Customer Reviews

Portraits of a Few of the People I've Made Cry: Stories (AWP) (Grace Paley Prize in Short Fiction)

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Christine Sneed manages to captivate the reader with each and every story in this collection of ten short stories. Each narrative considers the many different faces of romantic love, some of them ugly and disfigured. Each protagonist manages to capture the reader's affection and sympathy with their quirks, desires, and fears. Every character is distinctly human, the lines between villain and hero blurred. I think that this book is targeted for a mainly female audience, and women will definitely enjoy Sneed's many characters and perhaps identify themselves in one- or a few- of the heroines. Men may also enjoy this collection and obtain some insight into the female psyche. Everyone can definitely take something away after reading these stories about men and women and relationships and and the often questionable emotion of love.

In this sharply written, perceptive collection of ten stories set in the Chicago area including small, insular towns, the author does nothing to dispel the impression that human connections are never easy, especially when turning sexual, and are fraught with expectations, naïveté, self-doubts, social pressures, and advantages and disadvantages based on age, money, social position, etc.

Coercion, both on a personal level and by the community, can also intrude on relationships. In perhaps the best and most cautionary of the stories, "Quality of Life," twenty-something Lyndsey, though leery at first, allows herself to be drawn into a clandestine relationship with a generous older man, Mr. Fulger. His mysteriousness turns ominous when she wants to terminate this dead-end affair.

In "Walled City," the last and shortest story in the book and a bit of an odd fit, speech is literally banned by the city fathers to facilitate community harmony. In "For Once in Your Life," community pressures conveyed through word of mouth - the beauty shop or the bi-weekly women's association meeting, are more subtly applied, but are no less effective.

Two stories are concerned with the unsettling effects of a celebrity being introduced, first in a high school reunion and secondly in a college literature course. Resentments and anxieties that suddenly emerge have to be reconciled.

Perhaps the most prominent theme in these stories is in the dynamics of how age differentials impact establishing and maintaining intimate relationships. In "Twelve + Twelve," the comfort that a young RN provides the grieving father of her deceased friend turns romantic, but not without the complications of the ex-wife. "By the Way" shows that lies about one's age, especially by an older woman, always lurk and can easily undermine any connection.

In some of the stories, the price of acting on a strong attraction or maintaining a strongly sensual, though problematic, relationship is explored. What is one willing to barter, give up, or embark upon?

All of the stories are told from a female's perspective, though that hardly limits their applicability. The stories, in addition to flowing well, have any number of short, insightful observations. They are not particularly depressing or optimistic; for the most part, they are well within the tell-it-like-it-is genre. Connections are messy and people have a difficult time figuring it all out and determining what to do.

I must admit that I've never been a big reader of short fiction. It's not that I'm not interested in the genre, and it's not that I don't cherish a really beautifully executed short story. I think it's just that outside of reading them for college classes, I don't seek out short stories. Like most readers these days, I'm drawn to the longer narrative, the familiarity of the same characters painted on page after page of a long story. Perhaps it's laziness, but I enjoy not having to reimagine a new world, characters, and situation every ten or twenty pages. It's easier to continue lingering in a world of the familiar with the novel.

How much Christine Sneed's book has changed my opinion of what a short story collection can accomplish. This book was so engrossing, so easily addicting, that I found myself very quickly slipping into the world of each of the new characters. This book made me nearly miss my train stop one morning. Sneed's characters speak so uniquely and confessionally that they easily take form and start leading the reader into their worlds. Within one or two pages of each new story I found myself quickly acclimating to the new climate of the story and feeling the tug of believable, human, and understandable tension. While all of the voices in "Portraits" are female, I was so astounded at how different they each were--young, menopausal, insecure, frustrated, hopeful to a fault--and how relatable. I'm in my late twenties, trying to find a career path, new to love and relationships, and I found it so interesting that I felt such a connection to the protagonist in the story, "By the Way." Even though she's in her late fifties, divorced, close to wrapping up her career as a dance teacher, this woman's voice reached out deeply into my own experience. I could understand her fears, her insecurities, her hopes, as if they were my own. I was astounded that Sneed could create character after character that could speak so honestly about the human experience, and yet each character was so remarkably different and believably drawn.

