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jennyshank's review against another edition
4.0
http://www.dallasnews.com/entertainment/books/20130104-review-the-miniature-wife-and-other-stories-by-manuel-gonzales.ece
Zombies in the office and video game characters with souls add up to a clever story collection from an Austin writer.
The Miniature Wife and Other Stories
Manuel Gonzales
(Riverhead, $26.95)
By JENNY SHANK Special Contributor
Published: 04 January 2013 05:27 PM
The fantastical is commonplace in The Miniature Wife, the funny and clever debut story collection by Austin-based writer Manuel Gonzales.
A scientist returns from work to find his wife “shrunk to the height of a coffee mug.” A composer talks out of his ears. A narrator reveals that not only has the day-to-day grind of his office job rendered him zombielike, but also that he actually is a zombie, constantly convincing himself not to consume his co-workers’ faces.
In “Pilot, Copilot, Writer,” an airplane circles Dallas for decades, long enough for its pilot to age and die and for a young man who was born on the plane to take over flying. Some of us who’ve been stuck in an endless holding pattern over the Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport might be able to speculate about the genesis of this story.
“Life on Capra II” begins with the irresistible line, “Just as we bag that piece of [expletive] swamp monster, the robots attack.” The narrator is trapped in a repeating cycle of annihilating intergalactic beasts that blow his buddy’s head off. He never finds time to romance “the tomato who runs the commissary, a pretty little thing named Becky.”
Although Gonzales is too subtle a storyteller to reveal that the narrator is a figure in a video game, it becomes clear that’s the case, as he repeatedly finds himself set back in places he’s been before, not knowing why he returned, his weapons reloaded and his buddy alive again. “Life on Capra II” asks: What if those muscle-bound gunmen in video games had souls, desires, fears and a creeping suspicion that their memories and experiences were being toyed with?
Gonzales throws swamp monsters, werewolves and zombies at the reader in part for the fun of it — and they do have a way of enlivening the literary short story — but mostly to probe the questions about humanity prompted by our culture’s delight in these creatures. In what way do these beasts illuminate the human condition? How would a regular person react if he encountered one?
Perhaps a regular guy, upon purchasing a cheap, goatlike unicorn, would tie him in his Houston backyard and sit around with his buddy drinking beer and staring at it, to the detriment of his marriage, as in “One-Horned & Wild-Eyed.” The comedy and significance of this story arise from the way it seems like the result of introducing a discount unicorn into a typical Raymond Carver tale of minimalist domestic realism.
Many of the stories are written in a style of philosophical digressiveness that brings to mind a very different writer, David Foster Wallace, such as in a 100-plus-word sentence from the perspective of a hit man in “Cash to a Killing” that reads, in part, “I wish I could say that killing the guy was an accident, and maybe if you were to take the long view of the situation, take into account the events of his life, those of my life, the arbitrary successes and failures that befell us … you might say it was an accident.”
But enough comparisons to other writers — The Miniature Wife demonstrates that Manuel Gonzales is his own weird, imaginative, witty self. Any story by him is going to take the reader on a ride through a new world that is eerily like our own, yet full of the unexpected.
Jenny Shank’s first novel, The Ringer, won the High Plains Book Award.
Manuel Gonzales will appear at 2 p.m. Saturday at Barnes & Noble, 801 W. 15th Street, Plano.
Zombies in the office and video game characters with souls add up to a clever story collection from an Austin writer.
The Miniature Wife and Other Stories
Manuel Gonzales
(Riverhead, $26.95)
By JENNY SHANK Special Contributor
Published: 04 January 2013 05:27 PM
The fantastical is commonplace in The Miniature Wife, the funny and clever debut story collection by Austin-based writer Manuel Gonzales.
A scientist returns from work to find his wife “shrunk to the height of a coffee mug.” A composer talks out of his ears. A narrator reveals that not only has the day-to-day grind of his office job rendered him zombielike, but also that he actually is a zombie, constantly convincing himself not to consume his co-workers’ faces.
In “Pilot, Copilot, Writer,” an airplane circles Dallas for decades, long enough for its pilot to age and die and for a young man who was born on the plane to take over flying. Some of us who’ve been stuck in an endless holding pattern over the Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport might be able to speculate about the genesis of this story.
