Customer Reviews

Like Life

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Moore received a lot of attention for her latest, "Birds of America" but I prefer this collection. It's not just that the book is funnier and deals with generally lighter subject matter, but that she is able to apply her poignant observations to more mundane material. Wheras Birds of America deals with children who have cancer and adults who are deep into what have become seriously disappointing lives, Like Life deals with those (mostly women) who are still treading water, not too happy with the way things have turned out so far, but also not so far gone that it all couldn't turn around tomorrow. The character in one story is grappling with her unsatisfying relationship with her struggling playwright boyfriend, another is just having a lonely winter where she spends her time working in a store in the mall and playing with the cat. Even the nature of her disappointments -- she is not allowed in to a community singing group because she misses the first meeting -- wonderfully reflect the low gear in which many of her characters, like real life people, are operating. If it sounds pretty dull, this is exactly why this book is such a showcase of Morre at her best. I think it is probably easier to write movingly about cancer than it is to write about daily life. But Moore's stories really are moving. A must read for anyone who aspires to write but worries he/she has nothing to say. Moore shows that every experience is a story -- its all in the telling.

This quote, from the title story of Lorrie Moore's ridiculously good collection, really seems to sum up her writing here. All of her stories are so unbelievably bizarre, at times, and yet, we know they're real. She writes about things we only thought existed in our heads--perceptions, comparisons, understandings of life that we could once insist were our own neuroses, yet apparently, Moore's had all the same ideas, and has put them to paper in some of the most intriguing and complex and, at times, subtly hilarious stories I've ever read.

"Like Life" is where you'll find her story, "You're Ugly, Too," which I found in a collection of stories dubbed the best since 1970, a Scribner anthology, and what sparked my interest in Moore. "You're Ugly, Too" is a brilliant piece, and definitely one of my favorites. I also loved "The Jewish Hunter," which I was reading during pre-cal one day, and started laughing like an idiot at various points. (Not good.) "Starving Again" is an incredible piece. In fact, I didn't quite think I got it 100% until I was sitting in a restaurant with someone one day, and they were going on and on, and all I could think about was our food coming to the table....Well, read the story, you'll see. It's definitely one of those great stories that you experience in your own life, and then go back and read again, and appreciate it all the better.

"Like Life" is an incredible collection, and I'm already on my second and third readings of these stories. It's hard to read them and not look at life differently after.

Lorrie Moore, named one of Granta's "Best Young American Novelists" last year, is a poetic observer of ordinary life. In this her second collection of short stories, she presents us with a charming array of characters, each consumed by the pursuit of love and meaning in their lives. These stories are filled with people from all walks of life who don't really know what they want or how to get it, but they keep trying to find it anyway. From a working class woman who must choose between two equally undesirable boyfriends to a playwright who struggles to remain true to his art as his world collapses around him, these are people we can laugh with and feel sympathy for because they convey our simplest, most heartfelt desires. Lorrie Moore is a master storyteller, and this collection has much to offer the confused, yet optimistic, seekers among us

Lorrie Moore has an unmatched ability to mix verbal jokes and funny moments with tragic ones. She makes it look easy, but the craftmanship inherent in her work is quite complicated. She makes her readers feel her characters with their hearts and their minds. You'll laugh out loud and you feel lingering sadness.

My favorite story in the collection is "Places to Look for your Mind." I couldn't stop thinking about it, the characters were so real to me.

This whole book is a pleasure.

In the very first story of Lorrie Moore's collection "Like life", the narrator, a woman who has two simultaneous love affairs - one with a married guy who she seems to like more than the other man, a single but a little boring one - tells her Number One (this is the terms she uses for them) that he is special, but he would be even more special if he were single. To which he replies:

"That would make me more than special [...] That would make me rare. We're talking unicorn."

Accurately pointed observations about human life and behavior are abundant in Moore's second collection of short stories, "Like Life". There isn't a single bad or poorly written of developed story here. The books nears pitch perfection. We are indeed talking unicorn.

