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cricca's review
funny
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.0
tophat8855's review
2.0
Sometimes when you read a collection of short stories, there are a few that stick out to you and you know they’ll stay with you for a while. I don’t think any of these will stay with me.
alanffm's review
5.0
If Kurt Vonnegut and Haruki Murakami had a love child, it would be Etgar Keret. Suddenly, a knock on the door is some of the most amazing short fiction-postmodern literature I have ever read.
Sometimes Keret's stories are easy to swallow and sometimes they're not. Suicide and death seem to be recurring themes. Keret has a way of making the surreal seem plausible and the uninteresting irresistible. Ghosts, angels and talking body parts all make logical sense in these perfectly written tales.
Blind Willow Sleeping Woman, and Look at the Birdies have nothing on this book.
Seriously, I wish I had 100 copies to give out to everyone I know. 5/5
Sometimes Keret's stories are easy to swallow and sometimes they're not. Suicide and death seem to be recurring themes. Keret has a way of making the surreal seem plausible and the uninteresting irresistible. Ghosts, angels and talking body parts all make logical sense in these perfectly written tales.
Blind Willow Sleeping Woman, and Look at the Birdies have nothing on this book.
Seriously, I wish I had 100 copies to give out to everyone I know. 5/5
kinklekota's review against another edition
3.0
I feel like with those stories less would be more? They're so tiny and there's so many of them, I struggled to keep any in my mind. I recall very few. However, I was left with a general sense of poignancy and wryness permeating them all. They're very easy to read and well-written.
fireth's review against another edition
4.0
While reading this, I was making notes for future ice-breakers. And I wished many times that I can write Etgar (yes, I'm aware it's translated). If those are not signs that it's a great read, not sure what else will.
izumen's review against another edition
Книга за това "защо е толкова трудно да си човек и защо, по дяволите, все пак си струва усилието".
Преди около седмица Керет представи книгата си в България. Каза ми, че приличам на писател. <3
Преди около седмица Керет представи книгата си в България. Каза ми, че приличам на писател. <3
soy_sputnik's review against another edition
5.0
¡Brillante! ¡Brillante! Mi favorito fue el del Winnie Pooh <3
carinaspencer's review
4.0
I'm listening to the audio version - i.e. the one in which we get to hear Ira Glass say, "fuckin'". #Titillating.
dude_watchin_with_the_brontes's review
4.0
I started reading this for a book club, but then didn't end up going to the book club, which was probably for the best, because apparently everyone except the guy who suggested it were just tearing it apart, and maybe three days after Tree of Life wasn't the best time to hear a room full of gentiles having a hate-fest for a Jewish author. I read most of the book that weekend, and it's hard to separate my feelings about the stories themselves from the feelings of reading a book chock full of Jews, right after Tree of Life, when I work in a school that I'm one of only two Jews working in the whole district. It was emotional.
For the most part, I did really like the stories. I don't think his female characters are particularly strong, and his characters of color are pretty much non-existent. Other than that, though, I really liked the book a lot.
For the most part, I did really like the stories. I don't think his female characters are particularly strong, and his characters of color are pretty much non-existent. Other than that, though, I really liked the book a lot.
briandice's review against another edition
5.0
Etgar Keret became known to me in 2008 when I happened across an excellent interview with him in a 2006 edition of The Believer. I liked what he had to say in that piece, so I picked up a book of his stories ([b:The Nimrod Flipout: Stories|60424|The Nimrod Flipout Stories|Etgar Keret|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1316635601s/60424.jpg|58785]). His style of writing was a marked difference from so many of the MFA graduate story writers that I had come to enjoy and respect - that differentiation was a good thing. Some of his stories are three pages, two pages long. His ability to write a handful of paragraphs that are funny, meaningful and sometimes heartbreaking is nothing shy of miraculous. I enjoyed his first couple of story collections (translated from Hebrew) and was very happy that I had read that Believer piece before tackling that first story. You can really sense Keret working through some serious shit in those first two books of stories - like Vonnegut circling the Dresden bombing dragon in his early novels before slaying it in Slaughterhouse-Five. So I have been looking forward to Keret's next collection to chart his maturity as a writer and to see what new creations his beautiful mind unleashes. This collection was released in 2012, and with all of the other great fiction I have been devouring (thanks to you good people here), Keret fell off my radar until this week.
This collection of 35 stories shows a giant step forward in Keret's writing ability. His dark sense of humor and economical style of writing are very much on display here; there's also a deeper glare into the void that Keret wrestles. More specifically, and from that Believer interview, here's a glimpse into Keret's approach to life:
Yeah, that does sound pretty bleak, now that I re-read it, but you have to trust me that Keret takes that feeling as bedrock given - and then does exactly through his stories what he says in that last sentence. It's just that he isn't willing to sugarcoat any of it. Love or hate these stories, they bang a gong. They will not go quietly, and since Keret has you flipping pages those pages anyway, he'll try to expose that sacred cow of yours and make you ask yourself just why it is so sacred. And then laugh whilst you ponder.
Highly recommended for fans of short stories, and I also suggest reading The Believer interview first if you've not read anything by Keret (available for free in its entirety here: http://www.believermag.com/issues/200604/?read=interview_keret
This collection of 35 stories shows a giant step forward in Keret's writing ability. His dark sense of humor and economical style of writing are very much on display here; there's also a deeper glare into the void that Keret wrestles. More specifically, and from that Believer interview, here's a glimpse into Keret's approach to life:
"I think that any authentic feeling one has of life should be a feeling of defeat. It’s a losing game. You’re going to die. Civilization is going to end. Our society is in decline, and we should feel OK about it because Roman society was in decline and before it the Assyrian one was, and they disappeared off this earth and we will disappear too. If you really grasp what is going on, in some sort of way, you should feel some desperation. But that doesn’t mean that you can’t love your life or try to improve it."
Yeah, that does sound pretty bleak, now that I re-read it, but you have to trust me that Keret takes that feeling as bedrock given - and then does exactly through his stories what he says in that last sentence. It's just that he isn't willing to sugarcoat any of it. Love or hate these stories, they bang a gong. They will not go quietly, and since Keret has you flipping pages those pages anyway, he'll try to expose that sacred cow of yours and make you ask yourself just why it is so sacred. And then laugh whilst you ponder.
Highly recommended for fans of short stories, and I also suggest reading The Believer interview first if you've not read anything by Keret (available for free in its entirety here: http://www.believermag.com/issues/200604/?read=interview_keret