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bluestarfish's review against another edition
4.0
This is a very powerful debut collection of short stories that cover a range of exploring life from the view points of running, religion, infidelity, families, illness, sex. Some of the stories are overlapping and share a thread throughout the collection. And others gracefully pull in the absurd and fantastical and make it work so well. Most of the stories are set in Lookout Mountain which is a real town that straddles two states (Tennessee and Georgia) and the duality filters through to many of the characters. It is very well written and there is much to think on and enjoy in this collection.
susanbrooks's review against another edition
3.0
Weird short stories, but not quite weird enough or striking enough for my taste.
emilyisreading2024's review against another edition
4.0
Georgia the Whole Time was my favorite story in this collection. Some of the stories were a little bizarre for my taste, although Quatro is definitely very talented.
ebonyutley's review against another edition
2.0
I Want to Show You More is an eclectic collection of stories but it lacks coherence, which is generally not important for short stories except some of them are extensions of each other and others are not. It’s very confusing. I was expecting something along the lines of When it Happens To You, but this book just isn’t coherent. No matter how much I wanted it to be. The stories are also much darker than I expected—lots of infidelity and death. It usually isn’t until the end of the story that any of it made sense. Perhaps, the book is better on a re-read, but I’m not going to invest the time.
davidjordan's review against another edition
5.0
Funny, disturbing, fascinating, thrilling, sad...
I was reminded of how much I enjoy George Saunders’ short story creativity. Quattro is an impressively gifted storyteller with an uncanny knack for spiritual and religious detail, sexual longing and the accompanying euphoria and shame, and fantastic flights of imagination. What a talented writer, and abt an amazing collection.
I was reminded of how much I enjoy George Saunders’ short story creativity. Quattro is an impressively gifted storyteller with an uncanny knack for spiritual and religious detail, sexual longing and the accompanying euphoria and shame, and fantastic flights of imagination. What a talented writer, and abt an amazing collection.
stefanie_ann's review against another edition
4.0
Deeply moving mix of sometimes fantastical, sometimes gothic short stories set, mostly, around Lookout Mountain, GA/TN and tackling the questions in illness, death, religion, infidelity.
jisimpson's review against another edition
4.0
On the surface Jamie Quatro’s fiction focuses on things most people would rather not talk about: sex, religion, death, infidelity, phone sex. But Quatro almost immediately pulls you in, writing with such intense clarity, intelligence, deep wit and beauty about characters who give themselves over entirely to the physical as well as the spiritual in their unfulfilled lives.
Throughout the connected stories, we follow a woman in her late 30s as she begins and ends a long-distance phone-sex relationship with a friend of her husband. The stories range from traditional to fabulist, casting an unflinching and brutally honest eye on the nature of judgment, guilt, faith, family and death, while seeking their reflections in forgiveness, redemption, doubt, and perseverance. This dualism is strikingly evident in the location -- all of the stories take place in and around Lookout Mountain, Georgia, a town straddling the Georgia/Tennessee border (almost a fairytale land with whimsical street names), where Quatro lives with her husband and four children.
In “Decomposition: A Primer for Promiscuous Housewives”, a husband and wife are faced with the corpse of the woman’s would-be lover rotting in their bed after the long-distance affair has been broken off. Quatro compares the sense of loss and grief at the relationship’s end to the stages of decomposition: “III. Active Decay: in which the greatest loss of mass occurs. Purged fluids accumulate around the body, creating a cadaver decomposition island (CDI).” Reading this, I found it equally repulsive and hilarious, but I couldn’t turn away. In a nod to Flaubert’s Madame Bovary, Quatro describes the dead lover with black goo oozing from its crumbling jaws. It’s a story that sticks with you.
“Ladies and Gentlemen of the Pavement” is one of the more fabulist in the collection, about a near-future marathon race where entrants -- depending on their running prowess -- are given (mostly phallic, mostly heavy) statues that they must carry in backpacks throughout the entire race. This was one of the more surprising in the book, and one I can imagine being studied and dissected and discussed at length in any graduate writing program workshop.
