Family Terrorists [Paperback]

Antonya Nelson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 26, 1996

Seven stories and a novella by the award-winning writer of The Expendables explore the heart of contemporary life and the ties of love, faith, anxiety, and antagonism that bind families together. Reprint. 12,000 first printing.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

While some may regard family ties as a safety net, and others see them as an entangling web, it's not an either/or proposition for the families in Nelson's third collection, consisting of seven stories and a novella. With clarity and compassion, the author portrays the family as both familiar yet foreign, essential yet suffocating. What brings these pieces to vibrant life is Nelson's ability to make every incident provoke "feelings . . . that run the gamut in a matter of seconds," as Lynnie Link says in the title work. Confused about her parents' decision to remarry after being divorced, Lynnie nonetheless journeys from Texas to Montana for the wedding, picking up her brother en route. Her reactions to him, her sisters and parents are a mixture of love, annoyance and ambivalence--as theirs are to Lynnie--in this clan that terrorize each other with both the best and the worst intentions. The strongest stories here are those in which no one can be safely pigeonholed. A few less compelling and less convincing entries ("Naked Ladies"; "Crybaby") lack density and cumulative power. For, as Nelson powerfully demonstrates in her best work, the essence of being alive is to experience many contradictory feelings at once, especially about those closest to us.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Kirkus Reviews

Seven stories (two of them award-winners, ``Naked Ladies'' in Best American, ``Dirty Words'' in O. Henry) and a novella, done up in a kind of flip realism that subjects relationships to breezy examination. Nelson (In the Land of Men, 1992) writes in a popular ``conversational'' style, immediately establishing a friendly tone (``Though his head was larger than his body, his brain seemed unquestionably smaller''--referring to a Scottie dog) as if she were introducing herself to a new neighbor or co-worker. A natural storyteller, she's out to amuse and instruct, but she's at her best when inserting a catch in the narrative voice at moments of introspection nobody saw coming, moments heightened by deft or penetrating description: a father's nearly useless legs being lifted and tucked into a car by a daughter; the faces of people in an ice-cream store during a tornado (``Icy green and ghostly, when the lightning cracked,'' then ``gone, like the switched-off image of a television''). The charm lies in Nelson's ability to describe people and events in a few words, family history in a paragraph, and to offer observations that readers can readily identify with: ``When she was high ordinarily unfunny things made her giggle.'' This is good-natured and hard to resist, but it also relies on ``quirkiness'' as a way of making inexplicable people seem understandable. The tendency is toward glib reductions of mysteries and suggestions of depth rather than depth itself. The New Yorker eats this stuff up; readers will find Nelson either enchanting or boring. -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: Scribner Paper Fiction; 1st Scribner Paperback Fiction ed edition (January 26, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0684802244
• ISBN-13: 978-0684802244
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.2 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #624,701 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Family Terrorists at large in Nelson's heartfelt stories, July 30, 1996

By A Customer

This review is from: Family Terrorists (Paperback)

In "Family Terrorists," her third collection of short fiction, Antonya Nelson proves that her title, though apt, is by no means an oxymoron. The eponymous terrorists wreak mundane, unsensationalistic havoc (except in the eerily timely "The Written Word" where a little brother's prank diverts a jet and thwarts a longed-for escape.) These provocative acts include invitations to family occasions, ("Family Terrorists") giving birth, ("Dirty Words") uninvited help, ("Crybaby") or simply imparting unwanted knowledge, ("Loaded Gun"). Nelson seeds her prose with trenchant observation: "Her mother refused to understand tone, as if she were reading conversations instead of having them." "Bette's problem was that she merely missed drinking, like a hilarious friend who had moved away..." The stories unsettle by exposing the ironies inherent in our complacency. In "Naked Ladies" a painter divines his wife's infidelity from an array of ineptly rendered nudes. A woman sees how truly precarious her happiness is ("The Ocean"). A wife finally freed from her husband's obsessive ex-girlfriend misses being stalked ("Her Secret Life"). Antonya Nelson's gifts--deft characterization, gentle humor, supple language--entice us to marvel at the permutations of intimate sabotage.

3.0 out of 5 stars Kind of disappointing, August 18, 2009

By 

Julie Blattenbauer "I read every night before... (seattle, wa) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Family Terrorists (Paperback)

I thought these stories would have more of an edge. They don't really have a universal voice, the experiences set forth seem individually oriented and isolated, not particularly intuitive or wise. Her writing skill is good enough, the stories just did not strike me as anything remarkable, though.
Julie Blattenbauer Seattle

2 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Not Quite Believable, July 12, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Family Terrorists (Paperback)

Desparate people hiding behind normal lives populate Nelson's seven stories and a novella. Although her eye for details makes the stories vivid, false notes too often ruin her work. In "The Ocean", a terrified housewife hides in the bathroom with her baby while a robber, real or imagined, prowls the house. A terrific premise, but we never believe the central conceit---that a robber sees someone inside a house, but still breaks in during broad daylight? And why doesn't the thought of calling '911' even cross the woman's mind? Similary, in "The Written Word", a brother decides to kidnap his half-sister and use the ransom to get back to his real father. An engaging idea, but how the brother came up with this twisted scheme is never satisfactorily explored. Other bizzare relationships will rouse reader's interests: a woman has an affair with her stepson; a man dates his brother's ex. But the stories never get beyond the purely sensationalistic.