The Nimrod Flipout: Stories [Paperback]

Etgar Keret (Author), Institute for Translation of Hebrew Literature (Author), Miriam Shlesinger (Translator), Sondra Silverston (Translator)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0374222436 | ISBN-13: 978-0374222437 | Publication Date: April 4, 2006 | Edition: 1st

From Israel's most popular and acclaimed young writer--"Stories that are short, strange, funny, deceptively casual in tone and affect, stories that sound like a joke but aren't" (Yann Martel, author of Life of Pi)

Already featured on This American Life and Selected Shorts and in Zoetrope: All Story and L.A. Weekly, these short stories include a man who finds equal pleasure in his beautiful girlfriend and the fat, soccer-loving lout she turns into after dark; shrinking parents; a case of impotence cured by a pet terrier; and a pessimistic Middle Eastern talking fish. A bestseller in Israel, The Nimrod Flipout is an extraordinary collection from the preeminent Israeli writer of his generation.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Keret, an Israeli writer who also writes children's books and collaborates with illustrators on graphic stories and novels, specializes in brainteasing short short stories reminiscent of the "Shouts and Murmurs" section of the New Yorker—30 are packed in this thin volume. A typical Keret situation is enacted in "Your Man": the narrator finds that his girlfriends inexplicably break up with him in the back of taxicabs while the radio always announces a caller from a certain address. He goes to the address, finds photos of his exes tacked to the wall and erupts in violence, with repercussions that give new meaning to masochism. Dogs play a role in Keret's stories similar to the sly role they assume in Thurber cartoons, hovering between the fantastic and the everyday, and sex is an obsession ("Actually, I've Had Some Phenomenal Hardons Lately" is one story's title.) In "Fatso," a man's girlfriend confides a secret: she turns into a rotund male at night. Like French surrealist Marcel Aymé, Keret keeps his stories one dimensional, but it's a dimension he has mastered, one that peels away the borderlines of normalcy. (Apr.)
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From Booklist

Once you know that Keret's work has been featured on NPR's This American Life and Selected Shorts, it becomes hard to think of these 30 pieces as short stories. The adenoidal 35--going-on-13 tones of the former program's host grate in the mind like the voices of Woody Allen, Shelley Berman, and other ur-stand-ups, and the veil is parted. These aren't stories, they're routines! They're mostly told in the third person by the same kind of guys (once, gal) as the protagonists: schlemiels, though the singles among them are also slackers.^B They're modern young Israelis fixated on sex, unable to make lasting connections, frustrated to quiet madness, and feckless as . . . a stand-up's persona. Most of their stories are could-be realistic, a few are ultimately sentimental, and the best are arguably the fantasies, such as the volume opener, whose protagonist has a girlfriend ("the sex is dynamite") who becomes a fat, hairy, party-animal guy at night, and is still as much fun to be with. Vulgar, sad-sacky stuff, but amusing. Ray Olson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 167 pages
• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux; 1st edition (April 4, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0374222436
• ISBN-13: 978-0374222437
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 6.7 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #364,954 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #22 in Books > Literature & Fiction > World Literature > Middle Eastern > Hebrew

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

22 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars When he's good, he's good . . ., April 20, 2006

By 

KH1 (Middle America) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: The Nimrod Flipout: Stories (Paperback)

There are many fantastic short stories in this collection, _The Nimrod Flipout_, by Israeli author Etgar Keret. There are also many that are reminiscent of first drafts from a night-school creative writing class. When he's good, Keret is a fantastic new talent, full of humor and existential angst, but when he's not - he's trite, cliche, and boring - one more young guy writing about getting stoned and laid.

The titular story "The Nimrod Flipout", is one of the best in the entire collection. Three young men are possessed, in turn, by the spirit of their friend, Nimrod, who killed himself after his girlfriend broke up with him. [Variety is also not Keret's strong suit. There are at least two other stories where someone kills themselves because they've been dumped.] After the narrator, the last to succumb to the spirit of his deceased friend, the possession repeats itself starting over again with Miron, the first to be possessed. It's a touching story about the frivolity of youth, and deeply tragic, as well; its also one of the funniest stories in the collection.

"Fatso", the opening story, I also loved. It is about a guy whose girlfriend turns into a fat, drunk, soccer-loving man after the sun goes down, and how, after spending many nights going out and watching soccer at the bar with this character, he begins to love his girlfriend, too.

This collection has its shining moments, and is highly recommended to fans of short fiction. However, don't be surprised if some of the stories dissapoint.

21 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars so-so, April 8, 2006

By 

concerned reader "concerned reader" (Europe) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Nimrod Flipout: Stories (Paperback)

Some of these stories are brilliant, first round knockouts. Others are shtick-yawns. The best are like the wondrous short-short stories of Spencer Holst. The worst are whines from the slacker you'd never listen to for five minutes if you bumped into them at a bar. Buy the book for the wonderful, but expect a very mixed bag.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Israeli Magical Realism, January 1, 2008

By 

P. Willson (United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Nimrod Flipout: Stories (Paperback)

Who knew the Magical Realist mantle would end up in Tel Aviv? (There's no better place for it!) This is a somewhat uneven collection of short stories, thus the missing star. However, it's extremely rare to find a short story collection where that isn't the case.

Maybe he gets half a star back, and rounded up to the nearest star, because most of these tiny fables are incredibly good. Several are snort-wine-out-your-nose funny, some are perfectly sly, and others are sweet or poignant without sentimentality. A few lumber along unfulfilled, but just a few. (And they're really short.)

He's very a fine writer even in translation, with clear eyes and no fear.