Customer Reviews

Lucky Girls: Stories

5 star:		(15)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(23)

 

 

It's funny--most of the positive reviews for this book seem to be from the New York area--where the author is from--I feel fairly certain they're friends of hers. The strories here are just dismally mediocre, the "musings" of the socially privileged and insulated..the author just doesn't seem to have anything to say. It's certainly not envy that provokes me to write this--I am a reader, not a writer--I cheer every time a good book comes into the world but this one made me sigh with frustration. It's just...flat and amateurish. I think the so-called "jealous" reviews below are more bewilderment that this author has gotten so much unwarranted media attention when there are so many worthier candidates...sigh--better luck next time.

I really am. I didn't buy this book- thank God- but I've waited since we've acquired it at our public library- about eight months- to check it out. Let me tell you- it's like opening a Christmas present that has sat under the tree for a month, mysterious and promising, only to find that it's something "practical" or a "great bargain". And of course Lucky Girls was neither of these, even. The writing was bland and too safe-side, completely without imagination. Even the subjects were bland. Freudenberger managed to take a whole country with more allure than 97 percent of the places on this planet and water it down to a mere setting, not much different than my back yard Suburbia (even with all the references to poverty- which were just that: references). And Freudenberger doesn't connect herSELF to her own characters- how can she expect us, as readers, to connect to them?

I predict (and I'll eat my words if things work out to the contrary) that she'll have a novel out within a year and a half. There will be gobs of hype about it, with a lot of false assumptions about the warm reception of her collection of stories to fool readers into feeling they've been waiting for this novel forEVER. And it may even be a bestseller, but the novel will recieve such half-convinced reviews that we'll not be hearing from Freudenberger for a long time after that- or until she's at last found her strengths and weaknesses and worked them out- artistically, that is.

And, by the way, she's a very lovely girl. And sex sells. And all's fair in the publishing industry. The truth obviously comes out- as we've seen just in this small space on Amazon- when people concentrate on the content, but people like Freudenberger need all the head start they can get when they write so dispassionately.

This book presents an interesting dilemna--not good enough to be something memorable, but not bad enough to be a complete train wreck. The author has clearly spent time researching and revising. Although meticulous, her writing is not strong enough to carry this book without the "spark" of something like a plot, deeper insight, more humor, etc.

These stories are all about expat, young, upperclass women living in Asia. I'm amazed by how stories set in the most exotic (At least from the perspective of a middle class person living in the US) places can be described in such an uninteresting manner.

Many reviewers seem angry that this book was offered a $500,000 advance, when it of such an average, writer's workshop quality. These reviewers should remember to review novels solely on their merits, not over any bitterness or anger towards the author. For a truly interesting and well written novel about expat women, read "Interesting Women" by Andrea Lee.

Simplistic, cliched, shallow, not well developed, unlikeable and uninsteresting aimless characters with hollow lives populate this book of long winded stories. The author admitted in an interview that most of these stories were the salvage of a single failed novel attempt, and it shows.

Every story has at least one young woman who is just like a young woman in all the other stories. Her name and biographic details change but she has the same personality in each story, the same narcissistic, selfish outlook on life, almost sociopathic, where all other people are viewed as objects from which she tries to gain advantage or pleasure.

In the end of just about each story the main character is not proven wrong in any way, but is vindicated, which makes the stories read like lectures. You can just see the finger wagging in your face.

My title refers not to the clothes sported by the girls in these stories -- who generally cover up so as not to offend Eastern sensibilities, be they in Vietnam, Thailand, or India -- but to the stories themselves. "Lucky Girls" won't give you much bang for your buck. These are slender little pieces in which nothing happens. Each one has a central idea: the maybe-rape, the married boyfriend, the manic-depressive mother, the tutor-tutee romance. But the ideas just sit there without getting developed. Freudenberger's heroines are generally passive in the face of fate, and their lack of initiative drains the potential for movement out of the stories. Only the last story breaks this mould. It relates the life of an aging male writer, with a clever twist at the end that makes up for (you guessed it) the female first-person narrator's passivity and lack of initiative. But strangely, I found this story the most boring of the lot. Maybe I was simply fed up with Freudenberger's detached, slangless,zingless voice by that time. Or maybe it's that the only REAL strength of this collection, and the reason it gets three stars from me instead of two or one, is Freudenberger's vivid description of her Indian and East Asian locales. You can really hear the voices of the beggars, smell the chapatis, and see the cockroaches. And the last story, set in the Midwest and New England, didn't have that.

If Freudenberger writes a novel, I'll check it out IF it's set in one of these Asian milieux she portrays so well (or so it seems to me; I've never been to India etc.). If it's set in the Midwest, or (horror of horrors) is about a writer, I'll pass.

I knew nothing of this author when I picked up this book and find all the back and forthing in these reviews pretty amusing.
This is a perfectly OK collection of stories but nothing special. This is not some "talent for the ages" that some in the Eastern establishment seemed to have decreed. It's competent if rather shallow writing, standard-issue "Iike, I totally didn't know what I wanted to do with my life so I went and got an M.F.A" stuff..

Simply put, this book is fine. It won't stay with you, however, nor will you find it particularly moving while you're reading it. I mean--well, it's fine. And that's not exactly what I look for in a book, and I doubt you do either. If you're interested, my advice is wait for the paperback.

When the hype regarding "Lucky Girls" began, I was determined not to read this book...the premise linking the stories didn't appeal to me, and I am often not a fan of collections of short fiction.

However, when I picked up a recent issue of Granta and noticed one of Freudenberger's stories, I read it. And the story that I read, I found to be wonderful. So I bought the book.

Freudenberger, has a way with describing the romantic trysts that permeate the collection. I found the relationship between the young girl and her tutor to be beautifully and insightfully written. Unfortunately, I felt that Freudenberger was trying to hard not to fall into the cliched category that is "women writing about romance" in the rest of her stories and I didn't much get into her writing when she stepped outside of the form and subject matter that she did best. I was especially unmoved by the way that she depicted familial relationships in almost every story (most strongly in the story about the suicidal mother and alzheimer's stricken father - which I loathed)

Overall, I found the collection to be readable, but not riveting. Moreover, I don't believe that I will pick up the next book. There doesn't seem to be a lot of room to move for this author - the stories didn't seem to be brimming with unrealized talent.

It seems that the story that I loved, "The tutor" was a lucky shot.

It's funny everyone keeps talking about the hype I hadn't heard any of it--have I been living on a different planet or something?--but I did think this book had an attractive cover and I generally like short fiction so I gave it a go. Well it failed to engage me in any significant way. The narrators and characters are completely stock and the writing is self-conscious and pretentious and precious. For short fiction I recommend Lorrie Moore.

I am not at all pleased to give bad reviews but I agree with winfieldscott to the fullest. At the end of each story I was left wondering...what the heck was that story about? So I would actually sit down and read the story again, thinking that I hadnt caught the *boom* I thought maybe it was so subtle, in a word or single sentence...disappointingly there was never any *boom* just a whole lot of "what the..." It took twice the time to read with no pay off. Perhaps even if her writing was beautiful I feel I couldve overlooked the poor story lines. The writing was not beautiful, but confusing and rather weak. I am so sorely disapointed. I couldve used my 14 bucks to buy underwear or something.