Unferth's stories cover various topics from relationships, to families, to South American travel, to the lives of great composers and architects. Each story has its own life and ends up in a different place, sometimes an unexpected one. Her stories are accessible, I felt compelled several times to call my friends and read to them out loud. Unferth has a talent for changing an entire story around in one line, and sometimes changing it back with the next. All of the books in this set are carefully written, stylistically interesting and worth reading. I highly recommend it! |
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