Customer Reviews

Esther Stories

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After reading a story by Orner in the 2001 anthology of the Best American Short Stories, I instantly fell in love with his unique voice and sought out this collection, his first, I believe. I am a big fan of short fiction, and I have to say that Orner's work blew me away. The breadth and depth he brings to these gems is simply amazing. It's refreshing to see a young writer who doesn't resort to shock or gimmicks to keep the readers interest, but rather relies on character, wit, and language to keep us enthralled.

Orner has a profound sense of place. The characters in these stories often seem to be prisoners of not only their own desires, but of geography.

I am recommending this book to everyone I know and my book club next month is scheduled to read it (I will gladly re-read it!). If you're like me and you like to take credit for recognizing major new talents, you need to buy and read this book. Quite simply, it is excellent.

I have been reading Peter Orner's work in literary journals for years and am so happy to finally have it all collected in one volume. His stories are so quietly beautiful and devastating. The characters are alive, the prose is dead-on, the love of language apparent in every sentence. Orner's stories portray a very real world, flawed and heartbreaking, but joyous nonethless. These stories make me feel like people really are good underneath it all. I think Peter Orner is maybe my favorite contemporary short story writer. It might be a tough call between him and Stuart Dybek, but that comparison alone is the highest praise.

I was thrilled to find Peters book on our local library shelf. As a reader from Winnetka, Illinois, I felt moved and touched by Peters ability to capture the true essence of living here on the NORTH SHORE in the heart of the Mid West! I enjoyed every short story and found it difficult to put the book down without thinking about how one young mind could have experienced or imagined so much emotion in his life time! Although many stories are emotional, he never leaves us feeling sad!

Peter what a wonder collection of stories, we are all proud of you! It has been my honor reading your incredible stories.

This book is a testament to the great writing Peter Orner is capable of. In only a few pages, he allows his audience to find unique and incredibly strong connections with his characters, who are themselves unique. There are more than just short stories in this book; whole lives have been captured in minute scenes and laid out on the table for us. I imagine lifetimes are packed away between the covers of this book. Orner's voice grabs at his readers and pulls them into the lives of people that are more real than imagined. This book is something you will not be able to put down until you've read every story at least once. I highly recommend this strong first book and hope many more follow.

These 34 short American stories by Peter Orner will astonish you with their tender worldliness, quiet passion, understated wisdom, and luminous poetry. Were it not for the author's photograph and the biographical note, you might think you had at last discovered stories created during a 25- or 35-year career by a gifted writer you should have been reading for years, rather than the debut collection by an extravagantly gifted writer you will still be reading and rereading and urging on unsuspecting friends 30 or 40 years from now. The economy and precision of these stories are rare and compelling. They are dense with details (names, places, dates, smells, tastes), scattered with things, especially with love's debris, with books and photographs. The narrator of the title story looks at a photograph of his Aunt Esther, and sees someone who wants to be seen and not just looked at, "someone [he] would have loved had [he] been there." Orner does not just look at his characters, he sees them, sees their souls, lovingly re-imagines their stories and shares his revelations, his characters' simple, aching stories with us in language we can understand and remember. These are stories about love and remembrance in America, stories about remembering to love and remembering to remember. These are stories that will be taught in schools, next to stories by Poe and Hawthorne and Malamud and Roth to illustrate the art of short American stories. These are stories that will be shared by families who care about loving and remembering and about knowing each other's stories.

Agreeing with all of the previous reviewers as to the high quality of this collection of stories, I'll just add that rarely have I read a contemporary work so beautifully worded that it is truly a literary gem. Peter Orner has written an amazing book, and it is a must read.

I first bought this book mostly because I was curious about Orner outside of the classes he teaches at my university. The short stories in this book are all touching, some haunting. Each makes you feel a little guilty for moving on to the next. "Sitting Theodore" was my personal favorite. I hope he writes more books and continues to teach into senility and decrepitude.

Aside from being a great author, he's a great instructor as well. Hell yes, Orner. Go on with your bad self!

Esther Stories was a pleasantly unexpected find. Although I think this is an imminently impressive collection of short stories by a highly talented writer, I found myself much less "into" the stories in the second half of the book, than I'd been by the more eclectic tales that comprised the opening part. My favorite story here was "At The Motel Rainbow," which reminded me in a favorable way of vintage Joyce Carol Oates, circa "By The North Gate." However, I really wish Esther Stories had been two separate books, one an anthology of the stories that were set from Canada to the Midwest, the other being the Esther pieces proper. The stories in each section would easily have stood on their own, and truthfully the departure from them to theme was abrupt and confusing. But let me close this review by saying there wasn't a single bad story in this book and some rank as true masterpieces of the short fiction art form. A well-deserved best of luck to Peter Orner, from whom I have no doubt we'll be hearing more in the future!

To risk alienating those of you who don't watch British TV, Peter Orner's sharp and glowing Esther Stories are Tardis-like: just as Doctor Who's police-box spacecraft appears small from the outside and is cavernous within, so these stories, often only several pages, contain depths and layers far larger than the sum of their words. While all great "flash fiction" conveys far more than its brevity implies, Orner does something different, something quieter and more resonant. How he does it may remain as great a mystery as the inner workings of the Doctor's time machine.

The thirty-four stories are divided into four sections: "What Remains", "The Famous", "Fall River Marriage" and "The Waters". The final two sections contain linked stories about two sets of Jewish families.

The first story, Initials Etched on a Dining-Room Table, Lockeport, Nova Scotia is an excellent choice, a showcase for all Orner's particular talents. Very short, two and a half pages, yet it encompasses a far, far longer story. With a strong sense of time and history, illustrating precisely why it begins the "What Remains" section, it moves smoothly from one person's story into another, and ties everything together powerfully and unexpectedly with a pitch-perfect ending. This is what Peter Orner's stories do. ...

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Peter Orner knows how to write mesmerizing short stories. He is an inspiring writer, as well as an inspiring teacher. He is able to give a sense of mood on each one of his stories without narrating the mood to us, but rather showing us what happened (and he's a master of deciding what to include and leave out to achieve this) and letting us draw our own conclusions. I really love this book!