Customer Reviews

Birds of America: Stories

5 star:		(45)
4 star:		(16)
3 star:		(10)
2 star:		(10)
1 star:		(13)

 

 

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.

I feel sorry for the occasional David Sedaris fan who ran out to buy this book just because he said so, and then felt the authority in him/herself to say the book lacked depth and humor. First of all, while David Sedaris writes great, FUNNY books, he is writing in an entirely different league that does not even begin to compare what Moore accomplishes with her writing.

So Lorrie Moore's sense of humor is not as instantly gratifying as Sedaris's - she doesn't write centered around mere punchlines. Instead, she creates characters that are multi layered and breathing with life, sometimes over the course of only a few pages or even paragraphs, and even the comical moments therein are often subtle and melancholic. The moments she describes are so brilliantly captured and the confusion of characters so charming and relatable, so human and at once heartbreaking - I never know whether to respond in laughter, or tears.

This book is honestly one of my most cherished treasures.

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.

Recently I spent a third long stay at a hospital with my daughter. Living at the hospital, particularly accompanying your child, is a surreal (at best) existence. I found myself thinking constantly of Moore's incredible rending yet somehow darkly humorous story, "People Like That Are the Only People Here: Canonical Babbling in Peed Onk," wondering if anyone could possibly understand the dazed flurourescent-lit world of a pediatric hospital/cafeteria/series of Lego-like halls without having been forced to live it. The story brought me strange comfort, knowing that someone had glimpsed that life, the one where you're woken up constantly in the night and wonder whether it's night or day or if you'll ever get out of sweatpants, and as I waited to hear news regarding red blood cells, a part of me was falling apart for the mothers and children I saw there whose stay would not be nine or ten days, as ours, but months. If you know anyone who is stuck at the hospital for ridiculous amounts of time, this is the gift to bring them. The other stories are excellent too.

This is the most stunning short fiction I've ever read. I've been a Lorrie Moore fan for a long time, but she exceeded my expectations with this breathtaking collection. Anyone who loves short stories, or any sort of fiction needs to read this. She is a master at the form, and can make you laugh and break your heart in the same sentence.

In general I find it tough plowing through short stories. It seems to me that one just begins to care about the characters when the ending looms and they revert to black print on white pages, their lives wrapped up and done with. However, I hardly had this problem with 'Birds of America', probably because of how engagingly Moore writes.

This reminded me of Raymond Carver - especially 'People Like That are the Only People Here' compared with 'A Small Good Thing' - only with more flourishes and more humour. Her descriptions, metaphors and insights are elegant and can be startlingly original.

The reason I gave this 3 stars, with all the good things I've said, is primarily that while it's good it's not *that* good. For one, she's less subtle than Carver. Sometimes the pithy observations end up coming through directly, resounding in the author's voice instead of via the story. For another, some of the stories border on the unbelievable ('Real Estate' comes to mind). And lastly, most importantly, they aren't powerful enough. They're witty and they're elegant and they're true, but they didn't truly touch me. I agree with another reviewer when he said they were 'hardly lifechanging'.

I'm a fan of short fiction, but few collections prepared me for the emotional intensity of these stories. Each one left me with the feeling I had just read an 800 page novel - the depth of each story and character is remarkable. In particular the final story, Terrific Mother, with it's skillful balance of hope and dispair, comedy and tragedy left me wondering why Moore is not better known here in England.

This is a perfect collection for those who may not enjoy short stories and a revelation to those of us who do. This is my first introduction to Lorrie Moore and I will be quickly buying up her earlier work.

It's Christmastime and my own book of short stories, "The Middle-Aged Man and the Sea" debuted just last Friday, December 16th, on Amazon, and I was trying to describe to someone what my work is like. It's hard to describe your own work, but that's what brought me here, to find how Moore is described. I greatly admire Lorrie Moore, for her humor, for her style, and for her bravery to explore purely sad and horrible moments with such incredible insight and, often, light. Hence, before moving on, I thought I'd write a love letter to her work.

