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3.99 AVERAGE
3.99 AVERAGE
While easy to read and full of many stories, I found a repetitive darkness to each story. All the women seemed to be experiencing life as if a glass wall separated them from actually feeling emotion.
Gorgeous stories, beautiful and intense writing about sex, violence, race, motherhood and non motherhood, loss, and love.
They are all wonderful, but my favorite was Noble Things.
They are all wonderful, but my favorite was Noble Things.
adventurous
dark
emotional
hopeful
reflective
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
this book is amazing. roxane gay is one of the best authors of right now. every story contained multitudes and was so interesting and thoughtful and heartbreaking and weird and amazing. i don’t even like short stories and i loved this book. i started reading it a while ago and never finished it and i don’t know why because when i started reading it again the other day i was immediately hooked. truly a work of art. wow.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Sexual assault
Brilliant storytelling. The complex stories from all walks of life aren't told enough. This book is a must read for anyone interested in the complexities layers of women, their struggles, coping mechanisms and aspirations. Wonderful book.
I respect and admire Roxane Gay, the critic. I follow her on GoodReads, and if she endorses a book or sings its praises, I predict I will like it, as this seems to be a trend with books she reviewed in the past that I have read. I’d say our reading tastes overlap quite a bit, and I am always eager to see what she is enjoying.
I respect and admire Roxane Gay, the essayist, even though some of the popular culture subjects she chooses to write about, I am just not into— but that does not make her any less credible or valid. She may be the best example of “writing what you know” as her blockbuster hit, BAD FEMINIST, proves. She can deliver intelligent insight on just about any seemingly trivial topic— Sweet Valley High junior fiction novels, 50 Shades of Gray, Scrabble. She writes with conviction, clarity, and control, without ever coming across as pretentious.
I respect Roxane Gay as a person who advocates her for beliefs and acts in accordance with them, as her recent decision to pull an upcoming book from Simon and Schuster revealed, in reaction to the big publisher granting the bigoted, right-wing extremist, Milo Yiannopoulos, a hefty book deal.
I am not sure if I yet admire Roxane Gay as a fiction writer. To my dismay and my disappointment, I felt very little affection and connection or toward this collection. I went into it expecting it to be one of my favorite reads of the year— it certainly was one of 2017’s most anticipated, and so far, critically esteemed. In truth, I had to sludge through it, and I question if I would have finished some of the stories it if it were written by someone else. Great prose feels like a punch in the diaphragm. Well-constructed sentences are compulsively readable— over and over again, and I really didn’t experience those delights as a reader with DIFFICULT WOMEN.
Of course, as many readers noted, this book incorporates women in difficult situations more than it does actual difficult women. Is part of my disappointment a reaction to this defeated expectation that the title set up? Absolutely. I expected the women in this book to be difficult as renegades and rebels and advocates for womanhood and freedom, and those who possess a strength to reverse their trying circumstances— not sad, static characters entangled in infidelity, abuse, and bleakness. Is this what Gay is trying to prove— that some women just have difficult circumstances they cannot overcome? Sure, I believe it, but I feel like I didn’t deeply empathize for any of the one-dimensional characters, nor did I feel like many of the stories had a deeper thematic purpose. They made the reader feel, but they were lacking motif. Many of the stories seemed to be unfulfilled sexual fantasies with rugged outdoorsmen or flawed men. Sex, almost always, was depicted as a female character’s form of self-harm or violence, and I grew weary reading it over and over again, especially in addition to lost babies.
Gay has some writing quirks that I find to be tiresome. I noticed that she has a tendency to write, in both fiction and essay, “something was until it wasn’t,” For a more precise example of this: the first story, she says ‘We were young once and then we weren’t” (12). It is a wordy way of saying nothing. "And yet." just like that, seems to be a recurring sentence.
Overall I felt many of the stories in the collection seemed either unfinished or lacking cohesion. Too often I found myself surprised when turning the page only to realize the story had ended. The opener, “I Will Follow You,” is terrific. It was included in the Best Mystery Short Stories of 2016. “Break All The Way Down” and “Open Marriage” were two other memorable stories that had me engaged from start to finish. Some of the stories, I just outright did not care for. “Baby Arm” was cringeworthy and out of place, and “La Negra Blanca” felt like a laughably bad contemporary fan fiction of Kate Chopin’s short story, “Desiree’s Baby.” I intend to read AN UNTAMED STATE to determine if my distaste is unjust or if this was just a weak collection, and I am eager to read her forthcoming memoir, HUNGER.
