Birds of America: Stories (Paperback)

~ (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Lorrie Moore made her debut in 1985 with Self-Help, which proved that she could write about sadness, sex, and the single girl with as much tenderness--and with considerably more wit--than almost any of her contemporaries. She followed this story collection with another, Like Life, as well as two fine novels, Anagrams and Who Will Run the Frog Hospital? Yet Moore's rapid-fire alternation of mirth and deep melancholy is so perfectly suited to the short form that readers will greet Birds of America with an audible sigh of relief--and delight. In "Willing," for example, a second-rate Hollywood starlet retreats into a first-rate depression, taking shelter in a Chicago-area Days Inn. The author's eye for the small comic detail is intact: her juice-bar-loving heroine initially drowns her sorrows in "places called I Love Juicy or Orange-U-Sweet." Yet Moore seldom satisfies herself with mere pop-cultural mockery. She's too interested in the small and large devastations of life, which her actress is experiencing in spades. "Walter leaned her against his parked car," Moore relates. "His mouth was slightly lopsided, paisley-shaped, his lips anneloid and full, and he kissed her hard. There was something numb and on hold in her. There were small dark pits of annihilation she discovered in her heart, in the loosening fist of it, and she threw herself into them, falling." Elsewhere, the author serves up a similar mixture of one-liners and contemporary grief, lamenting the death of a housecat in "Four Calling Birds, Three French Hens" and the death of a marriage in "Which Is More Than I Can Say About That." And her hilarious account of a nuclear family undergoing a meltdown in "Charades" will make you want to avoid parlor games for the rest of your natural life. --James Marcus --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

Though the characters in these 12 stories are seen in such varied settings as Iowa, Ireland, Maryland, Louisiana and Italy, they are all afflicted with ennui, angst and aimlessness. They can't communicate or connect; they have no inner resources; they can't focus; they can't feel love. The beginning stories deal with women alienated from their own true natures but still living in the quotidian. Aileen in "Four Calling Birds, Three French Hens," is unable to stop grieving over her dog's death, although she has a loving husband and daughter to console her. The collection's two male protagonists, a law professor in "Beautiful Grade" and a housepainter who lives with a blind man in "What You Want to Do Fine," are just as disaffected and lonely in domestic situations. The stories move on, however, to situations in which life itself is askew, where a tumor grows in a baby's body (the detached recitation of "People Like That Are The Only People Here" makes it even more harrowing ). In "Real Estate," a woman with cancer?after having dealt with squirrels, bats, geese, crows and a hippie intruder in her new house?kills a thief whose mind has run as amok as the cells in her body. Only a few stories conclude with tentative affirmation. "Terrific Mother," which begins with the tragedy of a child's death, moves to a redemptive ending. In every story, Moore empowers her characters with wit, allowing their thoughts and conversation to sparkle with wordplay, sarcastic banter and idioms used with startling originality. No matter how chaotic their lives, their minds still operate at quip speed; the emotional impact of their inner desolation is expressed in gallows humor. Moore's insights into the springs of human conduct, her ability to catch the moment that flips someone from eccentric to unmoored, endow her work with a heartbreaking resonance. Strange birds, these characters might be, but they are present everywhere. Editor, Victoria Wilson; agent, Melanie Jackson.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 304 pages
• Publisher: Picador; 1st edition (September 23, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312241224
• ISBN-13: 978-0312241223
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.4 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (86 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #8,821 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

37 of 39 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Misunderstood, March 29, 2001

By	Todd A. Ritter (N.J.) - See all my reviews

I'm pretty surprised by the number of negative reviews Moore's work has received. Many readers have complained that the stories are about tiny people with tiny, unimportant lives. Well, that's the whole point! Moore is without a doubt the best chronicler of tiny people with tiny, unimportant lives. She knows - which many of us do not - that we all have tiny, unimportant lives. But, like her characters, those lives are filled with regret, longing, heartache, joy, laughter, wit and irony. And of course that makes them anything but unimportant. Every story she writes makes me laugh out loud at least once. Every story she writes makes me cry just a little. Every story she writes somehow pinpoints some tiny emotion or thought or feeling I never knew I had. Her sheer empathy is astounding.

It may seem like I'm gushing, but I've been reading her short fiction for over a decade now and there is no one writing today whom I enjoy more. Granted, a story like "People Like That Are The Only People Here" can be unwieldy for someone not accustomed to short stories. Probably the best introduction to Moore can be found in "You're Ugly, Too," which is in Self-Help, the Best American Short Stories of 1990 and the Updike-edited Best American Short Stories of the Century. But a story like "Charades" - in Birds of America - is easily accessible and is vintage Moore. It's sad, hysterically funny and all-too familiar. There are many like it in this collection, including "Whatever You Want Fine" and "Willing" and "That's More Than I Can Say About Some People."

One reviewer complained that the stories were over as soon as you started to get into the characters and that at the end they didn't live on, they were just dark type on a white page. That is untrue. Lorrie Moore's characters live on everywhere. They're in your office. They're at the grocery store and the bank and the dry cleaners. They are us.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Stories about women who compromise with men are best, September 3, 2001

By	M. JEFFREY MCMAHON "herculodge" (Torrance, CA USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

Amazon Verified Purchase

The best stories here are about talented, witty, sarcastic people (women mostly) who, lacking any hope or confidence, compromise their integrity to be in relationships with cliche-ridden mediocrities, bores, sociopaths, cheaters, phony ideologues, and other loathsome creatures. The result is a collection of stories that is both comic and sad. These characters seem rather nihilistic in their lack of free-will and the abyss of despair and acedia that they've succumbed to. Lorrie Moore is at the top of the literary food chain when it comes to writing these kind of short stories. There are imitators who try to be cool with their nihilistic, cynical stories, but Lorrie Moore is the genuine article.

15 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A collection of stories worth reading over and over, January 26, 2003

By	Debbie Lee Wesselmann (the Lehigh Valley, PA) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

Lorrie Moore's BIRDS OF AMERICA is a rarity: a story collection that arrives on the literary scene with such power that people still talk about it years after its original publication.

What's so special about Moore? For one, she writes with an unusual mix of wry humor and deeply-rooted emotion. Because the surface of her stories shimmer with laughs, the true meaning of the story can sneak up on readers, and when it hits, it does so with pure force. Her language is exact and unadorned, leading the reader precisely where Moore intends. Her ability to nail cultural and personal detail is extraordinary.

The most famous, and arguably the most successful, story is "People Like That Are The Only People Here," the moving yet at times absurdist tale of a mother coping with the grave illness of her baby. At first, Moore seems almost coy with her character names - the Mother, the Baby, the Husband, the Surgeon - but they serve to mute the roiling fear running underneath in true Moore fashion until it can no longer be contained.

Not a single story in this collection fails, but some rise above others: "Which is More Than I Can Say About Some People", "Charades," "Agnes of Iowa," and "Terrific Mother." Some of these stories will have you doubled over with laughter; others will make your heart ache. Most will do both.

I highly recommend this book, even to people who don't normally read short stories. If you have already read it, read it again. You'll be surprised by how much surfaces the second time around.