Customer Reviews

Little Stories

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The spectrum of the events of life is a broad one and Roberts examines many of them in this collection of 11 short stories. The twin events of birth and death are combined in the story of the birth of a girl at the same time as a grandfather is on his deathbed. Even though the hospital rules prohibit it, the baby is taken to the grandfather's room only hours before he dies. A once promising young man who was afflicted with a severe case of the "drinking lazies" in college is reduced to paying a prostitute for sex and the story ends with him engulfed in a flood of tears of self-pity.
My two favorite stories are about relationships between a man and a woman. The first one is about male and female roommates that sleep in the same bed. When the woman receives a call from an ex-boyfriend she wants to go meet with him, "just to talk." However, when she ends up spending the night with him, she comes back to a very awkward situation. Although they do end up snuggled in bed, nothing can bridge the loneliness gap between them.
In my second favorite, a man and his wife are having marital difficulties and he is taking a bus to spend the weekend with friends. The goal is to spend some time apart in order to get some perspective. While on the bus, the man meets an elderly gentleman who talks about his late wife in very loving terms. This causes him to go back home, yet when he gets there and "surprises" his wife, her reaction to his loving statements is sullen and dismissive.
Life moves on, sometimes we can control events but often we cannot. It is very easy to say that you must "go with the flow", yet that can be a very hard thing to do. In this collection, Roberts depicts people facing the challenges of life, sometimes in control but often just being hit by the flow.

Little Stories is a collection of 11 short stories. Jeff Roberts takes a look at life and the challenges it offers. Roberts demonstrates that we only think we are in control. The best stories are the ones that look at relationships between man and woman. One story discusses a young couple living together, more than roommates--but less than committed. The female spends time with an old flame, forming a rift between the two roommates. In another story, a married couple decides they need to spend time apart. When the husband returns early, his wife does not show the sentiment he expected.
Roberts writes in descriptive manner. He conveys the hurt, confusion, and disappointment his characters experience. Each story expresses the depth of emotion that we each feel when we face a situation gone wrong. After pondering this read, I feel that Jeff Roberts is demonstrating death. Death of a man, death of a pet, death of a relationship, death of trust..... Roberts is an extremely talented author, and we will see more of him in the future.

Little Stories (Outskirts Press, 2008), Jeff Roberts' first collection of painful portraits of life heralds the arrival of a new voice in modern American writing. Roberts' work, edgy and dark, is the voice of urban America, replete with characters who deeply experience the alienation of modern man.

Cleverly titled, Roberts' stories are nonetheless heart-rending as they portray lonely people striving for an epiphany of meaning. Lost in their loneliness and misery, they are unaware of life beyond the borders of the darkness that surrounds them. These stories are truly a slice of life, but not the suburban, pastoral life of mindlessly happy, complacent people intent on social mobility and expanding mutual fund accounts. Roberts' people are lost in the existential quagmire of striving for love, meaning and a reason to be.

While not all of Roberts' stories reflect modern alienation, most deliver a painful reminder of a misery that even the most content can easily recall. The betrayal in "Relativity" can easily rub salt in old wounds; "Most Likely to Succeed" will stir long forgotten memories. Each story brings a veil of sorrow and the revelation of the disappointment that life can allot, from "Cosette" to "Kisses," and "A Triptych." Throughout the stories, the characters, lonely and largely disillusioned, are haunting, reminding one of dark rainy days and cold cafes.

Noir best describes the mood in most of the stories. One cannot help but feel that no matter what opportunities present themselves, the first person narrator will not escape smoke-filled apartments and dark city streets. Even stories told from a third person point of view cannot break away from the dismal landscape of walk-ups and tenements.

Gritty, dark and existential best describe these vignettes of life. Roberts may well be the new voice of the modern man, lost in the city of despair and despondency. It will be interesting to watch Roberts bloom as a writer. He knows his characters and setting, and it will be interesting to see if he can ever redeem them or himself from the underlying sadness that permeates his work.

Unfortunately, in this reviewer's opinion, editorial oversights keep this first book from achieving a higher rating.

When I was growing up, my favorite location in the public library was the Biography section. I enjoyed the experience of diving into another person's life and viewing relationships and world events using a stranger's unique lens. Always of particular fascination would be diaries through which readers can witness an evolution in thought or perspective from one stage in life to another. Even in writing that is not as bare and personal as a journal, good writers still let us into their worlds through their chosen subjects and expression of emotion. In his new book Little Stories, Jeff Roberts shares a collection of short stories that he wrote during his undergraduate studies at the University of Iowa. Each piece offers a look into the fragile human psyche and, at least for this reader, provides an intensely personal reaction to situations of social dynamics that are painfully honest. Roberts offers a glimpse into the worlds of his characters at a specific moment in their lives and does so through such engaging prose that his readers will undoubtedly remember a time when they found themselves in such a situation, or at least would have reacted the same way given the circumstances. When you open up Little Stories, be prepared for an emotional connection with the words on the page.