Also posted to http://boldfacejace.wordpress.com
I respect and admire Roxane Gay, the essayist, even though some of the popular culture subjects she chooses to write about, I am just not into— but that does not make her any less credible or valid. She may be the best example of “writing what you know” as her blockbuster hit, BAD FEMINIST, proves. She can deliver intelligent insight on just about any seemingly trivial topic— Sweet Valley High junior fiction novels, 50 Shades of Gray, Scrabble. She writes with conviction, clarity, and control, without ever coming across as pretentious.
I respect Roxane Gay as a person who advocates her for beliefs and acts in accordance with them, as her recent decision to pull an upcoming book from Simon and Schuster revealed, in reaction to the big publisher granting the bigoted, right-wing extremist, Milo Yiannopoulos, a hefty book deal.
I am not sure if I yet admire Roxane Gay as a fiction writer. To my dismay and my disappointment, I felt very little affection and connection or toward this collection. I went into it expecting it to be one of my favorite reads of the year— it certainly was one of 2017’s most anticipated, and so far, critically esteemed. In truth, I had to sludge through it, and I question if I would have finished some of the stories it if it were written by someone else. Great prose feels like a punch in the diaphragm. Well-constructed sentences are compulsively readable— over and over again, and I really didn’t experience those delights as a reader with DIFFICULT WOMEN.
Of course, as many readers noted, this book incorporates women in difficult situations more than it does actual difficult women. Is part of my disappointment a reaction to this defeated expectation that the title set up? Absolutely. I expected the women in this book to be difficult as renegades and rebels and advocates for womanhood and freedom, and those who possess a strength to reverse their trying circumstances— not sad, static characters entangled in infidelity, abuse, and bleakness. Is this what Gay is trying to prove— that some women just have difficult circumstances they cannot overcome? Sure, I believe it, but I feel like I didn’t deeply empathize for any of the one-dimensional characters, nor did I feel like many of the stories had a deeper thematic purpose. They made the reader feel, but they were lacking motif. Many of the stories seemed to be unfulfilled sexual fantasies with rugged outdoorsmen or flawed men. Sex, almost always, was depicted as a female character’s form of self-harm or violence, and I grew weary reading it over and over again, especially in addition to lost babies.
Gay has some writing quirks that I find to be tiresome. I noticed that she has a tendency to write, in both fiction and essay, “something was until it wasn’t,” For a more precise example of this: the first story, she says ‘We were young once and then we weren’t” (12). It is a wordy way of saying nothing. "And yet." just like that, seems to be a recurring sentence.
Overall I felt many of the stories in the collection seemed either unfinished or lacking cohesion. Too often I found myself surprised when turning the page only to realize the story had ended. The opener, “I Will Follow You,” is terrific. It was included in the Best Mystery Short Stories of 2016. “Break All The Way Down” and “Open Marriage” were two other memorable stories that had me engaged from start to finish. Some of the stories, I just outright did not care for. “Baby Arm” was cringeworthy and out of place, and “La Negra Blanca” felt like a laughably bad contemporary fan fiction of Kate Chopin’s short story, “Desiree’s Baby.” I intend to read AN UNTAMED STATE to determine if my distaste is unjust or if this was just a weak collection, and I am eager to read her forthcoming memoir, HUNGER.
Also posted to http://boldfacejace.wordpress.com
This book a very obviously beautifully written. So many of the stories are incredibly gut wrenching and tragic. I found it very hard to read too much in one setting.
A good collection of interesting and thought-provoking short stories.
I do not like short stories.
It took me about a hundred years to finish one Alice Munro collection because it kept putting me to sleep... even though the stories were all only a few pages long, each felt like a portly sleep aid textbook.
But.
Roxane Gay. I would follow her anywhere. Even, apparently, into the depths of a short story anthology. Even, apparently, into the depths of a short story anthology full of heartbreakingly depressing mouthfuls of women and their lives and the men who leave bruises on their throats and thighs and hearts.
I did not love this. But I needed it.
It took me about a hundred years to finish one Alice Munro collection because it kept putting me to sleep... even though the stories were all only a few pages long, each felt like a portly sleep aid textbook.
But.
Roxane Gay. I would follow her anywhere. Even, apparently, into the depths of a short story anthology. Even, apparently, into the depths of a short story anthology full of heartbreakingly depressing mouthfuls of women and their lives and the men who leave bruises on their throats and thighs and hearts.
I did not love this. But I needed it.
first time i've read Roxane Gay's fiction. Vivid and disturbing.