The Brutal Language of Love: Stories (Hardcover)

~ (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Erian has published in hip, commendable places like Zoetrope and Nerve, but this is her first collection. It's a work one reads and likes despite oneself, because the characters can make one frown. There's Beatrice, who tries to make her grades in school by seducing her professors while rather meanly rejecting the advances of a lovelorn freshman, and newly married Shayna, who could never get through her famous father-in-law's books but falls for him anyway. Erian has a way of creating situations that make one read compulsively, like a guilty pleasure. She's good at capturing the dark and sensual underside of life without either celebrating it, or judging it, or presenting it with deadpan cynicism. She cares, and it comes across. A good choice for public libraries, especially with younger readers who deserve someone voicing their concerns. Barbara Hoffert, "Library Journal"
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

"I did it against my better judgment" is an old saying usually accompanied by a rueful shake of the head. The characters in Erian's short stories seem possessed of less-than-better judgment well seasoned with rue, acting out signals from a shadowy part of the psyche coordinating with a peculiarly complicated portion of the heart. A new bride finds herself strongly attracted to her father-in-law. Joyce and her brother Farrell bemoan their mother's obsessive need to meddle in strangers' lives, only to see themselves outbidding her in an effort to do the same. Vanessa, who dislikes wearing clothes, torments her modest sister with her nudity as an adolescent, then in college takes up with a superconservative Egyptian exchange student who's distressed at most of her clothes, sorting her closet into two categories: things she should and should not wear. He abandons her (wearing a forbidden bikini) in a lake, but, paradoxically, she marries him. Isn't it funny how those who make us shake our heads can be oddly endearing? Whitney Scott
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 224 pages
• Publisher: Villard; 1st edition (April 10, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0375504788
• ISBN-13: 978-0375504785
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.7 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,778,659 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars great collection from a stirring new voice, January 6, 2004

By	"shahinc" (Hollywood, California USA) - See all my reviews

let me start by saying that this is the only book i have ever felt compelled to review on this site, and probably will be the only one for quite some time. picking up this book was an impulse buy, as i violated two main rules in purchasing it: firstly, i don't buy authors i haven't heard of; and secondly, i shy away from women in contemporary fiction because i have gotten burned way too much in the last few years. that being said, this collection is one of the finest that i have read in my life. the protagonists are all empowered females, so the book has a feminist flair, but what is most interesting about the presentation is the decidedly anti-feminist undercurrent. erian never leaves things clear cut. when her characters makes conscious decisions that empower them, that allow them to flaunt their power and their sexuality, i found myself cringing because while these are powerful decisions, they are not exactly the right ones, and the characters know it. there is a self-destruction in the exercising of their femininity that is at once wholly new, unexpected, admirable, and tragic. erian's prose is economic and careful, and her stories taunt the reader with abrupt endings and open interpretation. she will end a story right as she leads up to a confrontation that has been building for fifteen pages, and it is here that she empowers her reader, by allowing them to take an active role in ending the story. based on what we have read, we know in our hearts how the story will end based on what we drew from the body of the prose; but our endings will all be different. erian's voice is immediate and achingly contemporary...it makes fare like the canon of oprah's book club seem inept and maudlin. this is power in storytelling. i can't wait for her upcoming novel.

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Left to their own devices..., April 24, 2001

By	Miranda Richardson (New York) - See all my reviews

Left to their own devices the women of Alicia Arian's first collection of short stories often willfully set down the wrong path as a way to feel more alive, even if the consequences are dire. Her heroines are self absorbed, masochists but somehow we, as readers, are compelled to stick with them through the ugliness that is all too familiar. Arian delves into the shameful moments that all of us share without moral proselytizing. She engages us through her acerbic wit and an assured hand. One after the other, each of her stories is a tart treat. Damged goods never were so prized.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Simply Fantastic, April 11, 2001

By A Customer

If you could somehow meld Philip Roth with Carson McCullers, you might get close to the wit and compassion Alicia Erian demonstrates in her first collection of short stories. Then again, Erian's voice is so incisive and orginal, she almost defies comparison. The stories in The Brutal Language of Love don't bother with niceties, striking right to the heart of things people are afraid to say out loud. But there's none of the world-weary pessimism and pseuo-sophistication that plagues so much contemporary fiction: Erian's protagonists are heartbreakingly human, and her prose never sells them short. This book is as entertaining as it is deep, as charming as it is disturbing.

If you like to read even a little bit, you'll be thrilled by this wonderful new voice in fiction.