Customer Reviews

Come Up and See Me Sometime: Stories

5 star:		(15)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Fabulous. Smart, funny, utterly entertaining. Erika Krouse is this generation's Lorrie Moore or Amy Hempel. She has perfect timing and rhythm, a combination of zinging one-liners and touching insight into the female soul. The stories are as addictive and readable as those of Melissa Bank's A GIRL'S GUIDE TO HUNTING AND FISHING, but they're smarter, more provocative, going one level deeper. I highly recommend. Best story collection I've read (and I've read a lot) since BIRDS OF AMERICA.

It's amazing how assured and vivid Krouse's writing is. The sentences take a life of their own. It's unfortunate the collection is being marketed as "sex and the single girl;" the phrase implies a slightness and of-the-moment nature that diminishness the quality and import of these stories. Her storytelling is remarkably assured and original--and the wit...ah, the wit....

This is a collection of dazzling and original stories, portraying single women who are torn between the longing for love and the insistence on self-autonomy. With the wit and precision of poetic language, Erica Krouse depicts these struggles in such an honest way that we are, from time to time, startled to see ourselves in them. Therefore, the hilarious laughter provoked is always tinted with a slight sense of sadness.

I strongly recommend this book. I savoured every word.

Krouse's characters are new, refreshing, disturbing, thought-provoking and entertaining. I was most impressed by the moments she captures and chooses to focus on within her short stories. They're common moments. Moments we don't often consider. Perhaps if we did, we would learn as much about ourselves as we do about these characters. Sometimes they define the person, other times the event, and sometimes, dare I say it, society.

I also found it amazing that Krouse can lead us from the heinous to the hilarious seamlessly, effortlessly. There are MANY laugh-out-loud lines in "Come Up and See Me Sometime." I won't list them - it would be a crime for me to steal your right to read them for yourself.

All I can say, is I honestly don't remember reading another author who can make you think without preaching and make you laugh without effort.

Krouse is witty, a little neurotic, and has a clear crisp voice. The 13 stories feature women in their late 20's to mid 30's struggling to find love or some equivalent. Some are well to do, others poor - all are living life in the best way they know how. Aren't we all...

As the author Erica Krouse, said at the Tattered Cover author reading, "Authors have to be on all the time. There is no 'just going through the motions,' no 'just showing up' that one can sometimes do with a lot of jobs. You are just so exposed."

Exposed. Honest. Funny because it's real and a little shocking. An odd thing that happened on the way to a relationship--life. Women often notice what happens to another friend, and see it through from beginning to end.

Sitting in the audience and reading her book before the author arrived to speak, I had the audacity to laugh aloud, more than once. In a world of bibliophiles, one murmurs; I was out of place but the laughter was irrepressible. It's a funny book with observations that are both irreverent and so true.

Having noticed that Erika Kraus uses passages from Mae West for her collection of short stories, I knew I had to buy this book. I love the stories! Kraus introduces the reader to thirteen women whose stories are poignant, funny and thought-provoking. The stories are rather profound -- reading between the lines and finding hidden messages are called for. There are various elements of magical realism in some of the stories. I loved "Drugs and You," "Mercy," "No Universe," and, my personal favorite, "Husbands." Darkly funny and thought-provoking, Come Up and See Me Sometime is one of the best collection of short stories I have read in quite some time. If you love Mae West's dark humor, then you will certainly enjoy this book.

For the most part, I am not a big fan of short story collections, but this book was highly recommended to me so i gave it a shot. I absolutely loved it. Most of the stories left such an impression on me that it was difficult to move on to the next one without closing the book and taking a deep breath. I hope Krause writes a novel one day (sooner rather than later!) I would love to experience her characters for more than the fifteen to twenty minutes it takes to read one these stories...

Erika Krouse's charming and substantive stories describe the lives of slightly eccentric young women whose concerns are so sympathetically portrayed that a reader almost has to identify with them. There are lots of relationships and the women are struggling to find someone to love -- despite this, Krouse manages to surprise. The men are not all insensitive and the endings are not predictable. They are satisfying, however. I loved the fact that the heroines found happiness or insight or something else worthwhile without ever experiencing that trite happy ending of 'true love with Mr. Right'.

These stories had me laughing out loud, then later on I'd find myself pondering the issues they raised. I think this book is written for women like me -- intelligent women who work and try to make some sense out of their strange lives. Plus, Krouse is FUNNY. Her humor is smart and quirky, and you feel like she's telling you stories over a beer. I, for one, am thrilled. I've found a new favorite author.

Erika Krouse is a major new talent. This collection of stories will pull you through the book as though it were a novel, yet each story is new and different with a fresh voice and unique perspective.

After reading her stories the ideas beneath them keep surfacing in my thoughts. She makes me think, and her characters live in my memory like newly met friends.

Don't miss this one.