Customer Reviews

We Were Ugly So We Made Beautiful Things

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Frightening and necessary. Maybe frighteningly necessary. My favorite piece is "Out of Pounds", which made me laugh and then cringe because I, too, am a fat girl on a bike.

Read it. Read it now.

Dave Barringer's creative snowball continues to roll. Keep an eye on this man.

If there was one book that I could smear on my skin, I'd make it Barringer's. Ever since I first read him on Opium Magazine's web site, I've hung on his every word. He's a magical being more than a writer, and if I were to meet him I'd ask to touch his unihorn.

"We were ugly" is a box of chocolates, each story a different flavor and often an entirely different food group. David Barringer is a musician of a writer, changing topics and tone with each turn of the page in this volume. Perhaps most importantly, Barringer's work is inventive and original and does not stoop to box-of-chocolate or musician analogies. Further, although the stories would be enjoyable at any length, Barringer's brevity makes this a fine volume for the attention-span deprived, allowing for enriching literary pauses during commercial interruptions or the satisfaction of taking in a number of stories during a leisurely bathroom break. Highly recommended.

David Barringer has a way with simplistic worlds, exploding the very minute of a life's experience to present his readers with telescopic view of his character's and their life. Albeit using a mattress as a trope to navigate a relationship and its possible decline in his short story, "The Mattress" or a methodical mental catalog of one's entire life that may not have been so lived in Barringer's "The Catalog". Barringer focuses on the not-so-pretty, the ugliness of life to bring forth tidy biographies, rich characters and he has a wonderful gift on capturing the idiosyncrasies of human behavior.

An amazing triumph for an amazing writer. Barringer's book proves that fiction can transcend the mundane and shows that the beautiful can come from practically anything. These stories will wiggle their way into your heart and not let up until you're pacing around the room wondering what beautiful things you can make. You can't. Give up. Barringer has already done it. Read this book. Now.

"Absolutely outstanding" gush fans of this "wonderful collection" from a Detroit writer; "bittersweet" stories about "bittersweet" "adolescence"; it's "a" "rich little book" that's "always an experience"; and the cover is "simply exquisite."

At many places, this book made me laugh, and in some instances, it made me shake my head in confusion...
The writing kept me thinking, all the time, and that's why I liked it so much. This book requires real reading.

A small town boy with a dream of becoming an astronaut enters a summer camp for those with like-minded desires. His third year at camp, Max is tired of "baby stuff" and tries to fit in with the older campers. He is unaccepted, teased by the other boys. But he has a special friendship in a NASA robot named Jinx. When a tormented Max asks his best friend to help him get into space, Jinx comes to the rescue and orchestrates a major malfunction to do just that. Launched into orbit without sufficient oxygen or supplies for even a day's space travel, Max and his friends have to work together as a team if they ever want to touch Earth again. I don't want to give anything away, but I'll tell you this: Jinx put Max into space, and Jinx can get Max back.

SPACECAMP is a great movie. If you liked Spacecamp, you'll love Dave Barringer's latest book, whatever it's called.