Reviews

Deceit and Other Possibilities: Stories by Vanessa Hua

casey_sunshine's review against another edition

4.0

This book was quick. It is short, and full of short stories, so I made my way through in just a few days. But also, the stories were fast-paced and brash, with characters weaseling their way here and there. The title is not abstract; every story is centered around deceit and other possibilities. Riveting.

stabigail_'s review against another edition

3.0

It’s more like a 3.5. Some stories were really great (Harte Lake) and some were weaker (the first two of the collection). I’m interested to read more of her work!

li3an1na4's review against another edition

5.0

A fantastic book of short focusing on the immigrant and/or first gen experience, specifically most stories focus on the experience of East Asians. That's an important undercurrent in all the stories. They're stories that focus on people making poor choices and having to deal with the consequences or about to see the consequences coming. The characters in each story have unique voices and stand apart from each other - this isn't something you always see in a short story collection by the same author.

Some stories seem to have inspirations from real life, the obvious Edison Chen story and the obvious Azia Kim story come to mind. However, telling the story from their POVs is pretty interesting. I do think the Edison story went pretty easy on him, he's kind of a major asshole - more so than what was depicted.

I also have to say that unlike other short story collections, I don't think this one was front loaded or back loaded, it was consistent throughout.

4.5/5 rounds to 5.