Tremendous short story collection. This is the second time I’ve read it and it’s still spectacular. The family dynamics in “Some Other, Better Otto,” and to a slightly lesser degree “Revenge of the Dinosaurs” (lesser only because “Otto” is so amazing) are stunningly real and Eisenberg can create a dynamic character with a few lines (pay attention to Wesley in “Otto” and Peggy in “Dinosaurs”…heady stuff!). This collection is from the early 2000s and the impact of 9/11 and the after effects weigh

I just finished this book a few days ago and, looking through the table of contents now, I'm already having trouble recalling most of the stories. Partly this is because most of the titles don't connect to their stories in any recognizable way, so when I see "Window," it doesn't trigger "oh, yeah, the one where that creepy guy takes the girl to his isolated cabin to babysit his kid." Partly it's also because the stories themselves often didn't stick with me. The two elements most contributing to...

The best of these stories — the title story and "Some Other, Better Otto" — are perfectly misshapen masterpieces chronicling The Way We Live Now. These are stories not only about the biggest questions of ethics and identity, but also about the processes by which we go about asking and answering such questions for ourselves.A few of the stories lack the clarity and audacity of the collection's best, and occasionally Eisenberg's structural experimentation becomes frustrating or precious. Still wor...

Blech!I tried to muddle through this collection, but it was difficult. I had no idea what the author was talking about half the time. I couldn't figure out if she just had ADHD or I had an attention deficit disorder of my own. Take, for example, the following passage from the title story"And actually, Russell (who seems to be not only Amity’s friend and possible suitor but also her agent) has obtained for Amity a whopping big advance from some outfit that Madison refers to as Cheeseball Editions...

Where has Deborah Eisenberg been all my life? Or maybe I should ask, how did I miss her?I picked this volume of short stories on a lark, as I was leaving the library, and what with the lurid cover, and especially after I had read a few of the negative reviews, did not anticipate their brilliance. In fact, I kept thinking that it was a fluke that I loved one, two three. well all of the stories except for the last one.Everything that happens is out there waiting for you p133to be continued

My frustration with these stories comes from feeling, as a reader, that I simply was not clever enough to understand the subtext in at least half of them. I wanted so much to know what was going on but I just wasn't getting enough information. Several were clearly influenced by the events of 9/11. I saw this on a list of some of the best books of the decade (2000-2009) but I'm not sure I'd recommend these stories.

The final word in Deborah Eisenberg's marvellous collection of stories is "wartime," and, like every syllable she writes, it's precisely placed and significant.These are tales for an uncertain time. Eisenberg's characters live lives that teeter on a ledge, with currents of violence, physical or emotional, about to knock them off at any moment.The fallout of 9/11 hovers over the book, but only appears literally in the title story, a challenging elliptical tale partially set in a luxurious apartme...

When people say that they don't read short stories because they want more character development, these are the stories to point them towards. Every character is fully human, with human hopes and baggage frailties. But if they say also that they don't read short stories because not enough happens, well, this book won't change their minds. Most of the plots in this book read like an anecdote about a friend that you might relate to another friend. "She went to New York to be with her family after h...

I've been reading this on and off for the past couple of years. From what I've read about Deborah Eisenberg, she's a self-taught writer and sort of emerged slowly and quietly to the literary scene. That's how these stories feel, too. There's nothing mechanical about them, nothing you'd expect from a writer that followed all the rules, made the necessary connections, and published with fanfare. The stories in this collection are unlike anything I've read, each an original masterpiece in emotional...

Okay, I've now finished the book and I have to say that while it did get a little better, it wasn't by much. The first story is AWFUL. She lectures you on things you already know, repeats the same crap over and over, and while the disjointed sections didn't really bother me, they didn't really add up to anything for me. It just seems like the story was pretty pointless. Unless the point was that after 9/11 we're just totally adrift. Maybe in the year or so afterwards it felt like that, but I don...

picked up from library Saturday, read title story last night - reaction to witnessing 9/11, pretty good... and they get better, but maybe it's just me getting accustomed to her style.for once I agree with the quote on the cover: 'concentrated bursts of perfection'. more later.. (hopefully)Clare, my wife, read this after me and she said she enjoyed the beginnings of all the stories and some (Like it or Not) all the way through, but found the rest tailed off into 'wankery'. That is people talking

“The Flaw in the Design” is, I think, one of her best stories; “Window” is another standout.

These stories deal with today, but more specifically, the "today" of four years ago. The title story is a gem, focussing on 20somethings whose nova like promise has begun to collapse even before the events of 9/11, for which they have an unfortunate front row seat. Shifting focus Eisenberg presents the preceding generation along with its shattered American dream of immigrants for their children and the transformation of New York into an "open wound." Eisenberg is able to compress entire historie...

Most of these stories have an ensemble cast of oddly named people, which hardly ever works. Harold Brodkey's "Bookkeeping" is the best example I know of how to pull it off: lots of short speeches with interruptions, breakaway-couple conversations, frequent comparisons of one character to another. Eisenberg drops half a dozen names in a paragraph, then has them chitchat, never describes them or compares them to one another. The exceptions are "Some Other, Better Otto" and "Like It or Not," both w...

This place is nothing now but a small-minded, mean-spirited, provincial little town - says one character to another, apropos of NYC and the US. Which is sadly the case 15 years from when the book was published, and 20 years from when the book was set. This should have been a good book to read around 9/11's 20 year anniversary, the year the war in Afghanistan has finally ended (crossed fingers) but it wasn't. It was just a confused, confusing collection of short stories that pitted irrelevant hum...

I may just have to give up on reading short stories. Every so often, I am seduced anew by the breathless, hagiographic blurbs on the cover of the latest hip author's contribution to the genre, to the point where I actually allow myself to believe that the book in question really will be "exhaustingly fascinating", "spirited and masterly", the next {Jim Shepard, Alice Munro, Chekhov, Lorrie Moore, John Cheever.....}. Hope springs eternal.Yet somehow, things never quite turn out as promised. Usual...

"The dining room was an aerie, a bower, hung with a playful lattice of garlands. Its white tile floors were adorned with painted baskets of fruit, and there were real ones scattered here and there on stands. But even as the waiters glided by with trays of glossy roasted vegetables and platters of fish, even while Harry took it upon himself to order for her, knowledgeably and solicitously, Kate felt tainted. Despite the room's conceit that eating was a pastime for elves and fairies, Mrs. Reitz's

The structure of the stories is quite unusual to me, Deborah Eisenberg isn't much concerned with the traditional structure. Her stories are very intimate and sudden, as life itself. She ponders problems, inner crises and unspoken feelings of small people. The stories are in some ways distinctly american, but when one continues reading the gentle tapestry of the sorrows, breakdowns and losses transcends nationality. These stories are very vividly and gently human. They are about all of us, even t...

"By stripping away quotation marks and the informational fat that might provide obvious explanations, by thrusting readers into the middle of a conversation with characters we have yet to meet properly or playing hot potato with point of view, Eisenberg tests just how much can be left out before a story drowns in enigma." So says Ben Marcus in his effusive New York Times' review, and I don't know if this statement better captures exactly what I found dreary about this book, or the critical aesth...

I was disappointed by this book. I remember loving The Collected Stories of Deborah Eisenberg...So Far, and these stories didn't grab me the same way. They seemed to be *trying* to live up to a disaffected postmodern approach. Maybe I'm just not with it right now, but at some points I couldn't even figure out the abrupt time shifts. There were a few well-turned phrases, but not enough to make the book. Oh well.