Roberts shares in some of his marketing material for Little Stories that reviewing the stories to compile for the book caused him both moments in which he cringed and others that brought great pride. I can understand the author's wide range of emotions, as he reveals so much of himself in each story. Some of the pieces he admits are actual moments from his life, like the miracles of birth and death coming together at a local hospital or the feeling of being "dead inside" immediately following his divorce. Other stories appear to be comprised of fictional characters but who still evoke such emotion that the author seems to pull from a very real and personal place. Regardless of the inspiration for each story, Roberts is magnificent at developing a rich storyline and three-dimensional characters over the span of just a few short pages. He also gives us the opportunity to relive similar episodes from a place in our lives that is hopefully now wiser and more mature. To know that we have survived some of the heart-wrenching moments that Roberts details in his stories is quite gratifying.

One of the most powerful features of Roberts' writing is the way that he examines the loneliness and insecurity that we often experience even in the most intimate of relationships. This study ranges from a young boy who feels desperately alone as he ponders the consequences of a failing mark on his report card to a husband determined to make his marriage work but instead returns home to a wife who is utterly distant and finding her romantic fulfillment through a computer screen. Whether literally through the text (such as "I never felt so alone" or "alone in this world") or through the feelings he evokes by more subtle means, Roberts brings us to the conclusion of each story with a reminder that we really are individual entities who may be left alone at any moment. This feeling of isolation is most often not caused by a physical separation, but instead an emotional, sexual, or other manifested divide.

Often times, I will keep a collection of short stories on my nightstand with the intention of reading one selection each evening and therefore progressing slowly through the author's work. In the case of Little Stories by Jeff Roberts, I ended up reading the entire book in one sitting. Since then, I have reopened the book many times to read certain stories that really spoke to me and I experienced a new detail each time. Little Stories contains raw emotions that never seem contrived or melodramatic, which can often occur in books through which the author is hoping to evoke a certain reaction from the reader. Instead, Roberts displays a great talent for capturing a real sense of human weakness and longing with the respect that these emotions deserve. I know that I am not done reading Little Stories, as it is a collection that can be read again and again. But, I also hope that Jeff Roberts chooses to publish another work that lets us into another stage in his life's journey. I have no doubt that the result will be just as fascinating.

Jeff Roberts is an author to watch. His first book, LITTLE STORIES, a compilation of works written while an undergraduate at University of Iowa, is such a rich literary experience for the reader that it seems we have a very important new voice rising in American literature. He has the ability to observe quiet events of everyday life and from them mold brief episodes of stories that seem so much a part of our own experiences that he startles us with his intuitive eye. Most of the emotions he creates or shares suggest a preoccupation with the tenuous threads that hold our lives together. Many are sad stories of loss, of disillusion, of the emptiness that is created when twists and turns of events alter our lives or rise up in front of our vision of how life should be. But Jeff Roberts is not a morose writer: his descriptions of his settings for his little scenes or acts in the nebulous play of life are painted with fine strokes of beauty that balance the words that lead us into the cracks so readily accessible in the human integument in his hands.

In describing landscapes such as that in Iowa in autumn, he cracks the egg of twilight that happens to illuminate for a vanishing moment the 'boundless acres of dirty greens, yellows and browns that paint the fields stretching out to the horizon.' In KISSES, a series of memories of his now aged mother whose busy life interrupted those special moments of shared expressions of love, he writes 'As I stood on my front porch and watched her drive her car up the road and disappear in traffic, it occurred to me how little we really know about anybody in this world, even the members of our family. It is a great mystery what hopes and dreams a person once held, what sacrifices and joys they had felt and what victories and traumas had formed them. Looking out over the rooftops as the sun faded in the west, I was filled with a feeling of warmth and love at this complex, bittersweet journey we all share called life.' And that is as terse a summary of Jeff Roberts' worldview as can be written.

This is a winsome little book, one that holds more moments worth re-reading than most authors accomplish in a major novel. To say that he is sensitive to the human condition is too embarrassingly obvious to state. He is a born storyteller and a poet the likes of whom we rarely encounter in first books. This is one of the finest book releases of the year, and a welcome to the field of literature, Jeff Roberts. Highly recommended. Grady Harp, December 08

Little Stories is just that, a bunch of little stories of different people at different places in there lives. Written by the author while he attended college.
Starting the first story "Relativity" captures the feelings of loss, anger and disappointment.
Another story "A Triptych" where a married man on a break from his wife sits on a bus next to an older farmer who misses his dead wife of 50 years. As the older gentleman talks about his history with his wife the younger man thinks of his wife. The end of the story you can see a difference of farmer's life back in the day to the way relationships are now.
My least favorite story was "A Question of Perspective". The story ended so abruptly and I didn't really understand it.
I enjoyed the stories although most of the stories ended sadly or poorly. I in some ways I liked it because of those things. The writer captures emotions well and you really relate to what the characters are feeling.

