Customer Reviews

Stripping + Other Stories (High Risk Books)

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
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1 star:		(1)

 

 

Stripping is a collection of stories about women who somehow didn't fit into society for whatever reason, be it that they were too intelligent, raped, too neurotic, etc. I loved it because of the attention to detail given to each story, and the authentic voice that each character has. My favorite story was the 1st in the book about the girl who develops an obsession with the death of Elvis. Each of the short stories will affect you in some way, and make this a book you won't forget.

This is the best of Pagan Kennedy's books. It has a bunch of short stories that are interesting as well as weird. She doesn't simply redo old themes, she has her own brain, and she's not afraid to use it.

There is exactly one interesting, original story in this collection, and that's the one about the girl obsessed with the skeleton she knows is under her skin. The rest is just utterly boring and of that pseudo-profundity & pretentiousness you display when you're about 14 and really really lonely. For chrissakes, about half of the stories deal with that loss of innocence (or whatever) you experience when you find out that your parents are not omniscient after all - do we really need this? What's worse, the other half just plods along for a handful of pages, going nowhere. I guess it's not so bad when you come across one of these stories in a magazine or whatever, but putting them all in a book just is not a good idea.