Customer Reviews

Like a Charm: A Novel in Voices

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The basis of this short-story collection is an original and intriguing one: each story, while entirely independent, follows the life of a charm bracelet, from its creation in Georgia in 1803, through time and across oceans, until it eventually ends up back in Georgia again. In each story, the bracelet plays its part, almost always brining bad luck to the one who has come to possess it. It's a short-story collection that could almost be read as a quirky novel. The only downside to this idea is that the connections of each story, through the life of the charm bracelet, should in some cases be made a lot clearer - once or twice it was hard or impossible to create a logical connection between one story and the next, and the old "so and so bought in an Pawn/Antique Shop" device was greatly overused - then as a whole this collection would be more powerful than it is.

The stories are incredibly varied; set in times and places as different as the American South in the 19th century to wartime Leeds in the 20th. In one, an accusation has dire consequences. In another, a train journey becomes anything but mundane. A sax player ends up getting more than he bargained for when he does a favour for a friend. A school-teacher's outing to London turns altogether more twisted. And a desperate writer makes a fateful purchase in exchange for inspiration...

I am very much a devotee of the short-story; they are perfect for slotting into a dead half-hour, ideal if you want a single-sitting read. Quick pleasure, instant satisfaction - if they're of quality. And, if you pick right - maybe one of Ruth Rendell's beautifully twisted masterpieces, of Ian McEwan's elegant, concise works - then they can be just as good as a novel. While the stories here aren't really of that quality (well, except for one; I'll get to that in a minute) they do align into a very good, entertaining and satisfying collection. Each piece is taut and well-tuned, written with the sharp succinctity and ability to shock that marks out the best of the form. Some of the writers you will have heard of: Peter Robinson, Mark Billingham, and Lee Child, for example. Others maybe not: Emma Donohue, for example, whose story "Vanitas" is an excellent little piece set on a plantation in the South. And Peter Moore Smith, or Jerrilyn Farmer, writer of the penultimate story "The Eastlake School", a twisted piece of brilliance. There are definitely a couple of writers here whose work I will be endeavouring to find out more about after reading this. You may too.

Here, all the stories are good (that is pleasing in itself - in every collection there are normally one or two mis-fires) but some of them are excellent: Robinson's "Cornelius Jubb", for example, or "Plan B" by Kelley Armstrong, to name just two among several. However, one story here does stand far, far above them all, and that is John Connolly's "The Inkpot Monkey". It's the sort of story of which one might say "it alone is worth the price of this book", but for the fact that it would be rather silly to actually contemplate spending $20+ on just 15 pages of text. The sentiment remains the same, though. It is an eerie, slightly surreal tale about a man suffering writer's block who goes to great lengths in order to rediscover his muse. Told with flair and punch, is explores several themes, such as, What does it mean to be a writer? More precisely, What of themselves do writers put into their work? What is required of them, what must they give in order to create and be inspired? And, ultimately, Is it worth it? And, having given it, What then? It is a brilliant, remarkable story, and is the real gem of this pleasing, ingenuitive collection. Despite the fact that the sometimes poor linkage takes away from the concept of this collection, Like A Charm is worth a look for fans of this form.

The dark, haunting cover foreshadows the disturbing malevolence that seeps from its pages. The voices of these collaborating authors are sinister, and every author is well-known in the mystery/suspense genre. But before you drop $21.95 for this book, be aware that these are not stories of murder and intrigue, but of death and misery. They are short stories with odd characters, titillating content, and startling revelations or actions. These stories reach the depths of obsession, insanity, and sin to show the deep, dark, even perverse sides of their characters, chilling readers to the core.

The stories take place in America and England at various times in history, and each chapter and each life is linked to a certain charm. The first story -- an erotic tale -- shows how a bracelet is cursed. It goes on from there....

_Like a Charm_ is for readers who like their stories dark, explicit, and sometimes bizarre.

