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adriarato's review
4.0
Definitely a page-turner.
The right amount of fiction with the right amount of depth and meaning.
I recommend this book to anyone looking to pick- up their reading habit. Enjoy!
The right amount of fiction with the right amount of depth and meaning.
I recommend this book to anyone looking to pick- up their reading habit. Enjoy!
lbkuj's review
dark
emotional
funny
inspiring
mysterious
sad
tense
slow-paced
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
shannonrose's review
4.0
An exploration of human behavior that will both entertain & dismay.
You'll re-think your interactions with others & your place in the natural world.
This collection is for anyone that has a love of the weather channel and a good Nor'Easter. The Mast Year story is a great reminder to be careful who you share your good fortunes with and who you let into your home.
My favorite lesson? We should all learn to "Abandon some bitterness."
You'll re-think your interactions with others & your place in the natural world.
This collection is for anyone that has a love of the weather channel and a good Nor'Easter. The Mast Year story is a great reminder to be careful who you share your good fortunes with and who you let into your home.
My favorite lesson? We should all learn to "Abandon some bitterness."
mmathis's review
3.0
Dark and disturbing short stories about end times and situations that bring about the worst in humans.
hilaritas's review
4.0
3.75/5, but I'll round up. Cook has a assured handle on her prose, which she applies to a welter of stories that at first seem disparate, but quickly resolve into a pattern. Most are surrealist, some are acerbically funny, and all keep at least one eye trained on the brutal competition at the heart of man and the heart of nature. She has a penchant for stories that read like blood-soaked fairy tales or fables, where the symbolism or subtext bubbles just below the surface. Some of the stories have speculative or SF conceits, but several of the strongest entries shine a macabre light on everyday reality or a dreamlike facsimile thereof. My main complaint about the collection is that she often hits with a sledgehammer when a rock pick would do; there's a brash lack of subtlety to most of her pieces. While this is effective in some aspects (and on a story level, keeps things brisk and entertaining), it feels a bit like the volume is turned up to mask some of the flimsiness of the worldview. I look forward to reading more of her work in the future.
erat's review
4.0
Full disclosure: I got a free copy of this book through Goodreads' First Reads program. Yep.
That said...
I confess, I approached this book with some trepidation. Living in Portland, Oregon, where no issue is too micro or too first-world to inspire frothy indignant rage, activism of all flavors and textures is a daily routine: you can't cross a street downtown without a clipboard being shoved in your face; you can't relax in your living room without people coming to your door asking for signatures and checks; if you edit a Twitter post down to 140 characters and in the process drop some context, an activist will hop on your ass and call you out for a bevy of social and political transgressions that were never part of your message; etc.
Has Portlandia mocked this yet? If not, it's an opportunity lost. I love Portland, but in some ways I also hate it, maybe just a little bit. Recently, I started ignoring Twitter and that's helped. Avoiding blatant activist screeds? Ditto. Some countries have wars, you know. Think about it.
Anyway, this book.
With a title like "Man V. Nature," I guess I had some preconceived thoughts about the book's content. Words like "preachy" came to mind. "Wacko" slipped in once. Seriously, I didn't originally approach this book with any level of enthusiasm, like, at all.
I signed up for the giveaway anyway.
Why? Coincidentally, I had just read Cook's story "Moving On" in Tin House (hands-down the best literary quarterly on the planet. Just my opinion) and I thought it was a pretty amazing story. As it turns out, Moving On is the first story in this book. I didn't see how Moving On related to Man V. Nature, though. Other than its dystopian setting, it didn't seem like an environmentalist rant to me. It was a heart-wrenching story about widows. Hm...I guess this warranted further exploration.
When the book arrived, I wasted no time. I dropped what I was already reading and dove in.
The second reading of Moving On was as sad and touching as the first. Then I got to the second story, titled "The Way the End of Days Should Be." It started off like any other story about destroying the planet, but that didn't last long. It, too, was a story about people and post-tragedy survival. So that's two down and no preaching.
"Somebody's Baby" was haunting, mysterious, surreal, and not preachy.
"Girl on Girl" was a bit weak in my opinion, but again, no sermon, just people dealing with unfortunate circumstances.
