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rachaelwho's review against another edition
emotional
funny
hopeful
reflective
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
I knew I'd read some or all of this one before but really only recognized a few stories. It's Lorrie Moore, what can you say? It's great. This one has a lot to do with aging and the specific lonelinesses that go with all that.
This one was read by the author and I'm beginning to realize I prefer women of a certain age to read to me. Not that surprising.
This one was read by the author and I'm beginning to realize I prefer women of a certain age to read to me. Not that surprising.
toniclark's review against another edition
4.0
I loved this collection of short stories by Lorrie Moore, especially loved the audio, with Moore herself as narrator. Although she’s been slightly criticized for using too many analogies and similes, I find them fresh and interesting and often LOL funny. And they make you stop and think. “The walls, like love, were trompe l’oeil.” “The candle, like love, flickered.” “Aloneness was like riding a bike. At gunpoint. With the gun in your own hand. Aloneness was the air in your tires, the wind in your hair.”
Her language and humor (offbeat and oblique, as Guardian reviewer Sophia Martelli put it) create an underlying web of connections running beneath the individual stories. In this collection, for example, there are many instances of different kinds of bark, barking, even debarking (as in disembarking). I never tire of her wit.
Her language and humor (offbeat and oblique, as Guardian reviewer Sophia Martelli put it) create an underlying web of connections running beneath the individual stories. In this collection, for example, there are many instances of different kinds of bark, barking, even debarking (as in disembarking). I never tire of her wit.
silviapelizzari's review against another edition
4.0
Mi taglierei una mano per poter scrivere come Lorrie Moore. Ho adorato questi racconti per come sono scritti e per come le parole mi stanno rimanendo appiccicate, per come le storie mi stanno girovagando nello stomaco, senza andarsene. Quello che non mi torna - e forse è troppo presto per avere una risposta, avendo finito questo libro oggi - è dove voleva portarmi l'autrice, cosa voleva farmi vedere davvero e cosa voleva dirmi. Lo intuisco, ma non lo riesco a scrivere, non lo riuscirei a spiegare a mia nonna, e allora, come diceva Einstein, significa che ancora non l'ho capito davvero.
spinstah's review against another edition
4.0
I remember enjoying this, but I've had a busy few days since finishing it and that's about all I can say at this point. Ooops.
arielamandah's review against another edition
3.0
I wish I had loved this. I WANTED to love it. The stories were dark, sad, and a little beside the point? They didn’t grab me or carry me along. Perhaps other collections of hers display her genius better, but Bark wasn’t the one for me.
amycrea's review against another edition
4.0
Moore just keeps getting better and better. Her wry wit is always present, but she uses it in service of the characters and the stories.
alittlebird's review against another edition
5.0
This is not what I'd call a happy read, but there are clever and sometimes even ridiculous things that happen within these stories of stagnation and despondency. And the writing is lyrical and visual but never distracting. Moore has a very adept hand and a very cutting and insightful view of the human condition.
rbreade's review against another edition
Lorrie Moore is at it again in these eight short stories, brilliantly deploying the exclamation mark--what other writer has so utterly colonized a punctuation mark in her name?--lavishing fresh dialogue and description across every page, sharp observations by the ton, and mixing wry, gentle humor into even the saddest of situations.
Examples, of course. In "Thank You for Having Me," the bridesmaids at a wedding "were in pastels: one the light peach of baby aspirin; one the seafoam green of low-dose clonazepam; the other the pale daffodil of the next lowest dose of clonazepam. What a good idea to have the look of Big Pharma at your wedding. Why hadn't I thought of that?" Not only is this fresh and funny, it characterizes the first-person narrator so much better than other approaches, such as, perhaps, the narrator ruminating on the pills she's taken, or continues to take, for a variety of troubles, unconnected to anything going on in the story at hand.
Tiny details of description? Moore doesn't skimp on them. In "Debarking," a refrigerator "puckered open, then whooshed shut." Puckered. Exactly.
Later in the same story, the narrator muses on dating after divorce, well into middle-age: "It had been so long, the whole thing seemed a kind of distant civilization, a planet of the apings!--graying, human flotsam with scorched internal landscapes mimicking the young, picking up where they had left off decades ago, if only they could recall where the hell that was."
Note one of her trademark exclamation marks as she quickly and vividly sketches a complex emotional undertaking in only a few sentences.
Well, more of this is available on each and every page.
Examples, of course. In "Thank You for Having Me," the bridesmaids at a wedding "were in pastels: one the light peach of baby aspirin; one the seafoam green of low-dose clonazepam; the other the pale daffodil of the next lowest dose of clonazepam. What a good idea to have the look of Big Pharma at your wedding. Why hadn't I thought of that?" Not only is this fresh and funny, it characterizes the first-person narrator so much better than other approaches, such as, perhaps, the narrator ruminating on the pills she's taken, or continues to take, for a variety of troubles, unconnected to anything going on in the story at hand.
Tiny details of description? Moore doesn't skimp on them. In "Debarking," a refrigerator "puckered open, then whooshed shut." Puckered. Exactly.
Later in the same story, the narrator muses on dating after divorce, well into middle-age: "It had been so long, the whole thing seemed a kind of distant civilization, a planet of the apings!--graying, human flotsam with scorched internal landscapes mimicking the young, picking up where they had left off decades ago, if only they could recall where the hell that was."
Note one of her trademark exclamation marks as she quickly and vividly sketches a complex emotional undertaking in only a few sentences.
Well, more of this is available on each and every page.
nssutton's review against another edition
3.0
This was worth the wait. It's not my favorite of Moore's, but it felt so good to be in her world again, tangled in her sentences, ear cocked to her asides. The story's felt like a small peep hole into someone else's life, letting you pull back before getting too involved. These with a bit more political than I remembered her work being. I much preferred the second half of the collection, from Wings to the very end.