Customer Reviews

Almost No Memory: Stories

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Davis has an acute sense-memory, it seems, and her erudite, yet brilliantly emotive, prose stays with you for days and days. You keep going back to it, reading a story here, reading one there, until you realize, without regret, that you've read the whole thing a hundred blessed times.

All of the stories in this book have an awe inspiring precision and simplicity that hides some of the real work that I'm sure went into these pieces. Check out End of The Story if you want to see her talents put into the novel form...a sadly under appreciated book if ever there was one...I think Lydia Davis is one of the best contemporary writers and translators in the U.S. I can't wait to read her translation of Proust which is due out in the next year or so...

I've never written a review before but I had to after reading the only customer review listed for Almost No Memory. All I can say is that I'm glad I'm not in her book group.

These stories are fantastic -- each one is a grab at life; each one sings a truth. Just read a few sentences (or a few stories; many are quite short) in the bookstore and see for yourself. If the writing doesn't grab you right away, then you'd probably line up with the disappointed book groupers. If it does . . . enjoy!

This is an interesting collection of short-short stories. Many are little more than vignettes and sketches, but they all seek to make the reader think about something. A truly unusual writer. Recommended.

This will sound snobbish, but there's no avoiding it: Lydia Davis' work is not for everybody. Some people won't understand her humor. But for those who can, this is the stuff. "Lord Royston's Tour, " to name one, is the funniest and best story in the English language. I made a fool of myself giggling at it in a laundromat. . .

While Lydia Davis can crystallize so much in a short short, her metafictional style begins to cloy. It may be the first person point of view, or the use of present tense, or the constant references to what the character is writing at that moment, but so many of these stories sound like they flow from the author's journal, rather than from a planned fictional arc. Frequently they are mere moments, rather than stories in which something happens, and leave this reader--who picked up the book looking for something more daring--longing for the traditional. Overall, this was disappointing.

Lydia Davis's second short stories collection displays a fine tuning of her talents for minimalism. In the 51 stories - some short, and some shorter - "Almost no memory", she digs deep into the human condition and the beauty of everyday life. Each word counts and makes a point.

"Lord Royston's Tour", for instance, is a beautifully traveling account through Eastern Europe. This is story is placed right after "To Reiterate", a single-page comment - rather than a story - about traveling accounts. Story after story resonates in the reader's mind, because together they bring a mural of human life. Some of them are interconnected by characters and/or places.

In "Almost no memory" Davis uses a fist person voice that makes the stories sound like confessions, as if she was opening her heart to the reader. In her first book, "Break it down", she also uses this approach that is very effective in her hands building a straight connection between writer and reader.

After having stumbled upon Lydia Davis three years ago, I read every one of her books, and fell quite in love with them. I proceed, as though I am reading a list. Every detail is a full bite. There are no flowers; it is not sentimental. Her prose is simple and clear. When I am finished, there is such incredible meaning that I am surprised by what I have found, and how easy it was to get there. That is a true pleasure.

This short story collection is my favorite of them all. It includes "The Mice" and "The Professor," two of her absolute best. Lydia Davis is a master of the everyday. She places her finger on the spot where our actions speak of our emotions, and reading her creates such a resonation, gives such weight to the simplest act, because when I read it, I know it. I recognize the act, and the paranoia, or the hurt, or the confused love that is behind it. I know the subtle emotions that are drawn on the line of the moment. She writes as though she knows the excuses we make, the way we cover our weaknesses.

Some people find her short forms troubling. But I find them very comforting. That she can bring an idea to completion in a few sentences is incredible to me. There is a weight in each of them, and they feel to be very carefully considered and broad, rather than accidental and finite.

These are brave and unusual stories. I find it easier to approach her with suspicion, to question whether in fact, she is writing about a mouse, or a house, or a fish in a tank. She is brilliant and, all at once, like everyone and no one I know.

This collection of 51 short stories, little fictions, and prose poems by Lydia Davis intrigues and rewards. The pieces come in every length. There's the 46-word "Odd Behavior," and at the center of the book, Davis gives us a forty page story, "Lord Royston's Tour," an extraordinary period travelog, written perfectly in the syntax and idioms of early nineteenth century Britain: "...a good deal tossed and beaten about off the Skaw, before sailing up the river." We learn in after-credits that the tale was adapted from a memoir Davis found, written in 1838.
She employs many styles, tones, and voices. The pieces come variously comic, peculiar, tragic, surreal, mysterious, whimsical, quirky, lyrical, cerebral, and earthy. Some are faintly Kafakaesque, Borgesian, Beckett-echoing, and most have plenty of Davis's originality. Some are very ambitious, others narrow in intent. Each defines its own terms as a fiction. If the reader finds one piece less than compelling, he eagerly continues, if only to see what she will come up with next. And is soon again enthralled. There are meta-fictions, such as "The Center of the Story," and a number of the pieces seem to be written for an audience of writers and sophisticated readers. Other pieces aim more broadly.
In "This Condition" the narrator conveys a state of generalized erotic feeling. It's lovely, sexy writing, a prose poem, with no single object of desire-- sexuality finding its echo in the universe of animals, minerals, vegetables; ideas, maps, texts. A sort of erotica for the lover of life.
In "The Professor," Davis's narrator, teaching English out West, reveals a fantasy of marrying a cowboy.
"...I started listening to country Western music on the car radio, though I knew it wasn't written for me."
She fastens on someone in her class who, though he'll have to do, doesn't quite fill the cowboy bill:
"The facts weren't right. He didn't work as a cowboy but at some kind of job where he glued the bones of chimpanzees together. He played jazz trombone..."
They have one odd date together, but nothing comes of it, and now years later, our professor, married and living back East, still finds herself subject to the cowboy daydream. Davis ends on a delightful goofy/comic note:
"I'm so used to the companionship of my husband by now that if I were to marry a cowboy I would want to take him with me, though he would object strongly to any move in the direction of the West, which he dislikes...."
"It would end, or begin, with my husband and me standing awkwardly there in front of the ranch house, waiting while the cowboy prepared our rooms."

This collection exemplifies the wild and wonderful possibilities in very short fiction where the only real rule is: Make it good. Davis knows how.

Far superior to "Break it Down." The stories are clearer, more enjoyable, the lengths are perfect, the language is wonderful. Read "break it down" as well -- to see how dramatically better "Memory" is.