The title story was intense and oddly believable, even though I had a hard time picturing the surroundings. I mean, how big was that damn lake?
"Marrying Up" was one of a few stories that felt like caricatures of "traditional" gender roles, although this one had a twist at the end that turned tradition on its ass.
"It's Coming" was absolutely hilarious. Picture a mash-up of two movies, Office Space and Cloverfield, and you'll get the idea. The characters reminded me of the professors and some of the students that my wife encountered when she pursued her MBA. Yes, the people in the story actually exist.
"Meteorologist Dave Santana" was interesting. I'm not entirely sure what Cook was exploring here, but manipulative women and their relationships with unfaithful men were prominently featured. All parties were damned, and deservedly so.
"Flotsam" may or may not have been about biological clocks. I'm not saying anything more than that.
"A Wanted Man" was another of the caricature stories. Perhaps "gender roles" isn't what I'm thinking of here. Maybe it's "perceptions of what men want/do vs perceptions of what women want/do." This funny/naughty/sad story is all about breeding. Let your imagination go wild.
I confess, "The Mast Year" confused me. Are we not supposed to be lucky? Or maybe the story wasn't about luck. Maybe it was about things spinning out of control, or maybe it was about how for every one good thing that happens 100 bad things inevitably follow? I'm not sure. Decent story, just confusing.
The book ends with "The Not Needed Forest." Others here have mentioned Shirley Jackson. I think that's spot on. Brutal.
So, again, "Man V. Nature?" I'm thinking "nature" wasn't "environmental surroundings" as much as it was human nature. Each story explored what people would do when placed in situations where they need to face the ups and downs of being human, whether it's the humanity (or lack thereof) in others or the humanity within themselves. Either way, this book is BLEAK. Severely creative, yes, and engaging, and surreal, and frequently funny, but bleak. You've been warned.
In spite of the book's bleak-ness, I highly recommend reading it. At only around 250 pages you really have nothing to lose. I know I'll be looking for more from Cook moving forward. That, and I'll stop writing off books before I read them.
That said...
I confess, I approached this book with some trepidation. Living in Portland, Oregon, where no issue is too micro or too first-world to inspire frothy indignant rage, activism of all flavors and textures is a daily routine: you can't cross a street downtown without a clipboard being shoved in your face; you can't relax in your living room without people coming to your door asking for signatures and checks; if you edit a Twitter post down to 140 characters and in the process drop some context, an activist will hop on your ass and call you out for a bevy of social and political transgressions that were never part of your message; etc.
Has Portlandia mocked this yet? If not, it's an opportunity lost. I love Portland, but in some ways I also hate it, maybe just a little bit. Recently, I started ignoring Twitter and that's helped. Avoiding blatant activist screeds? Ditto. Some countries have wars, you know. Think about it.
Anyway, this book.
With a title like "Man V. Nature," I guess I had some preconceived thoughts about the book's content. Words like "preachy" came to mind. "Wacko" slipped in once. Seriously, I didn't originally approach this book with any level of enthusiasm, like, at all.
I signed up for the giveaway anyway.
Why? Coincidentally, I had just read Cook's story "Moving On" in Tin House (hands-down the best literary quarterly on the planet. Just my opinion) and I thought it was a pretty amazing story. As it turns out, Moving On is the first story in this book. I didn't see how Moving On related to Man V. Nature, though. Other than its dystopian setting, it didn't seem like an environmentalist rant to me. It was a heart-wrenching story about widows. Hm...I guess this warranted further exploration.
When the book arrived, I wasted no time. I dropped what I was already reading and dove in.
The second reading of Moving On was as sad and touching as the first. Then I got to the second story, titled "The Way the End of Days Should Be." It started off like any other story about destroying the planet, but that didn't last long. It, too, was a story about people and post-tragedy survival. So that's two down and no preaching.
"Somebody's Baby" was haunting, mysterious, surreal, and not preachy.
"Girl on Girl" was a bit weak in my opinion, but again, no sermon, just people dealing with unfortunate circumstances.
The title story was intense and oddly believable, even though I had a hard time picturing the surroundings. I mean, how big was that damn lake?
