From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. Greek author Sotiropoulos (
Zigzag Through the Bitter-Orange Trees) depicts the hollow, deceptive civility hidden within intimate relationships in this capably translated story collection featuring lovers, married couples, brothers and parents. In “An Almost Guinea Fowl,†a husband and wife pull away from the brink of marital collapse after a dinner party game of Truth or Dare. A young man drifts toward waste and inertia over an adolescent romance gone sour in “Kissing the Air.†“Aren't You Going to Walk the Dog?†features a mother and her teenaged daughter facing off in a rancorous, controlling game of chicken. Other stories showcase the author's dark, effective devices, such as throwing together antipathetic characters in unfamiliar locales: in “The Pinball King,†two sparring brothers and an Italian tourist couple wind up lost on the way to Delphi, eventually taking refuge with a goat-herding couple. Each story demonstrates compelling depth and breadth, and involves heavy emotional stakes; perhaps the most nerve-wracking are the author-fan confrontation in “So You Like Literature†and the estranged father-daughter relationship in “Rain at the Construction Site.â€
(Dec.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Review
"Greek author Sotiropoulos (
Zigzag Through the Bitter-Orange Trees) depicts the hollow, deceptive civility hidden within intimate relationships in this capably translated story collection featuring lovers, married couples, brothers and parents. In 'An Almost Guinea Fowl,' a husband and wife pull away from the brink of marital collapse after a dinner party game of Truth or Dare. A young man drifts toward waste and inertia over an adolescent romance gone sour in 'Kissing the Air.' 'Aren't You Going to Walk the Dog?' features a mother and her teenaged daughter facing off in a rancorous, controlling game of chicken. Other stories showcase the author's dark, effective devices, such as throwing together antipathetic characters in unfamiliar locales: in 'The Pinball King,' two sparring brothers and an Italian tourist couple wind up lost on the way to Delphi, eventually taking refuge with a goat-herding couple. Each story demonstrates compelling depth and breadth, and involves heavy emotional stakes; perhaps the most nerve-wracking are the author-fan confrontation in 'So You Like Literature' and the estranged father-daughter relationship in 'Rain at the Construction Site.'" --Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Ersi Sotiropoulos's fiction owes a significant debt to her early work as a poet. Her stories in Landscape with Dog are pure electric, with the passion, energized wit and inevitability of the lyric poem. The surfaces are well-constructed, the characters often quirky and troubling and, like lines from a favorite poem, stay with the reader year after year." --Paul Vangelisti
"Ersi Sotiropoulos's short stories are jaggedly sharp and unsettlingly beautiful--and they are like none other being written today in any language. You have to go back to Cesare Pavese to find short fiction from Europe this vivid, lived-in, urgent and artful; Sotiropoulos writes as if her life depended on it. Landscape with Dog and Other Stories is a marvel." --Benjamin Anastas
"I loved these stories. They are vintage Sotiropoulos: electric, vivid, sensual, surprising." --Lynn Freed
