Take a photo of a barcode or cover
3.94 AVERAGE
3.94 AVERAGE
This short-story collection is what all short-story collections should be. At least, those collections by one author. Each story is individually very strong and poignant. Unfortunately, I read them all at different times, so I didn't really recognize a theme that connected them all (not that a collection really has to have a theme, just it's nice if one notices it and then can discuss). But if you're a fan of the literary short story, pick this book up!
A few days after Theresa recommended this collection to me, we found ourselves sitting in the lunchroom talking about unhappy endings. I prefer my reality stimulating and challenging and I’ll take my fiction the same, but I usually prefer there to be devastation and pain. Something unrequited, something lost. Something learned. When I told Theresa this (and, admittedly, in crasser terms — I said something about liking sad endings) she took the opportunity to recommend Orringer’s collection a second time. I was already halfway through at that point.
How to Breathe Underwater is the mature perspective of every mortifying high school experience played by five strings and a timba. It’s every revenge fantasy gone wrong, it’s the eccentricities of the outcast in the moment before descent. If you want to feel like you’re drowning in words and thoroughly enjoying it, this is the book.
How to Breathe Underwater is the mature perspective of every mortifying high school experience played by five strings and a timba. It’s every revenge fantasy gone wrong, it’s the eccentricities of the outcast in the moment before descent. If you want to feel like you’re drowning in words and thoroughly enjoying it, this is the book.
I feel really ‘meh’ about this book. Like I already said in my review of ‘the apple’, I prefer my short stories to have a somewhat clear beginning, middle and ending, with which I actually mean that I want them to have a clear plot. Don’t get me wrong: I do really value characters and I also like books that are more character driven, but I feel that it is much harder to pull off. With this book, I constantly felt that Orringer was onto something, but it just wasn’t it. The stories felt slightly off; they could have been great but weren’t. It was interesting to read about characters with different backgrounds, though (a lot of them featured Jewish characters and Jewish communities, which is a community I don’t know too much about and am not familiar with). Apart from that, I can’t really say that I felt that this book was anything special.
Julie Orringer looks at the ungainly, gawky, blundering period of childhood and adolescence with a razor-sharp eye -- indeed, I'm convinced she wrote these stories with a blade in hand, carving the words from the paper with surgical, mad precision.
The writing is simple and straight-to-the-point while still being able to rapture the reader's total attention. I felt there was a force pulling me into these stories, and I consumed (most of) them without blinking, honestly, without breathing. As if I was underwater. As if I was learning how to breathe.
It's all about feeling, about the exploration of womanhood and the awkwardness of bodies, of growing up, of living with grief, of understanding oneself, of overcoming it. I think there's something so unsettling about children, how the purity of their minds can be two-fold, a double-aged sword, and how girls destroy themselves most in their early ages, the catiness that is either born or forced into them. In that way, 'How to Breathe Underwater' is a stunning achievement, a true page-turner.
The writing is simple and straight-to-the-point while still being able to rapture the reader's total attention. I felt there was a force pulling me into these stories, and I consumed (most of) them without blinking, honestly, without breathing. As if I was underwater. As if I was learning how to breathe.
It's all about feeling, about the exploration of womanhood and the awkwardness of bodies, of growing up, of living with grief, of understanding oneself, of overcoming it. I think there's something so unsettling about children, how the purity of their minds can be two-fold, a double-aged sword, and how girls destroy themselves most in their early ages, the catiness that is either born or forced into them. In that way, 'How to Breathe Underwater' is a stunning achievement, a true page-turner.
4.5 stars. Excellent storytelling--witty, dark, and full of people who know they should want to be better but simply aren't. Fascinating character studies.
Beautiful short stories that capture a lot of emotion. Most of the short stories deal with sadness, growing up, loss and other difficult feelings, but they end with a small ray of hope for the future. I enjoyed reading them, I cried through some of them, and I related to all of them.