I really wanted to give this one a try, but where there was potential, this novel failed. I hate to say it, but while I thought the premise was extremely creative...just imagine the story behind a charm bracelet and it's charms, the writing (different authors) fell flat. I really wanted to finish this book..and had to recheck it out of the library several times before I could finish it. Maybe the problem was that there were different authors, and not just one author with a vision. While this works with other authors, like those that collaborated on the Naked Came the Manatee novel, it didn't for these. I would recommend that if you are so moved to read it, make sure you get it from your local library.

This sixteen collection anthology revolves around a charm bracelet that brings misfortune to the holder. The tales are unique yet build off where the previous story left off. Beginning in the Georgia Mountains in 1803, continuing in 1839 and on into the twentieth century, the bracelet moves from one ill-fated soul whose story is unfolded until at the end of the tale, another person holds the bracelet and his or her story is told in the next chapter.

The fifteen contributors (Karin Slaughter opens and closes the anthology) seem to have enjoyed adding their spin to the book because all the inputs are well written and loaded with action and suspense. The "charmed characters" surprisingly for the most part come across as genuine regardless of their era and location (the bracelet gets around). LIKE A CHARM is gimmicky, but fans of interconnected short stories will appreciate this delightful thriller that lives up to its title as readers will enjoy this suspenseful interrelated compilation.

Harriet Klausner

A so-so short story collection that is loosely tied together with a charm that crops up in each story. The voices, pacing, themes are really too disparate to make this anything more than an intro to some of the authors or just a plain short story collection. Wasn't interesting enough to propel me through it.

The good things:
You get to sample a lot of different crime and suspense authors and read their voice and vision (and often locations, a lot of these authors write about where they live).
Each to his or her own: you are bound to find one author or story you like.

The bad things:
The "plot" or the "Mcgufin" is a cursed charm bracelet. But the stories do not add up to a novel and often the charm bracelet aspect of a story feels forced on the author.
Some stories are truly bad on so many dimensions (obvious, characters are cartoons, plot "twist" obvious even before the end of the short-stroy, etc.) that there is a lot of disappointment.
This starts as a magical-realist world (magic is real) but then everyone latter is just a jaded modern post-modern materialist amoral blah. The anti-thesis of amoral is the moral, and its supernatural support, transcendent religion. Guess what doesn't appear? Yep, the devil gets his due, but G-d is a fugitive in these pages (or a cartoon character, the "enduring prsence of His absence" in the last short story.
The last short story is an inverse of Flannery O'Connor grotesques.

This is a handful of short stories, written by various authors, that form one novel. Each tale centers on a single prop... a cursed charm bracelet... resulting in stories written in the same vein as "The Monkey's Paw:"

(1) character gets charm bracelet and thinks it is lucky, but
(2) character soon loses something precious/commits heinous crime/dies/someone close to character dies.

Lather, rinse, repeat.

One punchy, creepy little diamond of a tale, "The Inkpot Monkey" by John Connolly, broke up the monotony. Then it was back to lather, rinse, repeat.

Karin Slaughter, who wrote the opener and edited the novel, also delivers the closer. Built around an unhappy Christian, Slaughter's finale first puts her character in bed with a pastor, a dishonest and unlikable man who regularly mass mails anti-abortion pamphlets and is lazy in bed. Then she has the character begging doctors for a late-term abortion while recounting how the character's congregation picketed clinics, yelling "Kill the doctors, save the babies."

It's a free country and Slaughter can write anything, as it should be. But here she employs discriminatory stereotypes that turn what could have been a great book into little more than bitter propaganda. In creating a totally fictional character that she feels is realistic, she comes off as a biased bigot.

If you don't have enough stress in your life or you feel compelled to throw away $20, this is your book.

There's a reason you can buy this book for a penny. Although the book concept was a good one (using a charm bracelet to bind the stories together), it didn't pan out. I didn't enjoy this book at all, and was positively disgusted by some of the stories.