A birthday-party magician whose hat tricks end in horror and gore; a girl parented by a major household appliance; the possessor of the lowest IQ in the Mossad—such are the denizens of Etgar Keret’s dark and fertile mind. The Girl on the Fridge contains the best of Keret’s first collections, the ones that made him a household name in Israel and the major discovery of this last decade.
The Girl on the Fridge: Stories
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Book Description
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Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Advocates of flash fiction contend you can say a lot with a little. Unfortunately, you can also say a little with a little. Israeli writer Keret (The Nimrod Flipout) confirms both with this hodgepodge of 46 sketches, culled from his first collection. There are whimsical tales like Nothing, about a woman who loved a man who was made of nothing because this love would never betray her, and Freeze! about a guy who can stop the world and uses the power to score with hot girls. Despite an appealing, comic voice, many of these pieces feel insubstantial and leave the reader indifferent. Nevertheless, a haunting theme arises as stories featuring violence accumulate: Not Human Beings, in which an Israeli soldier is beaten by fellow officers when he objects to the cruel treatment of an old Arab man, screams in the face of bloodshed, whereas the irritation of the father in A Bet, when TV news reports on an Arab sentenced to death preempts an episode of Moonlighting, suggests how violence has been normalized. Keret demonstrates how the same short form that produces ineffective trifles can also create moments of startling power. (Apr.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Review
"Keret is a brilliant writer . . . completely unlike any writer I know. He is the voice of the next generation." —Salman Rushdie
“Keret may be the most important writer working in Israel right now; certainly he is the closest observer of its post-intifada, post-Oslo spiritual condition. And astonishingly, he is also the Israeli writer closest to the literary tradition of pre-Israel, pre- Holocaust European Jewry . . . Kafka said that literature should be an ax to break the frozen sea within us. Keret is a writer whaling at the ice with a Wiffle ball bat.” —Stephen Marche, The Forward
“Short, strange, funny, deceptively casual in tone and affect, stories that sound like a joke but aren’t—Etgar Keret is a writer to be taken seriously.” —Yann Martel
“Keret can do more with six . . . paragraphs than most writers can with 600 pages.” —Kyle Smith, People
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful
By Dean McRobie
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
A great friend of mine loaned me this book saying is changed her. It had an amazing effect on me too. The book is written in very short stories, no more than a page or three at most. Each story is complete, explores an idea, an event, often with an unexpected component, not really a twist, just unexpected. The book is just the essence of stories. It's like a great red wine reduction ... flavorful, deep in color, hints of what could be a much bigger wine, but concentrated to accent your current mood.I think the first two stories: asthma and the marriage story stuck with me the most. The line in the first story goes something like this:
"When an asmatic says "I love you," and when an asthmatic says "I love you madly," there's a difference. The difference of a word. A word's a lot. It could be stop, or inhaler. It could even be ambulance."
"When an asmatic says "I love you," and when an asthmatic says "I love you madly," there's a difference. The difference of a word. A word's a lot. It could be stop, or inhaler. It could even be ambulance."
7 of 8 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This collection of short stories is very uneven in quality. The weak ones seem merely flippant, the strong ones remind me of prose poems in the tradition of Baudelaire. My first impression after reading a couple of the stories was mostly negative. Upon finishing the book, I realized the power and beauty of the best ones greatly outweigh the flimsiness of the weak. Definitely worth reading.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
This guy gets more done in two pages than most authors accomplish in two hundred.
May 9, 2013
By Bigeyediaz
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
Really spectacular. If you ever wished you could read stories that just got to the good part, these are them... Keret cuts out the backstories and the descriptions and the internal monologues and gets right to the heart of conflict. Spectacular.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
By Daniel
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
I had him sign this book when he spoke in my community, and I almost cried, haha. He is amazing, and I love ALL of his books!
