The Difference Between Women and Men: Stories [Hardcover]

Bret Lott (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 5, 2005

In this deeply affecting, beautifully crafted collection of short fiction, Bret Lott broadens his stylistic range, striking a surprisingly surreal tone with stark, hyperrealistic prose. As story after dazzling story deliberately takes you down a deceptively ordinary path, the arresting center of each startles your unsuspecting sensibility.

Among the narrative gems is “Family,” in which a husband and wife bicker incessantly before realizing that their two children are missing, only to discover them in a surprising place–and in a disturbing condition. In “Everything Cut Will Come Back,” a long-distance phone call between two brothers takes a turn when their own tragic past crackles over the line. In “History,” a widow thinks she spots her son at the airport and is left instead with a simple memory of her late husband that resolves her grief. The innocence of three boys is lost when they witness a devastating winter tragedy in “The Train, the Lake, the Bridge.”

Within these pages, adulterers are unceremoniously caught, epiphanies arrive during bizarre encounters, and characters move through everyday moments with a fortitude that elevates these stories almost to mythical status. Without a stroke of false sentimentality, The Difference Between Women and Men will leave you strangely shaken–and ever aware of the odd permutations of humankind.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The third collection from Oprah author Lott (A Song I Knew by Heart; Jewel) comprises uneven stories that explore the frail relationships and difficult emotions that render life surreal: in the eponymous story, an angry wife miraculously moves all of her furniture, including a heavy armoire containing her bewildered husband's things, to one corner of the bedroom. In "Family," a terrible fight between another husband and wife transforms their children into television-watching, complaining, aerobicizing dolls who live in a cooler. "Rose" echoes William Faulkner's "A Rose for Emily" but lacks its predecessor's narrative power, becoming instead a heavy-handed allegory starring an ancient, murderous necrophiliac. Other stories feature mostly unnamed, middle-aged characters in depressing situations, including bankruptcy, adultery, poverty, marital dissolution, and death. Lott's terse reflections on the struggles of average people trying to cope with mundane tragedy long to evoke Raymond Carver; instead, they produce meaningless dialogue, and epiphanies reached in the last line feel similarly forced. An occasional articulate observation about the difference between actual selves and imagined selves isn't enough to overcome cloying imitation or pervasive sentimentality.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

In this disappointingly thin short story collection, Lott resorts to Faulkner-like language and magic realism seemingly out of sheer desperation, for these extravagant touches cannot mask the fact that most of these stories lack substance. In "Family," a husband and wife suddenly stop in midargument when they realize their son and daughter are missing. They find their children in an ice cooler, where they have morphed into miniaturized adults; both are angry with their parents for intruding. In the highlight of the collection, "The Train, the Lake, the Bridge," two boys and their fathers are horrified to discover a train that has fallen into a half-frozen lake after the trestle collapsed during a heavy blizzard. Upon venturing onto the ice, the boys witness the frozen train occupants bobbing just beneath the surface. However, one story does not a collection make; other efforts are torpedoed by too obvious symbolism and ephemeral plots. Lott's reputation is still running high off the momentum generated by his Oprah-anointed Jewel (1991), which may prompt requests for his latest effort. But buy sparingly. Joanne Wilkinson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 208 pages
• Publisher: Random House (July 5, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0375502629
• ISBN-13: 978-0375502620
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.5 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,274,511 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Bret Lott is the author of thirteen books, most recently the novel Dead Low Tide(Random House 2008); other books include the story collection The Difference Between Women and Men, the nonfiction book Before We Get Started: A Practical Memoir of the Writer's Life, and the bestselling novels Jewel, an Oprah Book Club pick, and A Song I Knew by Heart. His work has appeared in, among other places, The Yale Review, The New York Times, The Georgia Review and in dozens of anthologies. Born in Los Angeles, he received his BA in English from Cal State Long Beach in 1981, and his MFA in fiction from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, in 1984, where he studied under James Baldwin. From 1986 to 2004 he was writer-in-residence and professor of English at The College of Charleston, leaving to take the position of editor and director of the journal The Southern Review at Louisiana State University. Three years later, in the fall of 2007, he returned to The College of Charleston and the job he most loves: teaching. His honors include having been named Fulbright Senior American Scholar and writer-in-residence to Bar-Ilan University in Tel Aviv, Israel; having spoken on Flannery O'Connor at The White House; and being appointed a member of the National Council on the Arts. He and his wife, Melanie, and live in Hanahan, South Carolina.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Reality and Metaphor Extended, February 22, 2009