The writer promises in her first collection, "Self Help", are more then kept here, they reach a higher level once the stories are longer which allows the writer a deeper look inside her character's lives. If in the previous book the images and use of language were stronger than the narrative, here there's a balance between elements bring a welcome depth.

In "You're ugly, too", a college tries to find love and closer relationship with her sister. In another story, "Vissi D'Arte", the surroundings of the building where a young man lives deeply affects his life, and the plays he's been writing for years. These are some of Moore's characters, they are people whose lives were brought to turning points - the problem being: do they really want to change?

Not always. Sometimes the torpor of everyday life, the security of routine is what helps them to be alive. Changes are inevitable and not always for worse. But until they're able to understand this, it could be too late. Just like life, this collection of stories indicates that our acts carry consequences, and one should be able to handle than. Moore is telling us this right now. Just pay attention to what she has to say.

I've decided at this, my fourth book by Lorrie Moore or so, that 1) she is one of my favorite short-story writers, and 2) that my official short review of her work overall is "bittersweet bad-ass."

She's just cynical, bitter, funny, and spot on the money. She catalogs the small joys and the strange, unfocused dissatisfactions of everyday life with a precision and a set of similies that suprise me constantly. I found "The Jewish Hunter" and "Like Life" particularly effective, but again, nothing she writes is less than pretty damn good.

"How did one's . . . life lead one along so cruelly, like a trick, to the middle of the sea?" I came across the short "Two Boys" in a 1989 GQ magazine, and ever since then have cherished her stories. Yes, many of Moore's lead characters struggle, falter, find themselves in transition, and leading, as Thoreau quipped, lives of quiet desperation. In short, they are a lot like us. This sort of truth hurts, and you can see that hurt reflected in some of the reviews below. And yet. And yet, Moore leavens her writing with humor, wit, and a dollop of sympathy for those deserving of it. (For example, from the title story: "I don't have a love life, I have a like life.") The language is rich and smart and flavorful and accessible at the same time - and definitely, worth yours.

The befuddled career woman, the lonely playwright, the angry history professor: Lorrie Moore tells us their stories of love and its loss with mordant wit in her second book of short stories, "Like Life," published in 1988. It includes "You're Ugly, Too," that first appeared in the New Yorker and in several anthologies including "The Best American Short Stories of the Century" edited by John Updike. Moore, whose third collection, "Birds of America," was widely acclaimed, here writes about commonplace people with poignancy and humor.

Loneliness and alienation are major themes in most of these stories. In "Vissi d'Arte," Moore charts the downward slide of Harry after his girlfriend, leaves him and their apartment over a sex pavilion for "real" life uptown. He struggles with noxious fumes from trucks idling outside his window and bad plumbing that fills his bathtub with scallions and broth. All the while, Harry continues to work on the play, his masterwork that has occupied his life for the last four years. Its climax is the "wrenching yet life-affirming death of his great-aunt Flora Fussbudget Flora, whose dying word had been `Cripes.'." Then, driven by the mounting disasters, Harry agrees to a fateful meeting with television producer Glen Scarp. Like so many of Moore's characters, Harry is plunged into deep melancholy, but is, in the end, not without hope.
Moore is a master of the quirky phrase that, taken by itself, leaves the reader as confused as some of her characters but with only a few steps back, often rewards with a fresh perspective. In her world, slushy February weather causes sidewalks to "foam to a cheese of spit."

Moore tells most of her eight stories solely from the perspective of the protagonist. This adds to the tone of isolation and loneliness but by the end of this collection, begins to feel slightly monotonous. In addition to short stories, Moore, an English professor at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, has also written two novels, "Anagrams" and "Who Will Run the Frog Hospital?". Taken together, these stories in "Like Life" successfully delineate the poignancy of life in America's cities and mid-western towns at the end of the 20th century and are worthy of attention.

I enjoy anything by Lorrie Moore. My favorite is still "A Gate at the Stairs," but this collection of earlier
stories, though not as mature as the novel, is worth reading.

Lorrie Moore writes amazingly beautiful short stories! They are tight, powerful, moving and exquisitely written. I highly recommend this book.