“Life on Capra II” begins with the irresistible line, “Just as we bag that piece of [expletive] swamp monster, the robots attack.” The narrator is trapped in a repeating cycle of annihilating intergalactic beasts that blow his buddy’s head off. He never finds time to romance “the tomato who runs the commissary, a pretty little thing named Becky.”
Although Gonzales is too subtle a storyteller to reveal that the narrator is a figure in a video game, it becomes clear that’s the case, as he repeatedly finds himself set back in places he’s been before, not knowing why he returned, his weapons reloaded and his buddy alive again. “Life on Capra II” asks: What if those muscle-bound gunmen in video games had souls, desires, fears and a creeping suspicion that their memories and experiences were being toyed with?
Gonzales throws swamp monsters, werewolves and zombies at the reader in part for the fun of it — and they do have a way of enlivening the literary short story — but mostly to probe the questions about humanity prompted by our culture’s delight in these creatures. In what way do these beasts illuminate the human condition? How would a regular person react if he encountered one?
Perhaps a regular guy, upon purchasing a cheap, goatlike unicorn, would tie him in his Houston backyard and sit around with his buddy drinking beer and staring at it, to the detriment of his marriage, as in “One-Horned & Wild-Eyed.” The comedy and significance of this story arise from the way it seems like the result of introducing a discount unicorn into a typical Raymond Carver tale of minimalist domestic realism.
Many of the stories are written in a style of philosophical digressiveness that brings to mind a very different writer, David Foster Wallace, such as in a 100-plus-word sentence from the perspective of a hit man in “Cash to a Killing” that reads, in part, “I wish I could say that killing the guy was an accident, and maybe if you were to take the long view of the situation, take into account the events of his life, those of my life, the arbitrary successes and failures that befell us … you might say it was an accident.”
But enough comparisons to other writers — The Miniature Wife demonstrates that Manuel Gonzales is his own weird, imaginative, witty self. Any story by him is going to take the reader on a ride through a new world that is eerily like our own, yet full of the unexpected.
Jenny Shank’s first novel, The Ringer, won the High Plains Book Award.
Manuel Gonzales will appear at 2 p.m. Saturday at Barnes & Noble, 801 W. 15th Street, Plano.
kilgore_trout's review
adventurous
funny
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.0
jdscott50's review
3.0
The stories center around a loss of self. Not necessarily an unravelling of a character, but aspects of that character disappear with surreal and bizarre reasons as the cause. A man on a hijacked plane that's been circling for 20 years wonders what will be left for the passengers if they land. Do they restart their old lives or start anew? A man who shrinks his wife contemplates what's missing in his life. His state becomes reduced, yet she gains beyond what he thought capable.
Most of the stories have an emotional punch with a good use of metaphor to emphasize points in the story. Gonzales covers a far range of topics from the surreal, to crime, to zombies. Many of the stories have insightful passages, but generally a weak pull. They lack the full punch that some of the stories could deliver. At times the stories are brilliant, but too often they fell flat.
Favorite parts:
I began to take notes for a story and the notes for a novel, and then notes for another novel and another story, but all they have been are notes. P. 8
"Is twenty years long enough to wipe away bad marriages, poor career choices, too many long hours spent following someone else's dreams?" P. 21
"...that I don't understand how hard it can be to keep our baser selves in check or how much easier it is, ultimately, to go back to the evil we know and understand, the evil we have lived with for so long that it feels an inherent and important part of ourselves, to go back to this evil and tell ourselves we had no other choice, that we didn't opt for this decision, but that really there were never any other options for us to take. I know about choices and about not having choices and how it feels when it seems you have no other choice. P. 149
“We had an impression of ourselves, of who we were, right or wrong, and we acted out our lives accordingly, and as I sat in my car I wondered when we had come to some reckoning of ourselves, some rethinking of ourselves as guys who did exciting, adventurous childish things, when I stopped believing in that story we told about ourselves, because, miserable or not, Ralph was still doing things. Things, for the most part, I wouldn’t do. Things I had no interest in doing, but things, nonetheless, and he had eked out a life for himself that, though just a shadow of the lives we had imagined for ourselves, was at least closer to those lives than anything I had made for myself, and that had now brought him to a Chinaman with a unicorn to sell for cheap.” P. 235
“I think to myself, 'This was for the best. All of this.' And maybe I should feel worse for Roger and the security guard and the reset of the human race, but I can’t help but wonder that maybe we need these kinds of moments. Not moments of quiet, but moments when our lives are upended by violent tragedy, monsters, zombies, because without them, how would we meet the men and women of our dreams? How would we make up for the sins of our pasts? How would we show our true natures—brave, caring, strong, intelligent?” p. 300
Most of the stories have an emotional punch with a good use of metaphor to emphasize points in the story. Gonzales covers a far range of topics from the surreal, to crime, to zombies. Many of the stories have insightful passages, but generally a weak pull. They lack the full punch that some of the stories could deliver. At times the stories are brilliant, but too often they fell flat.
