Scan barcode
briandice's review
4.0
Twelve short stories, crafted with acute attention to constructing the perfect sentence, the willful sentiment. "Tall Tales from the Mekong Delta" was by far my favorite, a combination of O'Connor's devil in "A Good Man is Hard to Find" and a West Coast Tama Janowitz heroine.
Blue is a common motif threaded through each story, and while Braverman is a fantastic author I think I should have perhaps spaced out the reading of the stories over more days - the booze/drug fueled women-on-the-verge, dealing with daughters that hate and men that abandon are present in every story, making the collection bleed into one. A friend gave a high recommendation for [b:Lithium for Medea|37785|Lithium for Medea|Kate Braverman|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1391042449s/37785.jpg|37587], that will be my next Braverman.
Blue is a common motif threaded through each story, and while Braverman is a fantastic author I think I should have perhaps spaced out the reading of the stories over more days - the booze/drug fueled women-on-the-verge, dealing with daughters that hate and men that abandon are present in every story, making the collection bleed into one. A friend gave a high recommendation for [b:Lithium for Medea|37785|Lithium for Medea|Kate Braverman|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1391042449s/37785.jpg|37587], that will be my next Braverman.
mollymctouch's review
3.0
So incredibly sad, with too few moments of redemption. Not an easy or enjoyable read.
canadiantiquarian's review
2.0
I fell for Braverman's writing quite deeply in the first pages, and was then pushed out with every subsequent turn of the page. Her use of words and imagery do not make up for many manifestations of privileged disaffection and ennui that mirror each other. Over and over she writes about things coalescing, but it feels more like emptiness merging with emptiness with nothing to say and nothing to anchor.
More...