The Stories (So Far) of Deborah Eisenberg [Paperback]

Deborah Eisenberg (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Avid short-story readers are probably familiar with Deborah Eisenberg's work, fictional chronicles of modern life in Manhattan and elsewhere, that has been published in magazines and in her two previous collections. But both of those earlier books--Transactions in a Foreign Currency and Under the 82nd Airborne--have fallen undeservedly out of print. This new publication corrects that omission, reprinting the stories from those books in one volume, including such titles as "Flotsam," "Rafe's Coat," and "A Cautionary Tale."

From Publishers Weekly

When her first collection, Transactions in a Foreign Currency, appeared in 1987, Eisenberg was already a master of New Yorker-ish stories. She studded her gentle satires of the upper and bohemian classes with moments of startling, acute sympathy: "at the sight of the cloakroom, with its rows of expensive, empty coats that called up a world in which generous, broad-shouldered men, and women in marvelous dresses (much like the one I myself happened to be wearing) inclined toward each other on banquettes, I was pierced by a feeling so keen and unalloyed it might have been called-I don't know what it might have been called. It felt like-well, grief... actually." Eisenberg favors first-person narrators and is an excellent mimic. Her reconstruction of altered states-drunk, drugged, dreaming or simply dazed-recall Anne Beattie. In stories like "Flotsam" or the brilliant "A Lesson in Traveling Light," Eisenberg ventures fearlessly into Beattie territory of baffled post-1960s (or '70s, or '80s) disaffection and claims it for her own. The addition of such works as "The Robbery," "Presents," "The Custodian" and "Under the 82nd Airborne" brings new menace to her oeuvre. With these stories from her 1991 collection (also called Under the 82nd Airborne), her satire becomes less gentle. Its targets range from adultery to American imperialism, and everywhere violence and self-destruction threaten the sad, fragile lives that her characters build for themselves. The reprinting of these two collections as one is sure to win Eisenberg's stories an even wider audience than they now enjoy.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 496 pages
• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux; First Edition edition (March 13, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0374524920
• ISBN-13: 978-0374524920
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #742,813 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Closer to the heart of life's mysteries, September 6, 1999

By 

tb - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Stories (So Far) of Deborah Eisenberg (Paperback)

There is something delicious and maddening about D.E's stories. Delicious because her prose is so cool and lucid, her take on emotional subtext in the interaction between people so accute. Maddening because she brings you so close to people's souls. There is something infuriating about knowing people like that and then having them vanish. In a way it's an argument for novels, though satiation always makes youa little ill.

I think D.E. is a brilliant realist. I've just surfed around the Amazon reader reviews for the first time. It's amazing, but worrisom, all those voices, because so many seem enthralled by fantasy. Eisenberg is about the real. That she is able to elucidate often painful situations with such beauty and wit is our good fortune.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful, February 28, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: The Stories (So Far) of Deborah Eisenberg (Paperback)

Honest, daring, funny, and smart, perfectly calibrated, perfectly observed. No short story writer today is better than Eisenberg at conveying the shifting nuances of self-doubt, self-consciousness, and self-deception.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars brilliantly written stories!, February 27, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The Stories (So Far) of Deborah Eisenberg (Paperback)

The stories in this book, particularly "What it was like seeing chris", "the custodian", "days", "a cautionary tale",and "rafe's coat" are brilliantly written, haunting stories that describe feelings and states of mind that you would have thought to be indescribable. You are really MISSING OUT if you do not read Ms. Eisenberg's stories. I read these over and over again and NEVER tire of them...my book is already falling apart!