Customer Reviews

Out of the Girls' Room and into the Night (Iowa Short Fiction Award)

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Book ReviewsBY AMANDA EYRE WARD November 26, 1999: Out of the Girls' Room and Into the Night by Thisbe Nissen The expression of love is the center of Out of the Girls' Room and Into the Night, an awe-inspiring collection of short stories by Thisbe Nissen, winner of the John Simmons Short Fiction Award. Nissen's characters are young and yearning, and they come together in lovely and unexpected ways. A young video clerk in "The Mushroom Girl" pours his heart out into his beloved's intercom: "I think you think I'm crazy, and I'm not. I'm not crazy. It's just that I see a chance for something I think could make me happy in a world that is a generally not very happy place, and I can't just give up and walk away from that without doing everything I know how to do to make it happen." This flustered suitor is probably the most eloquent in the book; Roz Rozenzweig in "The Rather Unlikely Courtship of Edwin Anderson and Roz Rosenzweig" proposes marriage by calling to her lover, "C'mon, Gimp, waddaya say?" Words are not the only means of admitting love in Nissen's stories. In "Accidental Love," Lilith, a high school senior, listens to an older woman who tells her, "Love is an entity unto itself. There are patches of it all over the place. It's not really tangible, but it's there, pools of it." Lilith takes the woman's words to heart when she finds Steff, the boy she loves, fixing lights underneath a Christmas tree: "The TV is perched on a rolling cart, and I wheel it over to where we can watch before I crawl underneath the tree myself. I curl around Steff and bury my hands into the wool belly of his sweater, and we just lie like that for a while: spoons under the tree in this pocket of candle-blue." Although Nissen's characters are generally young and blessed -- traveling Deadheads, college housemates, wealthy New York teens -- Nissen bestows them with earnesty and explores their desires carefully and with gravity. This is a marked change from the cynical city gals currently in fashion in contemporary literature, and I found myself astonishingly moved by her character's simplest movements, like those of the lovers in "Fundamentals of Communication." In a college classroom, the lovers "sit, shifting occasionally, glancing at the glowing wall clock, waiting for 9:15. I can't see them as well now, in the shadows, but I catch the occasional movement in one of their hands, the caress of a finger, press of palm." They seem to have realized another character's observation that safety is "a point of contact." And perhaps, Nissen suggests, that's what love is as well.

I was very much impressed by this book. Nissen's stories really live on the page, and many of them have been difficult for me to forget. Usually, I'll read through a story collection in a day or two, but I found myself reading this one more slowly: I wanted to hold on to each story for a while--to let the feelings it touched off in me finish washing through me before I moved on. I was reminded of the writing of Abby Frucht, and Elizabeth McCracken, and (a little bit) of Lorrie Moore: Thisbe Nissen has the same talent that they do for opening the joy of her characters up into pain, and vice versa. Also, her characters have the same sort of camouflaged vulnerability. Too much of the fiction being published today seems to deny that people can matter to one another, that they can either hurt one another or preserve one another, but Nissen never forgets this. Even when her characters try to close themselves off to the people around them, those people always come bounding back into their lives. This book is being published by a university press and deserves a wider readership than I'm afraid it's going to get. If you have a chance, you should pick it up. The stories carry a real emotional power, and they will stay with you for a long time.

I don't know why I waited so long to read this stellar collection. I agree with the other reviewers--the very best selections might be "Flowers in the Dustbin" and "Grog" and "Poison in the Human Machine," and of course the title story, but they're all good with moments or lines that are amazing. There is geniune emotion in Nissen's stories, and geniune insight in girls growing up, which is what I look for and hope for but rarely ever find. I haven't enjoyed a book so much since Jennifer Paddock's novel, A SECRET WORD, came out in the spring. It's that good! I couldn't recommend OUT OF THE GIRLS' ROOM AND INTO THE NIGHT more highly.

Thisbe Nissen's debut is incredibly fulfilling. I became extremely engrossed in the stories, and am hungry for more of her work. The stories range from insightful slices of New York City, the midwest, and New England, to moving vignettes of family memories. The stories are sharp, edgy, and made me laugh and cry (really!). The author has an uncanny ability to cull seemingly everyday experiences into insightful musings on the lives of twenty-something intelligent women. Get this book for yourself, and give it out as a present!

Nissen's quirky characters will charm you utterly, and her writing is just beautiful. She manages to be poignant and moving without ever being sappy--with smart, wry humor to boot. Very impressive.

Out of the Girls' Room and Into the Night has several of the most memorable short stories I've read as of late. This collection of quirky and disarming stories is thought provoking and disturbing at times. The ones that touched me the most were the ones centered on eating disorders, infidelity and death. "Grog," "The Mushroom Girl," "Flowers in the Dustbin, Poison in the Human Machine," and "Accidental Love" are my favorites. The aforementioned stories spoke to me. Are you in the bargain for a literary short story collection centered on women? I suggest you pick up this gem!

I, too, was skeptical of reading a book of workshop fiction, but I found the characters endearing and the sensory details compelling. Ms. Nissen has an unjaded embrace of the real and a confident understanding of the struggles her characters face. This is an outstanding first collection.

"Flowers in the Dustbin, Poison in the Human Machine," by far the strongest piece in the collection, mirrors the power-popularity play among girls in a Manhattan magnet school with the bourgeois entitlement of their parents; the final title piece is an indictment of pseudofeminism and a display of the confusion that surrounds the self-empowerment of teenage girls. "When the Rain Washes You Clean You'll Know," "Grover, King of Nebraska," and "Way Back in the When Before Now," are also strong short stories.

This book is just not good. I bought it because Amazon recommended it to me because I bought a Judy Budnitz book (which was a gem, like all her others) and because of the reviews it got here. But after reading about half of the stories I can tell you that this book is not worth your money. It reminds me of critiquing someone's work in a college creative writing class. I don't want to be mean and I want to tell you SOMETHING good about this collection but really...its adolescent and lacks style. You can tell that the author really tried to follow the rules. She tried to take leaps and induce a flow but the results are too workshoppy. I don't think that she had fun writing these stories. Chances are you won't have fun reading them. If you're looking for exciting female contemporaries, check out Judy Budnitz or Aimee Bender. Don't buy this book.

Very believable, original, emotionally-evocotive work. As I read these stories I feel admiration for the author's sensitivity, deep life-awareness and skillful use of language to convey her characters and their situations. They are jammed with aliveness and flavour. Very enjoyable.

This book was very good, but I didn't write a review to praise this book, only to coreect "Tiara"'s misconception. Gwynne doesn't end up with Donovan because of alcohol. Do you know why she had to tell herself, "I can do this, I can do this . . ." She is a lesbian who is in love with her best friend, and she feels betrayed when Darcy hooks up with a guy. Gwynne obviously isn't ready to tell Darcy how she feels, so when Darcy hooks up with Donovan's best friend--Gwynne decides to play it straight, so to speak. I missed this the first time I read it, along with other themes in some of the other stories.