From Publishers Weekly
Bukiet (Strange Fire, etc.) loses his bearings in this strained, wooden collection, which strives so hard to be clever that subtlety flies out the window. The 11 stories are best compared to Woody Allen's fictional sendups of great writers, but lack Allen's intelligent wit and insight. "The Two Franzes," a story about the young Franz Kafka, reads like a discarded skit for an intellectual's Saturday Night Live!, with 12-year-old Franz playing messenger boy to his first mentor, playwright Franz Grillparzer. Kafka's budding talent is ploddingly noted ("he often had ideas that he didn't know what to do with"), as is the genesis of The Metamorphosis ("You little insect," hisses his sister). Many of the entries focus on writers and the theme of literary envy. In "Squeak, Memory," Vladimir Nabokov is stalked by a young fan in 1973, with the Watergate scandal providing a contrived backdrop. In "Paper Hero," an unknown novelist plans a ridiculous publicity stunt at a German book fair that goes predictably awry (he's flogging a novel called Strange Fire). In the ambitious metafictional story "Tongue of the Jews," a WASP-y corporate lawyer becomes a guilt-ridden chronicler of Holocaust stories and is drawn into the plot of a Philip Roth-type novel, but the effort is marred by broad caricatures of wealthy Jewish New Yorkers. Throughout, Bukiet's pacing is uncertain and his tone uneven, literary pastiche alternating with bald colloquialisms ("Randall sometimes knew when he had been dissed"). These juxtapositions at times yield flashes of humor, but Bukiet never exhibits the incisive wit required for effective satire or farce.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.
After one reads Bukiet's short story "But, Microsoft! What Byte through Yonder Windows Break?" it's entirely possible that Bill Gates may never again be viewed in quite the same light. A teenage supermodel-cum-superbrain who falls victim to rampant sexism, Monella morphs into the presumptive Microsoft mogul, much to an old friend's dismay. Just one of 11 (not 12, not 13) short stories in Bukiet's cleverly compiled and titled collection, it ponders the classic issues of truth versus lies, perception versus reality, that have occupied writers for centuries. Indeed, many of Bukiet's stories feature writers, either as narrators or protagonists, who discover and distort the truth in all its many guises. From a philandering author in "Tongue of the Jews" to the Nabokov-obsessed scribe in "Squeak, Memory," the relationship between those who chronicle life's vagaries and those who orchestrate them becomes tantalizingly blurred as pain gives way to pathos, delight transcends despair--and vice versa. Irresistibly facile, intelligently fanciful, Bukiet's stories entertain with startling intuition.
Carol HaggasCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
