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adonisroses's review against another edition
dark
emotional
funny
hopeful
lighthearted
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? N/A
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
love love love this fucking book i recommend it to Everyone who is looking to get into short stories and magical realism
ajsterkel's review against another edition
3.0
I’m pretty sure this book has one of the greatest covers ever. It’s so perfectly weird. Whoever designed it is brilliant and needs to design more books.
Lungs Full of Noise won the Iowa Short Fiction Award in 2013. I loved one of the other collections that won the Iowa Award, so I decided to give this one a try. Judging by the synopsis, the stories sounded like my kind of bizarre. Now that I’ve read the book, I can confirm that it definitely is bizarre.
Many of these stories focus on characters who are trying to do what society expects from them. Competitive figure skaters make painful alterations to their bodies so they can win competitions. Little girls go to quiet camp and learn to be mute because children should be seen and not heard. Freshman girls dye their skin peacock colors in the hope that senior boys will invite them to prom. This collection makes readers question why people do the things they do. The stories take society’s norms and twist them into grotesque extremes. Even though the plots are fantastical, the characters are relatable. A lot of us have had moments where we think, What the heck am I doing? This is stupid. This book is made up of those moments.
Like most collections, I didn’t love every story. I have to admit that I skimmed a few of them because they are too abstract for my tastes. I lose patience with stories that are all pretty words and no action. Once a piece of writing gets rambley, I’m done.
Still, most of the stories are well-written and have surprising bursts of humor. These are my favorites:
TL;DR: This isn’t the best collection I’ve ever read, and I skimmed some of the stories, but it did give me a lot to think about.
Lungs Full of Noise won the Iowa Short Fiction Award in 2013. I loved one of the other collections that won the Iowa Award, so I decided to give this one a try. Judging by the synopsis, the stories sounded like my kind of bizarre. Now that I’ve read the book, I can confirm that it definitely is bizarre.
Many of these stories focus on characters who are trying to do what society expects from them. Competitive figure skaters make painful alterations to their bodies so they can win competitions. Little girls go to quiet camp and learn to be mute because children should be seen and not heard. Freshman girls dye their skin peacock colors in the hope that senior boys will invite them to prom. This collection makes readers question why people do the things they do. The stories take society’s norms and twist them into grotesque extremes. Even though the plots are fantastical, the characters are relatable. A lot of us have had moments where we think, What the heck am I doing? This is stupid. This book is made up of those moments.
Like most collections, I didn’t love every story. I have to admit that I skimmed a few of them because they are too abstract for my tastes. I lose patience with stories that are all pretty words and no action. Once a piece of writing gets rambley, I’m done.
Still, most of the stories are well-written and have surprising bursts of humor. These are my favorites:
In “Mariposa Girls,” figure skaters discover that some skating maneuvers are easier if they screw the skate blades directly into their feet. Soon, all the best skaters have blades on their feet. To stand out from the crowd, some of the skaters become more extreme. They shave all the hair off their bodies. Then they start skating naked. Then they start painting their bodies. When everybody is extreme, you have to be really extreme to get attention.
“Bibi from Jupiter” is about an alien who comes to Earth to study at an American university. The boys in the dorm building quickly fall in lust with her exoticness. The narrator of this story is an angry, judgmental bitch, which would usually be a turn off for me, but the story is so quirky that I was able to overlook it.
The girls in “Quiet Camp” talk too much. They wear muzzles so that they learn to keep their opinions to themselves, to not ask questions, to not complain when they’re uncomfortable. Good girls are quiet girls.
My favorite story is “Dye Job.” It reminds me of high school and the ridiculousness of teenagers. A group of freshman girls are desperate to attend prom, but they’re not allowed to go unless a junior or senior boy asks them. To get the boys’ attention, the girls try a fad diet that turns their skin purple. The boys definitely notice the purple skin, but as the girls squabble with each other over prom dates, they fail to notice that the boys have a competition of their own going on.
TL;DR: This isn’t the best collection I’ve ever read, and I skimmed some of the stories, but it did give me a lot to think about.
lillahexan's review against another edition
4.0
I loved the stories "Mariposa Girls", "Quiet Camp", and "So Much Rain". But out of all of them, I think I loved "So Much Rain" the most, it was just so strange and lyrical. But "Mariposa Girls" was a wonderful way to start, and I must say the morbidness of it really got me excited to read the rest of the stories.
I think that's what I really love about this collection of stories (though I found some of them boring), they can be grotesque and strange and a little gross, but the writing style is so soft and dare I say, feminine. I just really adore the author's writing.
But despite that, there were some weak stories, including two of them where I have no idea what was going on at all and I found them pretty boring. Thankfully in general the stories are pretty short here, so you're off to the next one pretty quickly.
I didn't like "Bibi from Jupiter". I found the narrator grating, and their ~friendship~ at the end was weird and fake. Bibi was more interesting in the beginning, when her and the narrator weren't friends. But I thought the narrator was kind of a brat. Out of all of the stories, I think this is the one that doesn't fit in with the collection the most. It didn't feel like it had such a different tone and style than the rest of the stories.
I love the cover. Its so strange and soft, its really the perfect cover for this book.
I think that's what I really love about this collection of stories (though I found some of them boring), they can be grotesque and strange and a little gross, but the writing style is so soft and dare I say, feminine. I just really adore the author's writing.
But despite that, there were some weak stories, including two of them where I have no idea what was going on at all and I found them pretty boring. Thankfully in general the stories are pretty short here, so you're off to the next one pretty quickly.
I didn't like "Bibi from Jupiter". I found the narrator grating, and their ~friendship~ at the end was weird and fake. Bibi was more interesting in the beginning, when her and the narrator weren't friends. But I thought the narrator was kind of a brat. Out of all of the stories, I think this is the one that doesn't fit in with the collection the most. It didn't feel like it had such a different tone and style than the rest of the stories.
I love the cover. Its so strange and soft, its really the perfect cover for this book.
nicolecraswell's review against another edition
4.0
4.5 stars.
Weird is definitely a good word to describe most of the stories in this book. However it's the kind of weird that is almost beautifully haunting in it's strangeness. Mellas has a way with language that is unprecedented. My personal favorite stories were Quiet Camp and Mariposa Girls. Both of those have really strong feminist themes that are weaved in with the stories in an incredibly elegant way.
This is not a story collection for those of the faint of stomach, several of the stories describe graphic scenes of gore and body mutilation. In addition, several of the stories feature sexual assault.
I have never read anything quite like this story collection before but I want more.
Weird is definitely a good word to describe most of the stories in this book. However it's the kind of weird that is almost beautifully haunting in it's strangeness. Mellas has a way with language that is unprecedented. My personal favorite stories were Quiet Camp and Mariposa Girls. Both of those have really strong feminist themes that are weaved in with the stories in an incredibly elegant way.
This is not a story collection for those of the faint of stomach, several of the stories describe graphic scenes of gore and body mutilation. In addition, several of the stories feature sexual assault.
I have never read anything quite like this story collection before but I want more.
ryuutchi's review against another edition
5.0
I'm not sure how to describe this book. I am tempted to compare it to Margaret Atwood's short stories and prose fiction, in its focus on the grotesqueries, metaphors and realities of a type of female life made manifest. But Mellas breaks open even the metaphors' metaphors. Her women are boxes within boxes with cocoons within berries and fruits and bugs. She doesn't shy from making manifest emotional pain as physical pain (in the first story of the volume, ice skaters screw the blades directly to their feet). Rape, fear, anger, love, are all broken into component parts and digested in ways that are both surreal and viscerally real. I don't know if I liked the book, but I'm glad I read it.
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