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
By J. Demske
Format:Paperback
Keret's stories are rarely happy, but they're fun. Their fluidity and lack of surface complications, plus the casual bits of surrealism, make them different in the best kind of way: they are different because of a unique simplicity, not because of a fatal dose of complexity and effort. The stories in "The Girl on the Fridge" aren't perfect, yet there are a handful that make the book well worth reading.
I look forward to reading Keret's other books.
I look forward to reading Keret's other books.
4 of 6 people found the following review helpful
By Andrew Corsa
Format:Paperback
I bought this book because I thought that several of the stories in Keret's book "The Nimrod Flipout" were truly incredible. Those stories, which were perfect gems, made a strong and lasting impression on me. They didn't just make me think. They were more than merely clever and odd. They hit me in the gut, in my emotional core.
Very few of the stories in "Girl on the Fridge" did that. But some of them did, and this book of stories is certainly worth reading. Still, many stories seemed frivolous, or merely odd, intelligent, or cleverly written. In my opinion, none was as good as the best stories from "The Nimrod Flipout."
"Girl on the Fridge" is a grab-bag. When Keret is good, he's excellent, but when he's not, reading can require a little effort. For me, the percentage of incredible stories wasn't quite high enough.
I don't want to put this book down too much! Keret is a superb writer, and, even when his stories didn't wow me, I was still impressed by how much he could accomplish in so few words. There are more than 40 stories in this book, each is only a few pages long, and a number of them still manage to pack quite a punch! And many of the rest, which didn't hit me as hard, were still quite clever and odd.
I certainly recommend you read Keret's other book: The Nimrod Flipout: Stories. I think it was better.
Very few of the stories in "Girl on the Fridge" did that. But some of them did, and this book of stories is certainly worth reading. Still, many stories seemed frivolous, or merely odd, intelligent, or cleverly written. In my opinion, none was as good as the best stories from "The Nimrod Flipout."
"Girl on the Fridge" is a grab-bag. When Keret is good, he's excellent, but when he's not, reading can require a little effort. For me, the percentage of incredible stories wasn't quite high enough.
I don't want to put this book down too much! Keret is a superb writer, and, even when his stories didn't wow me, I was still impressed by how much he could accomplish in so few words. There are more than 40 stories in this book, each is only a few pages long, and a number of them still manage to pack quite a punch! And many of the rest, which didn't hit me as hard, were still quite clever and odd.
I certainly recommend you read Keret's other book: The Nimrod Flipout: Stories. I think it was better.
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
Based on other reviews, I thought I'd give this a try, but I was really disappointed and after reading about 7 or 8 short pieces (I can't really say they are stories), I gave up.
By LeahLaugh
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
Etgar Keret is an amazing author and these short stories are a great example. It is a quick read and definitely worth the money!
Most Recent Customer Reviews
3.0 out of 5 stars
Familiarity with Israeli culture helps
The voice of the next generation? Please. If so the next generation is in more trouble than anyone in the previous generations has noticed yet. Read more
Published on April 21, 2011 by Dick Stanley
2.0 out of 5 stars
No idea what was going on
My it is just me, but I honestly did not get any of the stories. I would read a few over and over again just to try and understand what the point or meaning was behind the story. Read more
Published on January 5, 2011 by KinDC
5.0 out of 5 stars
Imaginative Writing
This collection is simply impossible to put down once you start. The stories are incredibly short and yet, rather than coming off as fragmentary, they are worlds unto themselves... Read more
Published on August 7, 2010 by William M. Razavi
4.0 out of 5 stars
"Girl on the Fridge" is an interesting and quirky read.
These quirky stories are interesting, yet cleverly crafted.They seem like amusing little pieces, but they are much deeper, with lots of food for thought about violence and family... Read more
Published on July 13, 2009 by jane veecee
5.0 out of 5 stars
Consistantly incredible
Keret has a powerful ability to craft profound stories in only one to three pages. Having read both The Bus Driver. . . Read more
Published on May 12, 2009 by Zachary Solomon
