Customer Reviews

Fahrenheit Twins

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For readers unfamiliar with Faber, he is one of the most versatile writers currently working. His styles range from some of the most disturbing speculative fiction I have ever read to to one of the most interesting and best-researched historical novels I have ever read. In between, he offers heartbreakingly good contemporary fiction.

The two best stories in this collection are the latter. Vanilla Bright like Eminem captures the happiest moment in a man's life. Faber writes extremely well about the interior lives of women, and I appreciated him bringing that same focus to the interior life of man in this story. My other standout selection is Serious Swimmers, the story of an noncustodial mother taking her young son on an outing. The fabulist stories are fantastic in both senses of the word, especially The Safehouse and The Fahrenheit Twins. But it is in the conveying of the painful world in which the realities of life intersect with the vagaries of the mind in which this collection shines, and shines painfully. The Smallness of the Action is too difficult to read.

Faber's work is collected in several different editions; if you have The Courage Consort, you already have the twins story, and also the Steps novella that is sold alone on Amazon. Read the product descriptions carefully to avoid duplication, though of course, if you're like me, you may become a Faber completist and want every single thing he's ever written and published, in whatever edition you can find. He is that good.

This is the best collection of short fiction I've read in many years, and that includes all the marvelous stories by T. C. Boyle. Faber's prose is leaner and meaner than Boyle's; both writers have a marvelous ear for language, but Boyle has a weakness for spaghetti sentences that go on for half a page, leaving the reader gasping for breath. Faber is subtler; his sentences sparkle, and there is rarely a false note.

However, these stories are anything but conventional. Realism and fantasy are mixed in unpredictable ways, and the meaning of the story is usually less than obvious; but Faber's unique take on surrealism gives these pieces a unique power.

This is the first time I can remember sitting down and reading a book of short stories, one after the other. Like a compelling novel, this volume was impossible to put down. Of course there are a couple of weaker pieces, but Faber sets the bar very high. "Vanilla Bright Like Eminem" is one of the most powerful pieces I've ever read, and yet almost nothing happens. (Actually, a lot happens ... but you need to read the story to see what I mean.)

The U.S. Edition is titled "Vanilla Bright Like Eminem", and includes all the stories except "The Fahrenheit Twins", which appears in the U.S. title "The Courage Consort."

This is one of the most satisfying books I've read in a few years. Highly recommended.

Inventive, tightly written, well paced and plotted. This is an excellent collection of stories covering a wide range of themes.

An intruiging short story that looks at the lives, and near deaths, of twins living in the middle of the ice in the northern hemisphere. The twins, and their shady father, are illustrated extremely well, inviting us the reader into their icy world. The dogs are brilliantly described, especially their reaction to the wrong sort of tinned food.

I simply loved his Crimson Petal and the White - since then purchased two more of his books and was so disappointed and the final straw was last night when I finished the last of The Courage of Consort's The Farenheit Twins - no more Michel Faber!!