I will turn to this book again and again not just because it is a joy to read, but because it will serve as an excellent example for my own writing.

And Just as I think it's perhaps a bit lazier to read a novel, I imagine that it might be a bit easier to write one. Only once does the author conceive the main characters and begin to build the world of conflict around them. Again and again in the short story collection the writer is asked to find a voice for their players, and set them in a new and interesting situation. And several times the author must swiftly and deftly dig her character's out of the mess she's sunk them in. Sneed does this so poetically and effortlessly she has truly given me a new appreciation for the short story. And she's written a collection that speaks of larger themes of love, helplessness, and resurrection that bind the stories together in that satisfying feel of a novel. I already can't wait for her next collection.

This book was a gift from a friend who read about it in the Chicago Tribune and liked it, too. It's easy to see why. The stories are readable, colorful, captivating and insightful. You are immediately drawn into them and want to know what's going to happen next. It's interesting to see how a writer such as Ms. Sneed creates her own "portraits" with words, instead of pigments. Her language is poetic, though I had to reach for the dictionary a few times. I agree with the Tribune's literary critic Julia Keller, that the author is a very gifted writer. This book fit into my purse, which made it easy to take to appointments and on the train, as once I began to read it, I didn't want to put it down.

As an avid reader, I've come across works that are both engrossing and lackluster, and "Portraits" is easily one of the most spell-binding and memorable works that I've come across in a long time. Not having been captivated as much by a set of short stories since reading Munro or O'Connor, her work was a true delight to absorb. Sneed conveys so much passion and wisdom in such elegant fashion that I greatly look forward to her next work.

It's hard to live life without stepping on a few people along the way. "Portraits of a Few of the People I've Made Cry" is a collection of stories from Christine Sneed telling stories of people living carelessly, where harsh repercussions are very real. From poor decisions in romance, to risks taken in the search for greater success, and more. The human experience and the regret and doubt that come make for a collection of stories that proves very enticing and hard to put down. "Portraits of a Few of the People I've Made Cry" is an all-out excellent read, sure to enlighten as well as entertain.

The title is deceptive. Theses stories are not about people anyone made cry. A secondary character in one story has given that title to some ink sketches.

Some of these stories are first person, others third person narrowly following the protagonist. The stories are set in contemporary America, but vary in social milieu from sophisticated upper bohemians to working class uneducated. The protagonist in many is a thoughtful, somewhat rueful woman dealing intelligently with winding her way among career and romantic issues. Sneed pays attention to the erotic, and many of the stories are sexy, without usually being very explicit. Many of them involve couples where one partner is notably older than the other, usually, but not always, the man (all couples are heterosexual). Several involve the effect of the prospect of glamour, or the effect of a glamorous person on the lives of people around him/her, but here is nothing trivial about these stories.

What I like most about the stories is the rich reality of the characters. No caricatures like Dickens or stereotypes like T. C Boyle; these folks, even many secondary characters, walk right off the page and inhabit your mind. The stories are not slices of life; you get a sense of the whole life of the main characters, really quite an achievement and the short form. The prose is clean; it does its job well without calling attention to itself, but can rise to moving occasions. The plots are thoughtfully constructed and are notable for reflecting the character of the protagonist. You come away both with the feeling you have learned a little about how people navigate life (or fail to), and that you have more questions. Detailed descriptions of settings from time to time add to the depth of texture - not exactly in style of Balzac, but in his tradition.

The series are not experimental; this is mainstream fiction. However in one story, my favorite, the narrator describes a series of interviews between her and some one who is researching the life of her glamorous late husband. Her account illuminates: her relation with her husband, with the interviewer, with her whole past, and with erotic involvement very reflectively and ingeniously.

Christine Sneed engages you with the first sentence of each story in this compact, tightly written collection. She is fond of John Updike, but in this collection her style reminded me of F. Scott FItzgerald's in Benjamin Button. Each has used colorful, poetic prose to create credible and indelible, though not always likeable, characters and believable scenarios in just a few pages. My best opportunity to read is on the train to and from Chicago, and this book made the commute enjoyable. The only problem was that the stories were so engrossing I nearly missed my stop on the way home more than once!