Two of the stories pay homage to Eudora Welty and Steven Millhauser in style (she couldn’t have chosen two finer writers to emulate), but with Quatro’s own unique twists.
Overall, this is an exceptionally well done debut from a talented author with great talent and a bright future.
Throughout the connected stories, we follow a woman in her late 30s as she begins and ends a long-distance phone-sex relationship with a friend of her husband. The stories range from traditional to fabulist, casting an unflinching and brutally honest eye on the nature of judgment, guilt, faith, family and death, while seeking their reflections in forgiveness, redemption, doubt, and perseverance. This dualism is strikingly evident in the location -- all of the stories take place in and around Lookout Mountain, Georgia, a town straddling the Georgia/Tennessee border (almost a fairytale land with whimsical street names), where Quatro lives with her husband and four children.
In “Decomposition: A Primer for Promiscuous Housewives”, a husband and wife are faced with the corpse of the woman’s would-be lover rotting in their bed after the long-distance affair has been broken off. Quatro compares the sense of loss and grief at the relationship’s end to the stages of decomposition: “III. Active Decay: in which the greatest loss of mass occurs. Purged fluids accumulate around the body, creating a cadaver decomposition island (CDI).” Reading this, I found it equally repulsive and hilarious, but I couldn’t turn away. In a nod to Flaubert’s Madame Bovary, Quatro describes the dead lover with black goo oozing from its crumbling jaws. It’s a story that sticks with you.
“Ladies and Gentlemen of the Pavement” is one of the more fabulist in the collection, about a near-future marathon race where entrants -- depending on their running prowess -- are given (mostly phallic, mostly heavy) statues that they must carry in backpacks throughout the entire race. This was one of the more surprising in the book, and one I can imagine being studied and dissected and discussed at length in any graduate writing program workshop.
Two of the stories pay homage to Eudora Welty and Steven Millhauser in style (she couldn’t have chosen two finer writers to emulate), but with Quatro’s own unique twists.
Overall, this is an exceptionally well done debut from a talented author with great talent and a bright future.
dajenny's review against another edition
3.0
I have a hard time rating this one. It might be more of a 3.5 for me.
Several of the stories were fascinating and thought-provoking, and will stay with me for some time. There's a definite Christian worldview underlying many of the stories, but they aren't preachy or cliche in any way. The prose is clear and good.
My concern would be some of the sexual edginess this has, with some scenes that many would consider obscene and unnecessary, if not blasphemous. I've read some interviews with the author on the subject, and I can appreciate her desire to show the world as it is and her goal of telling good stories. She mentioned the grittiness of the Bible, and, while I see her point, some of the stories came a bit closer to the edge than I'm strictly comfortable with. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing ... just something to be aware of.
Beyond that, a few of the stories felt unfinished. I walked away from them feeling as though I wasn't quite clever enough to pick up on the hidden meanings behind them.
Several of the stories were fascinating and thought-provoking, and will stay with me for some time. There's a definite Christian worldview underlying many of the stories, but they aren't preachy or cliche in any way. The prose is clear and good.
My concern would be some of the sexual edginess this has, with some scenes that many would consider obscene and unnecessary, if not blasphemous. I've read some interviews with the author on the subject, and I can appreciate her desire to show the world as it is and her goal of telling good stories. She mentioned the grittiness of the Bible, and, while I see her point, some of the stories came a bit closer to the edge than I'm strictly comfortable with. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing ... just something to be aware of.
Beyond that, a few of the stories felt unfinished. I walked away from them feeling as though I wasn't quite clever enough to pick up on the hidden meanings behind them.
laviskrg's review against another edition
3.0
Not what I expected, mostly because I hate reading about religion and church and sermons and shit like that. Overall, the writing was not bad, but I expected erotic fiction and got anything but. Meh. Not great, not terrible.
karencosta's review against another edition
5.0
If you love George Saunders, try Jamie Quatro. This book is crazy, smart, beautiful, and haunting.