As with all short story collections, this is rather a mixed bag - some great selections ('Taj Mahal' and 'Recalculating' were the standouts) and a few duds (most notably, the longest story, 'Merge'). This was my first brush with Eisenberg, but on the strength of this, I'd read more.

Last week I watched a movie at home that I hadn’t seen in years and as it was playing, my memory recalled the first and only time I had seen it at Film Forum, the emblematic movie theater when it was still on Watts Street (that’s how long ago it was…) in SOHO on a cold NYC winter night. My dinner with Andre, directed by Louis Malle is a cult film which I thought I had entirely forgotten, but to my surprise, it was just waiting to be revived in the labyrinthic aisles of my mind. The plot is simpl...

Was prepared to love, love, love it, but most of the ingenious writing was used up in the first story.

I thought the title was the best thing about this.

A quality I find most arresting in women is a certain kind of intellect. I am not sure I can adequately describe it. It is sort of edgy, drollery packaged in a faux-innocence, wit that slices profoundly yet does not maim, both languid and alluring. She reeks of smart but remains a lady, fully in control of her femininity, confident in herself. And she realizes how fractured and fragile she is and you are and will convey that to you with or without words, or conditions, on either partner. You und...

Some really moving stories in this collection - a wee bit of of Mary Robison flavour but maximalised? I liked the passage of time.

Engrossing stories. Longer than I’m used to for short stories, but they make great use of their length. So much going on, but all tied together meticulously and naturally. Moving and a pleasure to read.

I love how she talks about aging and how she writes time

I don't know what to make of this book to review it. But I absolutely loved it. It's definitely an excellently written book and Eisenberg is the kind of author who has a strongly independent and characteristic voice. But sometimes (a lot, actually) it crosses over to the difficult territory.The stories, especially if you're just beginning to read them, can feel arduous and make little sense. But once you settle in, you see the rhyme and rhythm of the book and the shorts start to grow on you. The...

Lots to love in these stories. Gorgeous writing: a tornado is a "dancer filled with God." Oh!! And weighty themes, like the destructiveness of late capitalism, are subtly woven into the narrative. But I am an old-fashioned lover of plot, and the plots in these stories were mostly thin. Also, in most of the stories, you're not sure where you are in time and place, and I find that disconcerting. I felt especially at sea reading "The Third Tower," in which a teenage girl is sent to "the city" (whic...

"It's not so hard to figure out why I'm not sleeping. What I can't figure out is why everybody else is sleeping.""Still, there was always the feeling that one would get around to being young again. And that when one was young again, life would resume the course from which it had so shockingly deviated."

Deborah Eisenberg is definitely a talented writer whose stories are layered nuanced, written with and wonderful sensitivity and eloquence. This collection is comprised of six long stories that are most effective when dealing with characters in the throes of some familial crisis. I liked 3.5 out of the 6 stories (meaning one story was good until about half way through). Overall though, this collection is one that I'm quite sure will not have an enduring place in my mind.

I'm not a great fan of audiobooks: I find it more difficult to concentrate than when reading a regular paper book or ebook and I often don't like the voices so get irritated easily.Your Duck Is My Duck was like that for me. On top of that, I found the stories not very interesting. I'm just not interested in clever intellectuals talking about nothing. Ah well, maybe I just missed bits because I was falling asleep...

Eisenberg is clearly a talented writer, but I'd put her in the category of a writer's writer (comparable to a poet's poet). A writer's writer is someone other writers admire for their style. She doesn't engage her readers with wonderful characters or a compelling plot. Her turns of phrase are original but they don't always work (I don't have the book in front of me, as it was a library book that I've returned, so I can't give examples). For my taste, she's too original: somewhat pretentious and

The past week I have been in thrall to Deborah Eisenberg’s new book of just six stories. I could have finished the book more quickly, but each of the stories in Your Duck is My Duck was so complex, so suggestive of multiple ideas, that I never read more than one story each evening. Then I reread a couple. In fact, I began with the audio version, read by the author and other distinguished voices, but I quickly checked out a library copy so that I could both read and listen. In “Taj Mahal,” for ex...

Deborah Eisenberg is a master of her craft. I was amazed by how layered and intricate each story was, characters so complex and developed in such a short span of time.These stories achieve depth and meaning which many authors spend a whole novel to achieve, Cross Off and Move On & The Third Tower were two stand outs for me in this collection, both ones I'll be coming back to. A clear choice for the NYT Notable Books of 2018.

I'm usually not one for short stories. How many writers can put a mini-story - with characters and plots - into the 50 or so pages most short stories run? But Deborah Eisenberg has written six mini-stories that are incredibly readable in her new book, "Your Duck is My Duck". I didn't like all six of the stories; I thought "The Third Tower" was a bit too science-fictiony for my taste. But the others, and most particularly "Recalculating", were tiny gems which were like snapshots into the characte...

My friend read a collection of this author's short stories, and it was her reaction that got me looking for one. The price was right for this one: 99¢ on Kindle. There's probably an automatic way to find the page count; my estimate is 28 pages.I am going to say something on the meaning of the title. If you think that would be a spoiler for you, stop here, but there isn't much more I can say about the story per se."Gentleman," he said, with a tiny bow, "I have a great deal to gain from this trans...

I love short stories, but each one of these left me wishing I hadn’t wasted those precious hours of my life on this weird, disjointed trash. I have never given a book one star before or written a bad review before, but I am making an exception for this one. It was special-level terrible.

"Comic, elegant, and pitch-perfect." -- Vanity Fair"There aren't many contemporary novels as shudderingly intimate and mordantly funny as Eisenberg's best stories." -- The New York Times Book Review"Eisenberg's stories possess all the steely beauty of a knife wrapped in velvet." -- Boston GlobeThese are some examples of the lavish praise that dots the book jacket of Eisenberg's most recent short story collection. As you may have surmised from my charitable 2-star review, I do not agree with the