Customer Reviews

The Temporary Life

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The Temporary Life draws you in and captures your attention right from the first page. After receiving this collection of short stories recommended to me by a colleague, I read the book cover to cover; it was not easy to put down. As a reader, I felt rewarded by Wasserman's extraordinary ability to illustrate the various dimensions of his character's personalities and the intricacies that exist within their relationships. This book took me on a journey through the characters' trials and triumphs within a multitude of diverse contexts. Pick this book up for a great read! I'll be keeping my eye out for the upcoming novel.

Eric Wasserman is one of my favorite authors. I had the opportunity to write with him in a fiction workshop at Emerson College in Boston and the privilege to read some of these stories in their early stages. What he's done with this collection is amazing. You'll be overwelmed by his mature voice and insightful point-of-view (he's only 30) found in his characters. "Reunion" is my personal favorite, the tale of a couple coming back together in the years following their son's tragic death of bone marrow cancer. "Next Year in Kona" develops a wonderful and sad character of Gabe Allen who re-enters the world of his very Jewish family when he attends his nephew's bar mitzvah in Los Angeles. "He's No Sandy Koufax" and the final story that lends its name to the collection, "The Temporary Life" are both worthy of being published in such publications as Ploughshares, The New Yorker, or The Atlantic Monthly. Wasserman is an American writer who we will hear from in the future, most likely as a successful novelist. If you like Hemmingway, Fitzgerald, Steinbeck, Joyce as well as contemporary writers like Tim O'Brien, Jonathon Franzen, or Nick Hornby, you'll find shades of those prose writers in his work. This collection is a winner, some of the most interesting prose I've read in recent years.

The stories breathe life into fiction like never before. You feel the characters anticipation, anguish and mundane sense of reality. Wasserman is able to take a simple person and make them into a complex living breathing being. This is a real achievement for a new author. This collection will hopefully breathe life into this young writer's future. If you are thinking about buying this book...stop thinking and just purchase it!