Customer Reviews

All Around Atlantis

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Just when I was sure Deborah Eisenberg's short stories couldn't get any better than the genius found in her earlier collections, I read this perfect book of short stories. Her use of dialogue is more innovative than any I've seen in contemporary writers and the depths of her intelligence and sentiment are staggering. I would reccomend this book to anyone and everyone. Some of the stories demand rereading and all are classics of contemporary literature.

Eisenberg's prose is poignant and percise. She cuts through the circumstance and gets right to the heart of what it really feels like to be alive. The stories are vivid, easy to read, touching and above all real. In particular Mermaids, The Girl Who Left Her Sock on the Floor, and Rosie Gets a Soul hit a resonant chord within me. I finished the book the night I bought it, and had re-read half of it by morning. One of the most satisfying purchases I've made in years.

I carried this book everywhere I went, so compelling and fascinating were these stories which explain so much about human nature and behavioral inclinations. I found myself re-reading most of the sentences so as to not miss a thing and to better comprehend what I soon learned to be an immensity of thoughtful hypotheses melded into each sentence construction; thought which was evident yet not overwrought - as compared to the work of Anais Nin, in which each sentence is such a crafted, and exhaustingly re-crafted marvel, that as a group such craftings often lack flow, and one can get lost in the forest for the complexity of each tree. These tales are built on carefully crafted yet never overwrought thoughts and sentences, and the forest, as a result, is a wondrous and navigable thing indeed.

I took this book along on a weekend getaway, which itself proved to be a perplexing and complex play of varying, fluctuating, and often inexplicable human interactions - derived from myriad economic and philospohical ideals, and the roots of disparate personalities - and so these stories became for me, out of necessity, both refuge and reference, by way of their effortless explanantion and readily-understood implications regarding the minds of people and all that exists behind and drives each unique utterance.

I am looking forward to gathering every collection of thoughts and words by Deborah Eisenberg, and will surely benefit from the entertainment and lessons within each refreshingly original and sublimely eloquent phrase. I am in awe of authors who are able to explain so much by way of seemingly simple tales. I became apprehensive at the waning width of the latter portion of the physical collection as the end loomed closer and closer, and tried to slow my pace to better savor each phrase.

Eisenberg is one of my favorite writers, and this to my mind, is a collection of her best work to date.