From Publishers Weekly
Fourteen very self-conscious stories from Greenman (
Please Step Back) demonstrate the author's easy hand with formal manipulation, though his command over emotional terrain proves to be circumspect. The collection is bracketed by two very short stories (the title story and Her Hand) built around picture postcards (indeed, postmarks appear at the beginning of each story), and the varied stories between them all move with transparency; Greenman's prose is polished to a fine gloss that handily guides the reader along. While some stories only get a few details—two stories with cloyingly cute and very long titles are among the shortest; their titles virtual punch lines—others spin on, dominated less by substance than by stylistic demands, as with Seventeen Different Ways to Get a Load of That, which documents a relationship breakdown in short numbered cuts. The strongest story, What We Believe We Cannot Praise, about changing dynamics at a law firm, hints at Greenman's talent and begs for a longer treatment than it gets in this chilly if playful collection.
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Review
“Ben Greenman’s masterwork of stories inspired by letters offers fresh insight into the mysteries of intimacy. A seriously brilliant and lyrical piece of modern fiction, with characters so alive and sincere and full of longing, they may climb out of the book and follow you home.” (Simon Van Booy, author of the Frank O’Connor Short Story Award-winning Love Begins in Winter )
“Romantic and compulsively readable,
What He’s Poised to Do will appeal to anyone who’s ever been in love, had a broken heart, or been misunderstood.” (Amy Sohn, author of Prospect Park West )
“Greenman offers quiet, serious stories lifted by occasional humor and linked by instances of written correspondence. ” (New York Times Book Review )
“Ben Greenman’s
What He’s Poised to Do is a terrific collection—a set of elegant, inventive dispatches that knock around space and time, and the wrenching gaps between people, to chart a world of previously unnamed moments and emotions.” (Jess Walter, author of The Financial Lives of the Poets )
“What a fine and unique writer Ben Greenman is. I love his sentences, his precision. I feel like he’s absorbed and digested so much great literature, distilling it all to create his own fantastic universe of stories and ideas.” (Jonathan Ames, author of Wake Up, Sir! )
“This book is like a strobe light—in short, sharp bursts, Ben Greenman renders the world we know into something startling, hypnotizing, and downright trippy.” (Daniel Handler )
“Ben Greenman’s prose is characterized by an effortless musicality. This collection finds him in peak form, simultaneously heartbreaking and hilarious. But it’s the beauty of his language that gets me.” (Rhett Miller, lead singer, The Old 97s )
