I just couldn’t stay interested in these short stories. Part of the problem was that none of them was short enough.

I wasn't enjoying the stories at all until I got to the very end. The story 'All Around Atlantis' was griping. It might be the other stories were a bit surreal while this last story, sadly was all too historically real.

Didn't finish this collection or come anywhere close. Gave the book away as soon as possible. The stories were long-winded and self-involved in my opinion. Can't even remember much of what they were about, simply that I didn't want to read them anymore. Someone who prefers a different style might love this one, but I wanted things to happen and the stories to eventually end.

I saw this book here earlier when I was at work and gave three stars without remembering much about it besides the title story, but then I came home and flipped through, and now I'm not sure about the three stars, or about much of anything.... So I thought that instead of figuring out how to register for the social work licensing exam, I'd sit here and think aloud (so to speak) about Deborah Eisenberg. I've only read this and Under the 82nd Airborne, which is out of print (and IMO should not be,...

The title story in this collection captures the WWII emigre trying to adjust to a post-war world, in another country and culture. Reminded me of some conversations with just such an emigre in the early 1980s in New York City. "Someone to Talk To" punched me hard. In only a few pages, I was reliving the end of my marriage. I had to put the book down for a couple of days to recover. Stories set in Latin America capture some of the complexities of describing cross-cultural experience.

Like your elegantly perfumed mother running her fingers through your hair. Her fingernails at your scalp. Her murmuring on the telephone across the room. Her talking to you very clearly as an adult, across a table. Your mother smokes, or used to. Your mother is at peace with the fact that her sculptures are not high art. Your mother is more interesting than you are.

I love Under the 82nd Airborne, but after doing a partial but passionate reread of Eisenberg’s Collected Stories, it is clear to me that Eisenberg became one of our—like, the human race’s—major artists, in any medium, with All Around Atlantis. Each aspect of each story fires on all cylinders. And it is exquisite.

It seems that The Collected Stories of Deborah Eisenberg have just been published, so I just read the final volume of her stories on my shelf, the out-of-print All Around Atlantis. I think it is one of her strongest collections. I usually don’t like the collected books of short stories, because they’re so big and unwieldy-I prefer these slim volumes that can be read in several sittings. It’s right up there with Under The 82nd Airborne. Eisenberg’s stories are usually distinguished by great dialo...

‘Yes, I had nightmares—children do. After all, it takes some time to get used to being alive. And how else, except in the clarity of dreams, are you supposed to see the world all around you that’s hidden by the light of day?’⁣⁣⁣I love Eisenberg’s fiction for its aesthetic qualities above any emotional or intellectual qualities, though she succeeds gloriously on all fronts. She has admitted as much that great sentences are what she cares about most. She’s an unabashed aesthete, and I love her lit...

This is the third collection of Eisenberg's stories that I have read in the last 4 months. Her strengths as a writer continue to be maintained in this collection. I read these stories in an unusual manner for me. I read the first two stories several weeks ago and then dawdled over the third story for almost 10 days despite that haphazard pattern I thoroughly enjoyed Someone to Talk too. I found that I could drop into the text after an absence and Eisenberg's skill as a sentence maker and charact...

Eisenberg's stories stay with you. The atmosphere, the moods...I almost feel like I can see how the light looked when I remember these stories, what the characters' faces looked like.

Very disappointing. Not too dense, but almost like an educated stoner was writing it. Could it have been me, the reader? No. All the other books I've read over the past half year have not made me feel this way. I get the impression from the sentence structure and vocabulary that Eisenberg is highly educated, but the stories just aren't captivating. I got the same impression reading (or trying to read) Infinite Jest... too intellectual for its own good. Like looking inside a very old computer. Lo...

Jessica sent me on my trip with this one mostly because there was a story about a girl who freelances as a decorative painter and I do that too and so it was befitting for me to read... It definitely expresses the depressing sentiments involved with the business! Or is it the depressing sentiments involved with the people who commission such business. Either way, perceptive story.

I’ve written about Deb’s prose stylings in my review for Under the 82. I also put together a petition I want everyone to sign. So sign it. So Here I’ll just talk about subject stuff.And what subjects! It’s 82ish in that you have stories in foreign countries, and you have ones that don’t. Praps Deb felt compelled to take on that challenge. She doesn’t have to, but she does. The World is happening whether felt or not, so she places some characters nearer its Event. This preoccupation with the nece...

There's no questioning the intelligence, surprising vision, and reach of these tales, nor Eisenberg's ability to reveal at once the limited and unfathomable consciousness of young girls. With each one I read, I began by thinking, "Ah, here's a situation. How will this character get out of this fix?" Perhaps my question wasn't the right one, but given that many of the setups are a yarn spinner's dream, I was often disappointed when barely an arc was realized. I wanted to be moved--not just airlif...

Struck a cataract of longing in me...best collection of the four of hers I’ve read so far.

Eisenberg is a brilliant writer. Her short stories are peppered with lines that literally stop you, wherever you are on the page, and force you to go over them again and again to mine their rich imagery and layered meaning. Some of the stories lack momentum. But the imagery is intense, and there is rich food for thought in each and every story: what is memory? justice? love?

This is a book of short stories. Not just any ordinary set of short stories, but stories of people caught out by life in different countries and cultures. What makes these stories interesting is that they all capture the thoughts of the central character who doesn't feel as if he or she belongs in that society.Everyone has thoughts that we don't voice, fears we don't share, jubilation we can't show at times, and these stories expose all these hidden inner thoughts and show them off in their bril...

Reminded me of Salinger’s short stories. I loved those when I read them many (15?) years ago.

Mystery clings to a story that haunts us long after it is finished. The title story in Deborah Eisenberg’s short story collection “All Around Atlantis,” demonstrates this enigma; her characters embody it. She blends modern and ancient styles of storytelling—stream of consciousness, mystery, and tragedy—to create richly layered characters and penetrate their painful secrets without destroying their mystery.Deborah Eisenberg begins the story after Anna notices her mother Lili’s former lover Peter,...