Customer Reviews

The Woman Who Cut Off Her Leg at the Maidstone Club and Other Stories

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Each short story is a wonderful work of imagination and creativity. The reader is taken into the lives of very bazaar individuals afflicted with such things as teeth on their body, bodyparts falling off, or those inanormed with the tree outside the bedroom window. Very fun to read if you are in the mood for something out of the ordinary.

Never have i read such a collection of short stories! Julia Slavin is an absolute genious when it comes to mixing extremely unsettling situations with intense dark humor. I can't get enough of this book! Buy it now, read it often.

Slavin's stories provoke a wide range of responses. They are simultaneously funny, sad and disturbing. It was fascinating to read the first few stories and to imagine how these stange situations would end, however, as one read on, the stories became somewhat formulaic and the outcomes unsurprising. I found it hard to maintain my enthusiasm for the book.

Tightly written; tightly reasoned. One of the best collections I've read in recent years. Very witty, very smart... very fun.

This is a first rate collection of stories. Unusual and off the wall, they are a breath of fresh air. I'd recommend Slavin's book to anyone looking for a great read.

Slavin is the best, most bizarre, most fascinating short fiction writer I've read in a while. "Dentaphilia" gave me nightmares for weeks. Buy this book.

This is kick-you-in-the-funnybone prose, viscerally funny, yet edgy, as it conjures up our fears and lets them run loose like the Sorceror's apprentice. The first time in a while that the book I was reading on the subway home didn't allow me to nod off.

I first had these stories read aloud to me by a friend and I could not believe what I was hearing. Slavin writes the most imaginative and original stories ever, on the verge of the sick and twisted, but she manages to do so with both taste and tact. I have honestly never read anything so shocking and amazing in my life. Her short stories actually leave you wanting more. My favorites are Swallowed Whole, Dentaphilia, Blighted and He Came Apart. Get this book!

Slavin is a performer and the stories here are all just a little too easy for my taste--people inside of people and the like, all that clever sophomore magic. A couple stories are pretty nice and mean, but on balance it is not her best work, it's her only work.

Bought it for the title, which was catchy. Let it sit on my bookshelf for months before I got around to reading it. Didn't realize it was short stories when I bought it, but it made for a quick read.

My first impression was: What a WEIRD book. Which it was. That said, it was an interesting read, made for a few entertaining evenings. It's not literature or anything-- I don't think there's any deep new-age wisdom lurking in stories about people who eat the Lawn Boy, or anything like that, but it was nonetheless an ok means of passing the time.

This is the sort of book I'd recommend to friends if they didn't have to pay for it: good for galloping through, but not worth seeking out or pondering over for any period of time.