NOTE: This review is for a single story in this collection."I haven't lied to you this far, and I'm not going to start now."I got this to read "Keith"; I saw the movie based on this short story recently. To say I loved the movie is a gross understatement, so I was naturally curious about the story. It's more subtle than the film, more restrained, but it still hit me with a ton of bricks. I read it about four times: it's charming and bittersweet and romantic. It's the story of the relationship between high school seniors Barbara Anderson, "president of half the school offices and queen of the rest," and her lab partner, Keith Zetterstrom, "the window, wallpaper, woodwork. He'd been there for years and they'd never seen him." The friendship is extremely unlikely--the entire alphabet comes between them--and yet utterly destined. There is a lot of telling in this story, which creates an emotional distance; simultaneously, there are subtle and quirky details--mainly having to do with physical objects (a trophy, a key, a valise, a pair of bowling balls)--that take on huge emotional weight. I'm frankly stunned with what Carlson was able to do in twenty pages. You'd think, given my reaction to "Keith," that I'd be curious about the other stories in the collection. Try as I might, though, I couldn't read any of the others without drifting back to "Keith." It's like when I become single-repeat-obsessed with a song on an album: often it takes me years to listen to the other songs. But the book is due back to the library tomorrow, so I think I'll read "Keith" one last time and send it on its way.
I read this as part of the #24hourbookclub in one day. I didn't have much in terms of expectations, except the trust in the team that chose it for the day. I thoroughly enjoyed each piece in turn, and loved it even more as details threaded through in subtle ways. The stories certainly stand on their own, but I think they do a lot as a set, which was a delightful surprise. I also started to enjoy the patterns of the form, the pivot point where something changes for the characters.The voices are predominantly male, and the only piece written from a female perspective seems more unhinged and vindictive than the rest. That being said, these male voices, dabbling often between adolescence and adulthood, are compelling and vulnerable.It is a good work of art that inspires you to play with its form and medium, and that's the impression I was left with after reading Carlson today. At the very least it will motivate me to pay more attention to the fiction in the New Yorkers that have been piling up on my coffee table. This was a pleasure, and I'm itching to read more.
What do You think about The Hotel Eden (1998)?
"Cooking, they say, uses a different part of your brain and I know which part, the good part that's not wired all screwy with your twelve sorry versions of your personal history and the four jillion second guesses, backward glances, forehead-slapping embarrassments. The cooking part is clean as a cutting board and fitted accurately with close measurements and easy-to-follow instructions, which, you always know, are going to result in something edible and nourishing, over which you could make real conversation with someone, maybe someone you've known since college." –page 181
—Lizzie
you give your heart to one baby and you get hurt. word? yisurr. tis why i like short stories. or is it because I'm an ADD crack baby? anyways, this book is full of some great stories and some not so great ones. the one about the oil I got nothing from. however, the one's about the ball player who can't stop killing people with his foul balls, the kid who delivers O2 tanks to old farts, and the one that lends it's name to the title are all amazing tales that delve into the minds of twisted psychos, confused saints and in betweens.
—Conor
Enjoyable at the start, but a lot of these stories depend on Carlson having a trick up his sleeve -something obscurely unsettling about a main character, with no big reveal to sate curiosity in the end. That's fine for the first few stories, as it isn't necessarily effective or even intriguing to have difficult characters who are routinely lead to explanation by narrative, but the practice feels exhausted here. Like the characters are shady for the sake of being shady, and after a few stories even their quirks and absurdities start to feel obvious. You've met these folks before, in more interesting places.
—Brandon Floyd
