Customer Reviews

The Demon of Longing: Short Stories (Carnegie Mellon Series in Short Fiction)

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The Demon of Longing is the best-written book I have encountered this side of the 19th-century. Gilliland writes like a fine painter of miniatures making every stroke count. Unlike with most acclaimed short stories nowadays, which seem to be trying to prove themselves more manipulative than television commercials or an unscrupulous manager trying to motivate his employees, there are no cheap devices used to create enthusiasm. Overall, the effect is to create (using fine writing) a very quiet peaceful effect akin to what eastern religions like Buddhism try to produce by praising the elimination of desire. Admittedly, the tendency (I have noticed) is for cool unenthusiastic types to be either nihilist or dissipated (enthusiastic love is not pointless or cheap but dear when a guy is trying to use whiskey or depravity to seduce you away from love). But Gilliland in writing these stories is on the contrary white-tornado clean and just plain intelligent. As for evoking irrational misplaced emotions by way of exorcising them, I'd rather watch a football game than allow myself to be manipulated less transparently by a manipulative story. And Gilliland creates calm not by calling forth the demons of longing in us that we may experience how such demons affect us and then experience a kind of catharsis later by understanding them, but by the more difficult approach of maintaining a tone totally devoid of irrational longings, that we may experience the joy of what it is like emotionally to be emotionally more-or-less completely reasonable. Gilliland is very ingenious in her writing style; for instance, she has a way of cleverly adding just the right technically superfluous preposition (used adverbially) at various places to give an extra sense of movement and aspect, which by I guess making action verbs less abrupt helps produce an ease that is unusually harmonious with activity. Athough Gilliland's tone is warm in that it is a sharing one, the quiet of her stories is not the quiet of a limp girl captivated by love, rather a mature quiet more compatible with activity (like making a living) and quotidian matters. Accordingly, the sensibility of the stories is more a populist generally useful sensibility for dealing with the ordinary matters we all have often to deal with than a sensibility for totally profound things--in my opinion, that's neither good nor bad, that's just the way the stories are.

A number of these elegantly-told tales could be fodder for novels. The characters are deep and flawed and thoroughly human, and a few of them trail their contorted histories through several stories. At times, Gilliland backtracks over a life's foibles in a single paragraph, a technique no less effective for her than for the likes of Gabriel Garcia Marquez. At other times, her narrators speak for themselves with poignant simplicity. I picked the book up to amuse myself during the holiday season, figuring that short stories would not command much attention from my busy life; I found myself taking the time I didn't have, turning the page to find out what happened to these women and men because the author made me care. Loved the book; recommend it with both thumbs up, and a big toe or two thrown in.

I was asked to recommend a book by a local author for our book group. I got this paperback from a friend who was giving it away. It's a collections of short stories published by a minor university press. The stories are pretty minor too. Lots of women / girls as victim sort of thing. Failed relationships and difficult lives. (The men don't fare much better actually.) One strange story where the narrator claims to be a rainmaker ...O-Kaaayyy... whatever floats your boat. Another story about a girl whose face is ruined by untreated acne. Another story about child abuse. The author is obviously not a happy camper. Anyway we chose another book for our book club

Local author Miss Gilliland has a collection of stories here about people who regret what coulda/shoulda/woulda been (Kind of like our own Boston Celtics right now). These people want better relationships, better lives, like most of us. Unfortunately they don't know how to get there. No news flashes here. Point of view shifts fairly often - why I don't know. Stories don't always make sense. The whole effect is kinda like eating a salad of iceberg lettuce & no dressing. It's not bad for you but you'd still rather have almost anything else.