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mrsthrift's review against another edition
4.0
This is a collection of 24 short stories around issues of family, sexuality and violence. The stories are sort of sad and dirty, and it made me feel like I was carrying around the secrets that Ms. Hunter unloaded on me. I can't decided if it is better to devour this all at once and totally immerse yourself in her world, or if it would be better to draw it out and read one story a day like a IV drip. The stories are fearless and don't hold any punches. There is a careless, wild, careening madness that drew me through the book. Did I like it? It seems difficult to explain my feelings about this book in simple terms such as "like" or "dislike." It had a strange and strong effect on me.
If you are wondering if Lindsay Hunter is for you, many of these stories are previously published and some are available on the web. Get a little sneak peak of Daddy's here and here and here and a personal favorite, here.
If you are wondering if Lindsay Hunter is for you, many of these stories are previously published and some are available on the web. Get a little sneak peak of Daddy's here and here and here and a personal favorite, here.
denaedivo's review against another edition
4.0
These stories are gruesome, gritty, and genius. I've seen an unfortunate trend in contemporary short stories where the author tries too hard to make their tale "edgy" and "raw," and instead end up with something incoherent and even disgusting. Lindsay, on the other hand, is a brilliant story-teller who happens (at least in this collection) to often tell gross stories. Sometimes only a couple pages long, the stories in Daddy's are all enthralling and each exhibits a mastery of language such that you can't put them down even though you may want to. I don't think the collection will appeal to everyone, and despite the quality of writing the stories were sometimes unrelenting in a way I am having a hard time putting into words. These stories will stay with me for a while, for better or for worse.
jasminenoack's review against another edition
5.0
There is another review I wrote a while ago that talks about how fiction is kind of a response to a feeling that hume metaphorizes as when we live we can only live a sketch, there isn't time for drafting or going back to fill in the missing pieces. And basically in that review I concluded fiction was a way of trying to draft things to go and color in an experience we'd never had and never will have, basically to live a different life. I don't suddenly disagree with that, but reading this book I think it might also be a way of retraumatizing, or even reliving trauma when you can control it. I don't mean to say that I think the things in this book really happened to lindsay hunter because I have no way of knowing that. But I do think this book leaks pain in a way that a lot of books even ones that aren't about terrible things happening don't.
I guess the way I want to review this book is to talk about books it reminds me of.
[b:Famous Fathers and Other Stories|1185451|Famous Fathers and Other Stories|Pia Z. Ehrhardt|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1181736129s/1185451.jpg|1173416]
To be honest, I don't remember the actual stories in famous fathers. I do remember feeling like there was a sense of damage. But for me it felt like a sense of resolved damage. Like it had been worked through and dealt with and was being put out the world more in a sense of, this is what I'm past, not this is what I am. Daddy's doesn't feel that way to me, it feels preoccupied with the damage. Maybe that's a working through instead of a presentation, maybe that is something hunter is manufacturing, but I think that for me at least this book is much more emotionally jarring than pia ever was.
[b:Suburban Pornography|2151537|Suburban Pornography|Matthew Firth|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1266585490s/2151537.jpg|2157034]
Okay honestly this book just came to mind because they are both so sexual. but I mean differently so. While firth tends to be obsessed with the tradition, with the regular, hunter's book obsesses on the strange, the "abnormal" and even the degradation of the sexual object. The sexual object becomes something to mock, to study, to reject if it doesn't turn out to be exact as opposed to the feeling in firth that it is something to be desired a prize to be achieved. This book as tends to make the sexual object the narrational core while in firth the sexual object is outside the narrator. This positioning I think is really interesting and much less common. how often is the focus an object, it definitely creates interesting conflicts between the emotional core of the store and the intense attempt to objectify the narrator.
[b:The Things They Carried|133518|The Things They Carried|Tim O'Brien|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1297915473s/133518.jpg|1235619]
Okay I actually think there is a bit of a war going on in the hunter book. The stories feel like reliving emotional trauma, and like the O'brien I think they aren't being relived in the same physical space but in the same emotional space. Stories about different physical events constantly tend to bring up the same traumatic feelings for me at least which makes me think the more important aspects aren't the events but the senses of depersonalization and abandonment, just like for o'brien what's important isn't necessarily who does what but rejection and guilt.
I guess in short I think this is a really powerful book but also a really difficult book to read.
I guess the way I want to review this book is to talk about books it reminds me of.
[b:Famous Fathers and Other Stories|1185451|Famous Fathers and Other Stories|Pia Z. Ehrhardt|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1181736129s/1185451.jpg|1173416]
To be honest, I don't remember the actual stories in famous fathers. I do remember feeling like there was a sense of damage. But for me it felt like a sense of resolved damage. Like it had been worked through and dealt with and was being put out the world more in a sense of, this is what I'm past, not this is what I am. Daddy's doesn't feel that way to me, it feels preoccupied with the damage. Maybe that's a working through instead of a presentation, maybe that is something hunter is manufacturing, but I think that for me at least this book is much more emotionally jarring than pia ever was.
[b:Suburban Pornography|2151537|Suburban Pornography|Matthew Firth|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1266585490s/2151537.jpg|2157034]
Okay honestly this book just came to mind because they are both so sexual. but I mean differently so. While firth tends to be obsessed with the tradition, with the regular, hunter's book obsesses on the strange, the "abnormal" and even the degradation of the sexual object. The sexual object becomes something to mock, to study, to reject if it doesn't turn out to be exact as opposed to the feeling in firth that it is something to be desired a prize to be achieved. This book as tends to make the sexual object the narrational core while in firth the sexual object is outside the narrator. This positioning I think is really interesting and much less common. how often is the focus an object, it definitely creates interesting conflicts between the emotional core of the store and the intense attempt to objectify the narrator.
[b:The Things They Carried|133518|The Things They Carried|Tim O'Brien|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1297915473s/133518.jpg|1235619]
Okay I actually think there is a bit of a war going on in the hunter book. The stories feel like reliving emotional trauma, and like the O'brien I think they aren't being relived in the same physical space but in the same emotional space. Stories about different physical events constantly tend to bring up the same traumatic feelings for me at least which makes me think the more important aspects aren't the events but the senses of depersonalization and abandonment, just like for o'brien what's important isn't necessarily who does what but rejection and guilt.
I guess in short I think this is a really powerful book but also a really difficult book to read.
melanie_page's review against another edition
2.0
I included way too many links to format this post on Goodreads, so here is a link to my full review on my site, Grab the Lapels.
lyonstails's review against another edition
4.0
The page layout of this book being horizontal opposed to vertical gave it an added dimension that there was extra hidden poetry between all the endless beautiful lines of prose. I've been dipping in and out of this book for a couple of years, but finally committed to reading the full thing, and it takes you on a really great arc.
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