Customer Reviews

Home Remedies (Harvest Original)

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Angela Pneuman has a sharp sense of humor and great delivery in her short story collection, Home Remedies. Once you read the first story about a young girl who begs her skilled, elderly babysitter to take out her tonsils, you're sucked into worlds you've never seen quite like Pneuman describes them.

A Christian girl, not allowed to date, tries to hide her phone calls with a boy. But the young girl's perceptions are off; the boy isn't interested when his old girlfriend comes back to him. She has to discover this scenario in the lunchroom at school. Tragedy and comedy are meted out side by side in these stories of conflict, parental control, Christian values and the harsh realities of life.

The greatest gifts of these stories are Pneuman's endings to every story. She leaves the readers wondering in their own mind how everything played out. She doesn't give you the sugarcoated, everything-turns-out-fine kind of ending that the reader may expect. She leaves it up to the reader to decide how the stories end. Were the girl's tonsils removed? Did the boy dump the girl because she was Christian and couldn't date?

Armchair Interviews says: Riveting stories for any reader.

When I hear people talk about Pneuman's stories, they converge on some of the more unforgettable moments, as when a nanny heats an icepick to perform a home tonsillectomy or when a daughter raises a golf club to her mother. True, those are the kind of thrilling moments many people read for, but I think these stories are also filled with subtle humor, beautiful prose and achingly observed mother-daughter relationships. Plus this book will really make you think about the plateaus that follow a loss of faith.

These stories offer a startling view of life at its seminal point. We see in these narratives, which generally feature young female protagonists growing up under variously oppressive circumstances, how the ravages of living are not reserved for the hardened or the experienced, but are often thrust upon the young with brutal exactness. We see also that the experienced are not necessarily the strong, or the wise, or the compassionate. In Pneuman's literary prism, a narrow ray of American life--that of young girls in rural Kentucky--disperses into its full, wicked, discomfiting, tender, spirited, and rousing spectrum. This is not only an important book, it is also a truly enjoyable read.

The stories capture pivotal moments in the lives of young women. Some of the moments are painful - to the young characters, and to the reader as well. Interestingly, I read several of the stories 10 days ago and I have found myself, on several occasions, thinking about the young women, the decisions they made, their families and friends, and their futures.

An important collection of stories that resonated with this 30-something woman.