Scan barcode
melanie_page's review against another edition
4.0
Some of the stories seem anti-women and violent, but there could be something in the translation. Very short and powerful.
nyertryingtoreadeverything's review against another edition
5.0
Brilliant set of short stories. Loved it, a great read.
mattsjaeger's review against another edition
3.0
Keret's "Bus Driver" changed the way I thought about reading and writing. This collection feels much more disposable. The stories are hardly stories. Musings, perhaps. Snippets of dreams. Frenetic and increasingly predictable. I've read about half the stories, enjoyed two or three of them, and have relegated the rest to read on the toilet.
heypretty52's review against another edition
3.0
A very interesting collection of short stories- almost like watching a lucid mind slip into dementia.
kathijo63's review
1.0
Week 51 of the 2017 Reading Challenge: A collection (e.g. essays, short stories, poetry, plays). This book was horrid. It was worse than Jane Eyre and if you know me, you know how much I hate that book.
slcansian's review against another edition
3.0
More lovely little stories from Etgar Keret. Some of them were repeats from his other collection, but there were a few new gems in this volume that really made it for me. The first prose piece is only a paragraph, but it really compels you to think differently about word choice.
bluepigeon's review against another edition
4.0
I first saw Jellyfish, I think, which I liked a lot. Then I read Rutu Modan's Exit Wounds, which I liked. Somewhere in the back where there is an interview she mentioned Keret (and they have worked together before.) And then I saw $9.99, which I also liked, though not as much as Jellyfish. So I decided I should read something by Keret, and The Girl on the Fridge was the first book I could get my hands on. I suppose what I did not expect was the horror aspect of the stories. The rest was familiar from the films I had seen.
I kept thinking the stories reminded me of Gaiman's Sandman comics. Not the parts about Dream and his siblings (the Endless,) but the other parts, like the serial killers who meet up in a hotel, the girl who lives in the building with some bizarre characters, etc. So some horror, some mystery, some bizarre, and some political commentary. If Gaiman, Lynch, and Kafka got together and wrote a bunch of short stories that take place in Israel, this could very well be it.
With that said, Keret does have that home advantage. His stories are very much culturally infused with Israel, the conflict, the everyday urban life. Some stories can easily reproduce the horror of war and conflict, the meaningless struggle. There is always some violence, whether it be a kid being bullied aside from the main story, an Arab being run over for fun by Israeli border patrol, or a severed head of a bunny. Most lead characters are male (if not all?) and most of them are not in charge of the situation. Things happen to them, and usually they suffer. Children have a special place in some of the stories, and they seem to live in the middle of a disturbing life, unaware.
All in all, a pleasure to read, only if you like this kind of thing. If you enjoy the bizarre, the horrifying, the absurd, the surreal, you will enjoy these stories.
I kept thinking the stories reminded me of Gaiman's Sandman comics. Not the parts about Dream and his siblings (the Endless,) but the other parts, like the serial killers who meet up in a hotel, the girl who lives in the building with some bizarre characters, etc. So some horror, some mystery, some bizarre, and some political commentary. If Gaiman, Lynch, and Kafka got together and wrote a bunch of short stories that take place in Israel, this could very well be it.
With that said, Keret does have that home advantage. His stories are very much culturally infused with Israel, the conflict, the everyday urban life. Some stories can easily reproduce the horror of war and conflict, the meaningless struggle. There is always some violence, whether it be a kid being bullied aside from the main story, an Arab being run over for fun by Israeli border patrol, or a severed head of a bunny. Most lead characters are male (if not all?) and most of them are not in charge of the situation. Things happen to them, and usually they suffer. Children have a special place in some of the stories, and they seem to live in the middle of a disturbing life, unaware.
All in all, a pleasure to read, only if you like this kind of thing. If you enjoy the bizarre, the horrifying, the absurd, the surreal, you will enjoy these stories.
tdstorm's review against another edition
4.0
Keret vacillates between tough guy stories told by self-loathing narrators and magical realist tales that evoke a little more sympathy. I tend to gravitate toward the latter. Stories like "Crazy Glue" and "On the Nutritional Value of Dreams" are the standouts for me. But Keret knows how to create a poignant scene in his very short stories. Some of the realist ones, like "Sidewalks" and "Moral Something" are pretty powerful, too.
drokk's review against another edition
5.0
Etgar Keret keeps rocking my boat in a good way,
love his mastery of the short story.
love his mastery of the short story.