By 

Valerie Lynn - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Difference Between Women and Men: Stories (Paperback)

If I had not read Catherine Wald's The Resilient Writer: Tales of Rejection and Triumph by 23 Top Authors, I would not have found this interesting author. This is a collection of short stories that frequently lifts the reader off the page and into flights of imagination. It is not type of the writing I usually seek out. Typically I spend a lot of time with language heavy literary writing and nonfiction works. To my surprise, I was immediately intrigued by Lott's unique style after finishing the first story, "Family."

I liked "Everything Cut Will Come Back," for how accurately it demonstrated the difficulty men have communicating their feelings to each other. Lott's blending of grounded reality and flights of fancy caught me off guard, but as soon as I let go of preconceived expectations, I was able to find much to admire. By the time I read "Appraisal," the story of a woman drowning in financial problems, I found myself missing the author's fanciful flights of unreality. Lott's stories focus on compassion, gratefulness and how important love is in our lives. These stories teach in much the same way traditional fables do. In some, the oversize metaphors required me to read the piece more than once. Tackling the kinds of relational issues that bring people into therapy is a daunting task, so I liked reading a totally original approach. The Difference Between Women and Men: Stories offers refreshing, light and entertaining reading where thought provoking ideas await discovery.

1 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars thumbnail sketches, June 12, 2008

By 

A. C. Walter "awalter" (Lynnwood, WA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Difference Between Women and Men: Stories (Paperback)

Bret Lott's short fiction seems to be one of the great, accidental secrets of today's literary scene. Borges, Kafka, Flannery O'Connor, Raymond Carver--I have to go back to the Dead Greats to find someone to compare him with. Lott's stories are thumbnail sketches of heartbreak and tragicomedy, and each is written straight from the gut. Like Carver, Lott has mastered the craft of narrative minimalism, and his 3 collections put to shame most of the modern novels I read. In this book Lott makes a welcome addition to his bag of tricks, giving us a handful of superb magical realism tales. So I dare you: pick this up, read maybe "The Family" or the very short "A Part of It," and then try--just try!--to tear yourself away from the book.

2 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars It Can Be Alarming & Life-Changing., November 29, 2005

By 

Betty Burks "Betty Burks" (Knoxville, TN) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Difference Between Women and Men: Stories (Hardcover)

The title is misleading, as this collection of stories are varied, like his earlier collections, A DREAM OF OLD LEAVES and HOW TO GET HOME. As he sees it, the difference between men and women is that they just don't think the same. Here we have a man and wife who had been married for 27 years and one chance remark in the car caused her to make a drastic change in the living quarters, to his abject uncaring or help. She goes on a rampage of moving furniture around in their bedroom. Me, I always chose the living room for those nights when I couldn't sleep to rearrange. But this wife is rearranging their lives, not just the room, separating his things from her things. In an article in November, 2005, 'Fitness' magazine, we are told how to manage emotions in times of stress as you 'agree to disagree.'

First, as the wife in the short story did, you must establish boundaries and find a creative solution which includes your needs and wants as well. You're not gong to learn much by sticking to what you already know, or do things because they've always been done that way. It's best to prune hour own behavior a little, as you enrich your life by trying things you do imperfectly. Me, I was sometimes driven to throw things which break. There's a reason why men before 1957 were violent and moody' they hadn't seen 'Old Yeller' yet! Everyone cries; today's news has a "tearful congressman who quits over two million dollars he received in bribes." He cried because he got caught. There is little ethics in politics.

This short story concerning how the small wife moved the large, heavy armoire which held her recalcitrant husband's belongings is just one of fifteen short anecdotes. We learn from each other by repeating what the person said, to zero in on their feelings. Other stories were 'Gesture,' 'The Issue of Money,' 'Somebody Else,' 'A Part of It,' and 'Appraisal.' Bret Lott is an English professor at LSU, has written two non-fiction books previously and six novels. I found most of this collection melancholy. Perhaps he is going through mid-life crises. One thing for sure, we all get through it whether man or woman. That's something we share, a difficult process.