"Birds of America" is filled with a variety of women ("birds," as they say in England) who are unique. Included in the volume are a dancer, a real estate agent, an actress, an English teacher, and more, and they all become vivid and archetypical--never stereotypical. In Moore's stories, you laugh and you gasp. For instance, in "People Like That Are the Only People Here: Canonical Babbling in Peed Onk" a mother learns her baby has cancer, and in her plunging worry and despair in visits to the pediatrics oncology wing, the mother's insight often comes tinged with humor. "`I've never heard of a baby having chemo,' the Mother says. `Baby' and `chemo,' she thinks, should never even appear in the same sentence together, let alone the same life."

A similar high-wire act occurs in "Terrific Mother," about a 35-year-old woman who sits on picnic bench holding her friend's baby, and the bench gives way and the baby is accidentally killed. Both friends' lives change inextricably. The story is about the woman who was holding the baby, not the mother, and one sentence betrays how the woman was stapled into despair: "She had spent the better part of seven months napping in a leotard, an electric fan blowing at her, her left ear catching the wind, capturing it there in her head, like the sad sea in a shell." Her friend Martin suggests they marry and she could then accompany him to an academic conference in Italy. She says, "You don't understand. Normal life is no longer possible for me. I've stepped off all the normal paths and am living in the bushes. I'm a bushwoman now. I don't feel like I can have normal things. Marriage is normal thing." As she continues talking, her eyes burn, and "she waved her hand dismissively, and it passed through her field of vision like something murderous and huge." The woman and Martin marry anyway, and the time in Italy is tough--yet unparalleled.

I've found myself highlighting lines in her stories just to feel the words more deeply. A few examples: "Her room was a corner room where a piano was allowed. It was L-shaped, like a life veering off suddenly to become something else" (from "Willing"); "In his mouth is a piece of gray chewing gum like a rat's brain" (from "Beautiful Grade"); "The pediatrician, nurse, and head resident are all drawing their mouths in, bluish and tight--morning glories sensing noon" (from "People Like That...).

Writing stories is difficult, especially when you consider how subjective both writing and reading can be. When I saw someone here rated Moore a one star and called her book dreary, I sighed. Yet I can see how someone might view some of the stories as difficult subject matter. Humor, too, is easy to miss, intangible at times as a unicorn's horn. Maybe people will miss the humor in my stories. (If you want to try a sample, go to www.chrismeeks.com and click on the cover.) I love the fact that in this Ipod, Tivo, CD-ROM world, people still love bound books and are willing to write reviews about what they love, hate, or find middling. I happen to get recharged by reading Lorrie Moore's stories. Merry Christmas, Lorrie!

Wow what a writer! This is how Martin Amis would write if only he was a woman. Lorrie Moore's short stories are modern, and relevant, humane and humorous all at once. I don't usually like short stories but these left me satisfied, and needing little break to process them just like I do with a good novel.

I wasn't very enthusiastic with Self-Help, but decided to give Lorrie Moore another whirl. Birds of America is a wonderful short-story collection and I am glad I had decided not to put this author on my black list. The stories in this book center on female angst (and a couple of them center on men), nothing new there, but her stories are told with a mixture of poignancy, humor and insight that make them irresistible. Some of the stories also had a bit of surrealistic twist, which made them even more attractive. Some of them deal with mundane issues, like grieving a pet's death, and others deal with more serious matters, like a terminal illness, but they are all told in a way that give the characters a great deal of depth. My favorite stories are "Terrific Mother," "Charades," "Four Calling Birds, Three French Hens," "People Like That Are the Only People Here," and "Real Estate." These stories are amazing and I cannot recommend this collection enough. Perhaps I was too harsh with Ms. Moore when I read Self-Help. She has proven to be quite an amazing storyteller with this collection.