Little Stories is a collection of short stories that lure the mind into a dream space of relationships and turbulent feelings. The author uses vivid scenes, live images and real strong characters and situations. His stories are detailed and well crafted, and his writing style is highly emotional and sensitive. Jeff tries to capture moments in real life, just like a photographer does. He depicts the raw reality using detailed descriptions, complex sentences and live dialogue. He talks about relationships, love, death, betrayal, misery, desperation and loneliness, all the emotions a man can feel. The readers will sympathize with him and feel the emotional ups and downs his stories convey.

This book is enjoyable to read and feel; Jeff's stories stimulate imagination and leave the reader think about the future. It is a great book for the thinking reader. Get this book from [...]

Liana Metal, author of Storytime

One of these "Little Stories" that caught my attention was Valentine's Day 2005. It is a "real story" that a lot of us can relate to, especially right now, right this moment in time. It was so real that you could see yourself ending a relationship that seemed to be one that would be there until you ended it. But that was not to be, things change, companies change and then you are at their mercy. From the moment you get the "pink slip" to the moment you walk in with your manila envelope to the HR Manager, it is not real. All moments in time cease to exist, no more passing by the guard and him smiling and waving to you. No more lunch with colleagues that you enjoyed. Jeff Roberts is very good at creating the moment in time for you. He is subtle, he is to the point and he is also encouraging you to move on and move forward right then and now. These are "real" stories and once you figure out that there is a message waiting for you, you can easily relate. I would love to see Jeff do a sequel to these stories and see where he will next take us.

Jeff Roberts's Little Stories is a little book with a lot of emotion. It really is a small book (only 99 pages), but Roberts fills his writing with enough emotion for several volumes. Little Stories consists of eleven short stories. The stories were written during Roberts's undergraduate years at the University of Iowa. The topics covered include the loss of a beloved pet, a troubled marriage, a promising student on the brink of failure, and betrayal.

In the "Prologue", Roberts mentions that he has included all of his short stories- even "the immature as well as the overcooked". That information does explain some of the differences among the stories. Some of the stories, such as "Kisses" and "Cosette" feel deeply personal. At times, it seems as if the reader is somehow invading the narrator's privacy. This is not a bad thing; rather it is a sign of the level of emotion that is present in the stories.

My favorite story has to be "Triptych". In this story, Ethan shares a long bus ride with an elderly man named Ron. Ethan has plans to spend the weekend in St. Louis with friends after another fight with his wife. Ron is on his way home after a visit with his family in Wichita. Throughout the trip, Ron tells Ethan about his life and his marriage. He was married to his wife, Enola, for fifty-two years. Their happy life stands in stark contrast to Ethan's tense situation. "Triptych" is a beautifully written study in contrasts. Even in old age, Ron has a peaceful life with his elderly dog. When Ethan goes home, a new tiff begins with his wife. The contrasts are striking and poignant. The portrayal of Ron's life is especially touching.

A high level of emotion seems to be the unifying theme in this collection. Most of the stories tackle the basic human need for love and acceptance, so this is a fitting way to unify the collection. Roberts also includes bits of humor throughout his stories. Often the humor comes in ironic bursts, such as the exchange between a man and his girlfriend in "A Question of Perspective". In this case the humor lightens a surprisingly dark mood.

My only real complaint about this book is the lack of depth in some of the characters. Roberts fails to define some of the secondary characters in most of the stories. In most cases, they are simply relegated to the background. For example, Ethan's wife in "Triptych" only appears for a few moments. Her primary actions are snapping at her husband. As the reader, I didn't feel like I knew enough about her to really judge her. Yet, Roberts does manage to portray Ron's deceased wife, Enola, in some detail.

Little Stories is a quick and deceptively easy read. Jeff Roberts captures common human experiences with a deft touch. There is very little affectation here. Like a true Midwesterner, Jeff Roberts writes in a clear, concise style with beautiful simplicity. His stories feature strong emotions and elegant writing. Short story fans will definitely enjoy Little Stories.

Award nominated writer Jeff Roberts brings his short fiction to the table in "Little Stories", his first collection of short fiction where through his prose he expresses his learned philosophy on the world through his characters and the crises that occur in everyone's life daily and how they are dealt with. "Little Stories" is thoroughly entertaining and gripping reading and highly recommended reading for anyone looking to sample some short fiction.