Favorite parts:
I began to take notes for a story and the notes for a novel, and then notes for another novel and another story, but all they have been are notes. P. 8
"Is twenty years long enough to wipe away bad marriages, poor career choices, too many long hours spent following someone else's dreams?" P. 21
"...that I don't understand how hard it can be to keep our baser selves in check or how much easier it is, ultimately, to go back to the evil we know and understand, the evil we have lived with for so long that it feels an inherent and important part of ourselves, to go back to this evil and tell ourselves we had no other choice, that we didn't opt for this decision, but that really there were never any other options for us to take. I know about choices and about not having choices and how it feels when it seems you have no other choice. P. 149
“We had an impression of ourselves, of who we were, right or wrong, and we acted out our lives accordingly, and as I sat in my car I wondered when we had come to some reckoning of ourselves, some rethinking of ourselves as guys who did exciting, adventurous childish things, when I stopped believing in that story we told about ourselves, because, miserable or not, Ralph was still doing things. Things, for the most part, I wouldn’t do. Things I had no interest in doing, but things, nonetheless, and he had eked out a life for himself that, though just a shadow of the lives we had imagined for ourselves, was at least closer to those lives than anything I had made for myself, and that had now brought him to a Chinaman with a unicorn to sell for cheap.” P. 235
“I think to myself, 'This was for the best. All of this.' And maybe I should feel worse for Roger and the security guard and the reset of the human race, but I can’t help but wonder that maybe we need these kinds of moments. Not moments of quiet, but moments when our lives are upended by violent tragedy, monsters, zombies, because without them, how would we meet the men and women of our dreams? How would we make up for the sins of our pasts? How would we show our true natures—brave, caring, strong, intelligent?” p. 300
panda8882's review
4.0
My first read from TheRumpus.net's book club affirmed my decision to join. I joined because (1) I like Cheryl Strayed and therumpus.net likes her (2) I generally like the stuff therumpus.net posts and (3) I wanted to be forced to read stuff I might not otherwise pick. This definitely achieved that objective. I don't think I've read a short story since high school English class. Clearly, I have been missing out. This particular set reads like a set of the author's crazy dreams but he tells them in such a factual way that you become a part of his world, believing that wives can be accidentally shrunk, hijacked planes can circle airports for 20 years and zombies can invade shopping malls. And once you accept those factual scenarios, it allows you to see a 'moral of the story' that you otherwise would have missed and understand that in the grand scheme of things, reality is always a little bit crazy itself too. Loved the way this author wrote. It just made me smile.
sam_dupree_reads's review
5.0
Well I'm going through my Read List and decided to review what I'd gotten through and this lovely book has been my favorite thus far and I wanted to start with good reviews and work my way down...
This book was fantastic. All the stories completely draw you in and keep you interested. I could read an entire novels worth of the title story but many of them have that feel. Sort of, Twilight Zone in a way, in that the small snipets feel complete but could easily be expanded.
I would recommend this book to everyone I know, its such an easy short story collection to plow through.
This book was fantastic. All the stories completely draw you in and keep you interested. I could read an entire novels worth of the title story but many of them have that feel. Sort of, Twilight Zone in a way, in that the small snipets feel complete but could easily be expanded.
I would recommend this book to everyone I know, its such an easy short story collection to plow through.
ashction's review
5.0
There's no denying these stories are weird, but that almost always seems to work to their advantage. Probably one of the best books I've been assigned in college, honestly!
rachelsayshello's review
5.0
This is silver and gold and zombies and unicorns--and one of my favorite books of all time. Gorgeous and weird and perfect.
dannafs's review
2.0
"The whole time, you never realize that the thinking is the problem, that your brain's getting in the way of what your body already knows how to do" (91).