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Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com
Etgar Keret's The Bus Driver Who Wanted to Be God & Other Stories stings and thrills with fierce fables of modern life. Set in landscapes ranging from "this armpit town outside Austin, Texas" to "this village in Uzbekistan that was built right smack at the mouth of Hell," these stories lay their plots' central tensions out plainly: "Dad wouldn't buy me a Bart Simpson doll," one begins. Then they take off like little roller coasters, careening through the pathos of Denis Johnson's Jesus' Son, the clowning of David Sedaris's Barrel Fever, the in-your-face violence of Quentin Tarantino, and the bewildered alienation of Franz Kafka. But readers need not know any of Keret's sources to enjoy his stories fully. The Israeli writer's aphorisms leap off the page and lodge themselves in the mind: "There are two kinds of people, those who like to sleep next to the wall, and those who like to sleep next to the people who push them off the bed." Keret's vernacular prose is fun to read, and his vision of the world is weirdly comforting. Happiness never really flourishes, but small hopes and graces abound. --Michael Joseph Gross
From Publishers Weekly
In this collection of antic tales, Israeli writer Keret chronicles the bitter ironies that determine his characters' daily lives. Set in contemporary Israel, Keret's brief stories most are three to five pages long juxtapose a casual realism with regular flashes of unabashed absurdity, portraying characters on the brink of adulthood forced to confront life's chaotic forces death, justice, love, betrayal for the first time. Keret attempts to render often sad or tragic events with a light touch, and his plots lend a fantastical, whimsical air to simple, everyday reality: a bus driver is obsessed with keeping his schedule, a stewardess falls in love with a passenger, a man is befriended by an angel in disguise, a woman runs a convenience store at the gate to hell. The most successful stories capitalize on their brevity, their irony sharpening as the plot turns on a dime. "Cocked and Locked," for instance, portrays an Israeli and an Arab soldier in a desert standoff; a clever switch of identity reveals that the enemies we create are often born inside ourselves. But Keret's characters can be carelessly drawn, their shifts in sentiment seeming either flip or predictable, as in the story "Good Intentions," which focuses on a coldhearted killer's decision not to murder a good man. Similarly, the longest story, "Kneller's Happy Campers," which follows a young man on a quest for love in the afterlife, seems disjointed and bland after the charms of its conceit wear off. Without strong individuals, the stories here lose critical mass and remain too disparate to command attention as a collection.
See all Editorial Reviews
Etgar Keret's The Bus Driver Who Wanted to Be God & Other Stories stings and thrills with fierce fables of modern life. Set in landscapes ranging from "this armpit town outside Austin, Texas" to "this village in Uzbekistan that was built right smack at the mouth of Hell," these stories lay their plots' central tensions out plainly: "Dad wouldn't buy me a Bart Simpson doll," one begins. Then they take off like little roller coasters, careening through the pathos of Denis Johnson's Jesus' Son, the clowning of David Sedaris's Barrel Fever, the in-your-face violence of Quentin Tarantino, and the bewildered alienation of Franz Kafka. But readers need not know any of Keret's sources to enjoy his stories fully. The Israeli writer's aphorisms leap off the page and lodge themselves in the mind: "There are two kinds of people, those who like to sleep next to the wall, and those who like to sleep next to the people who push them off the bed." Keret's vernacular prose is fun to read, and his vision of the world is weirdly comforting. Happiness never really flourishes, but small hopes and graces abound. --Michael Joseph Gross
From Publishers Weekly
In this collection of antic tales, Israeli writer Keret chronicles the bitter ironies that determine his characters' daily lives. Set in contemporary Israel, Keret's brief stories most are three to five pages long juxtapose a casual realism with regular flashes of unabashed absurdity, portraying characters on the brink of adulthood forced to confront life's chaotic forces death, justice, love, betrayal for the first time. Keret attempts to render often sad or tragic events with a light touch, and his plots lend a fantastical, whimsical air to simple, everyday reality: a bus driver is obsessed with keeping his schedule, a stewardess falls in love with a passenger, a man is befriended by an angel in disguise, a woman runs a convenience store at the gate to hell. The most successful stories capitalize on their brevity, their irony sharpening as the plot turns on a dime. "Cocked and Locked," for instance, portrays an Israeli and an Arab soldier in a desert standoff; a clever switch of identity reveals that the enemies we create are often born inside ourselves. But Keret's characters can be carelessly drawn, their shifts in sentiment seeming either flip or predictable, as in the story "Good Intentions," which focuses on a coldhearted killer's decision not to murder a good man. Similarly, the longest story, "Kneller's Happy Campers," which follows a young man on a quest for love in the afterlife, seems disjointed and bland after the charms of its conceit wear off. Without strong individuals, the stories here lose critical mass and remain too disparate to command attention as a collection.
Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
See all Editorial Reviews
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- After 9/11: Solutions for a Saner World (I Called Along Time Ago...) by Don (ed) Hazen on page 82