Customer Reviews

Do the Windows Open?

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

Thank God for this book. When I first encountered it I had nearly teetered into the abyss of believing that the way we live now has a rational underpinning. Julie Hecht possesses a brilliance that is at once undeniable and subtle. She sees things. To her critics, I can only say that worthwhile literature is not required to have formulaic plotting, at least in the traditional sense. Something doesn't have to "happen." Characters don't have to be drawn with giant magic markers. There is great power in the small. The quiet voice. To those who prefer the opposite, get a Tom Clancy book.

I am always hesitant to recommend fiction to other people because enjoyment of fiction is so subjective and so personal. I feel so strongly about the stories of Julie Hecht, though, that I had to write this review. When I see an issue of "The New Yorker" that has a new Hecht story it just makes my whole week. It is hard to define her style but perhaps calling her the Steven Wright of short story writers would give you some idea! She makes the most oddball but humorous (in a bittersweet way) observations using a deadpan delivery. Her narrator, always the same person in all stories, is alienated and lonely and neurotic but touching and engaging because of her humor and intelligence. Hecht's stories have no grand themes and contain no momentous events. She writes of the mundane daily activities of her protagonist: going to the health food store; riding on a bus; a visit to the doctor. The activities are not important; it is Hecht's observations of other people that will resonate within you. If you enjoy lowkey writing which is concerned with the behavior of everyday people I think you will enjoy these stories as much as I did. I can't wait for Ms. Hecht's next collection of stories. Unfortunately, I think it will be awhile as her stories come out very infrequently!

It's so comforting to know that there are other neurotic people out there! This book is a laugh-riot. I loaned it to my friend, and she loved it so much that after she read it, she went and bought a copy. When she gave it back, I reread it and laughed just as hard the 2nd time. It's genuinely hilarious if you are the type of person who can agonize and analyze forever.

Either you get it or you don't. If you don't get it, then the nameless heroine of "Do the Windows Open?" would be awed and more than a little envious of your oblivion. If you DO get it, if Julie Hecht's collection of short stories strike you as wonderfully entertaining, then maybe the nameless heroine (and part- part-time photographer) would like to come take a picture of you with a book that makes you laugh. If she could just decide which pair of socks to wear. Neurotic and demanding, but also tender and generous, Hecht's heroine narrates in exquisite detail the exhausting process of trying to figure out "how to live in this world". (Difficult when expectations are so high that Clorox and tomatoes, forbidden in her macrobiotic life, offer an irresistable siren song.) And after witnessing heat prostration, dressing dilemnas, and transportation ills in many a futile attempt to photograph the fascinating "Dr Loquesto, famed reproductive surgeon", readers will find themselves wishing the narrator would find a hobby less stressful than photography. Like maybe the Japanese tea ceremony. Four hours to make a cup of tea sounds just about right for this babe

Julie Hecht's debut collection introduces a narrator with a voice and awareness by far funnier and more beguiling than any I have read. She is tactful, alienated, melancholy and hilarious, without ever indulging the confessional; that is, the tour we take is in her world, not merely in her mind. She is a guide through the insanity of the mundane, sure of her mark and always fresh. Writing like this is a reminder of what we all orinally loved in literature: the bliss of taking in a life other than our own

In a world of the banal, the vulgar, the repellent, Julie Hecht glows with a true light. Her writing is both simple and complex. Her stories are of a wandering soul, a person trapped in solitude while speaking to many neighbors and acquaintances. All her conversations, as her cypher of a husband comments, are "futile, aimless". With no one has she the slightest communication beyond the trivial. Her attempts at communication invariably bounce right off those around her, like a bead of oil on water. Julie Hecht is incredibly funny, as in the opening title story, but she is also deep and subtle. Her story about a dinner at friends, featuring an unbearably smug Swedish wife with 4 small boys, is really about the narrator's sad alienation because she is childless. Yet nowhere is this spoken. The reader must infer it from quiet moments. The angst-filled, anxiety-plagued narrator seems so like me, filled with worries that to her are real, looming possibilities rather than far-fetched scenarios, that although she would be horrified by my carnivorous eating habits and yogaphobic lifestyle, I nonetheless am presumptuous enough to feel we would be instant soulmates. Her final story, "Who Knows Why", which seems to be about the renovation of a floor, is really a melancholy reflection on the frustration of effort. Why bother? it seems to ask. Yet nowhere is this book of stories depressing. It is uplifting, it is spiritual, it is - well, brilliant. You probably won't like it, but since its Amazon sales rank is 400,000-something and it can be bought used for .01 cent, you are probably in the majority. I, though, have found my literary soulmate.

this book caught me by surprise. the writer's style is unique and enjoyable. i don't usually write reviews because i think they are incredibly subjective but i had to make an exception here because of a review that criticized julie hecht, taking on her racial slurs. the reviewer obviously is confused with the first-person narrative point of view and sees the narrator and the writer as one and the same.they write that they continued reading to find out if hecht got pregnant in the end. i can't believe this!lighten up. it's a story told from a made-up character's p.o.v.

There are many reviews of this author already and I agree with all the positive comments. Hecht turns the relentless assaults of our daily world into a type of healing humor. Her narrator, like all of us, has constructed a way of getting through the pain, the absurdity, the mundane and it happens to make me laugh out loud, frequently! I can't recall being so carried away with enthusiasm for an author I have just discovered. Highly recommended is an understatement! I'm now reading Happy Trails to You and it's every bit as wonderful.

My introduction to Ms. Hecht was a short story she wrote titled "I Want You, I Need You, I Love You." It's a chronicle of her infatuation with Elvis (often mentioned in "Do the Windows Open?") and an alternative riff on Elvis's untimely, undignified death. It was published in the O. Henry Prize Stories of 1978. Find it if you can.

At first, I was put off by the collection. The first story, with all that blindness and sight blather, made me think: "Oh, no, not this again. There really is nothing new under the sun." But I read on, to discover that the rehashed metaphors and neuroses can still sparkle. The narrator of these stories is a barely-menopasal Holden Caulfield, another New Yorker type. This one veers through her life, never really connecting her insights to any of the deeper ironies they contain. She is starkly, sternly innocent--and rightfully nuts. She sees and speaks associationally, in long, looping digressions that circle back on themselves to reveal the poverty of her circumstances. Along the way, she finds her devoid insights and splatters them out at the reader, as if they make sense, much like that adolescent boy who donned New Yorker print a long time ago. My favorite lines were "I didn't see how poetry could be written in the suburbs" and "Hurry up. I don't have time for surrealism."