"Marrying Up" was one of a few stories that felt like caricatures of "traditional" gender roles, although this one had a twist at the end that turned tradition on its ass.
"It's Coming" was absolutely hilarious. Picture a mash-up of two movies, Office Space and Cloverfield, and you'll get the idea. The characters reminded me of the professors and some of the students that my wife encountered when she pursued her MBA. Yes, the people in the story actually exist.
"Meteorologist Dave Santana" was interesting. I'm not entirely sure what Cook was exploring here, but manipulative women and their relationships with unfaithful men were prominently featured. All parties were damned, and deservedly so.
"Flotsam" may or may not have been about biological clocks. I'm not saying anything more than that.
"A Wanted Man" was another of the caricature stories. Perhaps "gender roles" isn't what I'm thinking of here. Maybe it's "perceptions of what men want/do vs perceptions of what women want/do." This funny/naughty/sad story is all about breeding. Let your imagination go wild.
I confess, "The Mast Year" confused me. Are we not supposed to be lucky? Or maybe the story wasn't about luck. Maybe it was about things spinning out of control, or maybe it was about how for every one good thing that happens 100 bad things inevitably follow? I'm not sure. Decent story, just confusing.
The book ends with "The Not Needed Forest." Others here have mentioned Shirley Jackson. I think that's spot on. Brutal.
So, again, "Man V. Nature?" I'm thinking "nature" wasn't "environmental surroundings" as much as it was human nature. Each story explored what people would do when placed in situations where they need to face the ups and downs of being human, whether it's the humanity (or lack thereof) in others or the humanity within themselves. Either way, this book is BLEAK. Severely creative, yes, and engaging, and surreal, and frequently funny, but bleak. You've been warned.
In spite of the book's bleak-ness, I highly recommend reading it. At only around 250 pages you really have nothing to lose. I know I'll be looking for more from Cook moving forward. That, and I'll stop writing off books before I read them.
smay's review
4.0
Great collection of strange short stories. Definitely recommend to anyone who loves Kelly Link.
kawai's review
3.0
Lots to love here, with stories that manage to feel madcap, surreal/fabulist, while managing to maintain emotional depth. All this done with a skillful amount of efficiency, of which, as a writer, I'm insanely jealous.
Cook has a unique style, often employing short, declarative sentences with wildly surprising content juxtaposed against each other, e.g. "'Someone needs help,' he said resolutely, shrugging on his robe. I'm told he fought hard, scrappily, but was dragged to his knees, then dragged down the street."
And yet, as I'd paged through the latter half of the book, something started to wear thin. The stories seemed to have too similar a structure, too similar a plot and themes. Apocalypses upon apocalypses and people losing people they love in creepy and/or violent moments that often happen off-camera or in the blink of an eye (not that I'm looking for such moments to be elongated). Many of the stories ended at the moment of climax, or the penultimate moment; it happened often enough that it left me feeling dissatisfied in aggregate as a reader, as if I'd had a great meal whisked away from me just as I was about to dig in.
Cook is talented and unique, a great writer. Many of these stories would be standouts in an anthology; I have a feeling their impact would be heightened, and the parts I struggled with the most diminished, in that case. Definitely worth a reader's time, as I'm sure most will find much to love in many of the stories.
Cook has a unique style, often employing short, declarative sentences with wildly surprising content juxtaposed against each other, e.g. "'Someone needs help,' he said resolutely, shrugging on his robe. I'm told he fought hard, scrappily, but was dragged to his knees, then dragged down the street."
And yet, as I'd paged through the latter half of the book, something started to wear thin. The stories seemed to have too similar a structure, too similar a plot and themes. Apocalypses upon apocalypses and people losing people they love in creepy and/or violent moments that often happen off-camera or in the blink of an eye (not that I'm looking for such moments to be elongated). Many of the stories ended at the moment of climax, or the penultimate moment; it happened often enough that it left me feeling dissatisfied in aggregate as a reader, as if I'd had a great meal whisked away from me just as I was about to dig in.
Cook is talented and unique, a great writer. Many of these stories would be standouts in an anthology; I have a feeling their impact would be heightened, and the parts I struggled with the most diminished, in that case. Definitely worth a reader's time, as I'm sure most will find much to love in many of the stories.
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