Customer Reviews

A Chapter From Her Upbringing

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This is a wonderful collection of stories! What struck me, over and over, was the feeling that someone had finally written how life really happens and feels. All of the stories I've read and even liked in recent years--including the brutally blank or bleak ones--suddenly seemed exposed as still full of exaggeration and driven by stock formulas. So, devastating as many of Ivy Goodman's stories are-and there are some heavyweight knockouts here--they're also remarkably refreshing; graceful, generous, and tough; embedded everywhere with sharp insights. They're loyal to the human story even in its irresolutions--not in the form of snooty alienation or post-structuralist pretensions, just a respect for craving and spite and shyness, and for all the things in life that for some reason don't happen.

I loved this book! Ivy Goodman, author of the prizewinning short story collection "Heart Failure," writes with a dark and cutting comic edge that in the end proves to be regenerative and uplifting, as great prose writing always proves to be. There's an eerie psychological perspicuity in her inimitable stories about loss, death, and violation. I especially loved "Eating Him Alive," an updated riff on Kafka's "The Hunger Artist"; and "In Consequence," a chilling story that alternates point of view between grandmother and grandson in a family that's gone awry. The scene with the father's teeth took my breath away! If you don't know Goodman's fiction, you've got a treat in store for you. Can't wait for her next book!