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3.34 AVERAGE
3.34 AVERAGE
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I’ve heard nothing but good things about Joshua Ferris’s books ( Then We Came to the End, To Rise Again at a Decent Hour ), so I was excited to dive into his new book of short stories. Nearly every story highlights the imperfection and uncomfortableness of life. Some highlight small, mundane actions while others focus on larger topics like bad marriages.
In one story, we watch as a couple lives out one of life’s most painful conversations: “‘What do you want to do tonight?’ ‘I don’t know. What do you want to do?’ ‘It doesn’t matter to me. Whatever you want to do.’” Another is about a small-time actor/writer obsessing over whether a well-known actress meant to invite him to her party or if it was just a mistake. In the last story, a man wonders why the man he hired to help him move won’t have a proper conversation with him.
There are plenty of in-depth looks at people during their most awkward and neurotic moments, some of which I found oddly relatable. While overall I enjoyed this book, it often felt drawn-out and took too long to get to the point. While it makes sense that an anxious person undergoes question after question in their heads, I didn’t need to know every little detail. The writing itself flowed well, and it makes me want to seek out Ferris’s other books and determine whether his novels are more condensed.
Thank you to NetGalley and Little, Brown and Company for the digital copy!
In one story, we watch as a couple lives out one of life’s most painful conversations: “‘What do you want to do tonight?’ ‘I don’t know. What do you want to do?’ ‘It doesn’t matter to me. Whatever you want to do.’” Another is about a small-time actor/writer obsessing over whether a well-known actress meant to invite him to her party or if it was just a mistake. In the last story, a man wonders why the man he hired to help him move won’t have a proper conversation with him.
There are plenty of in-depth looks at people during their most awkward and neurotic moments, some of which I found oddly relatable. While overall I enjoyed this book, it often felt drawn-out and took too long to get to the point. While it makes sense that an anxious person undergoes question after question in their heads, I didn’t need to know every little detail. The writing itself flowed well, and it makes me want to seek out Ferris’s other books and determine whether his novels are more condensed.
Thank you to NetGalley and Little, Brown and Company for the digital copy!
Interesting situations, I suppose, but every single story ends before any greater meaning is really touched on.
Whether or not that's a flaw instead of a feature is up for debate -- it's entirely possible I'm missing some masterful Flannery-O'Connor-like narrative iceberg beneath the surface -- but "The Dinner Party" seems to me to exemplify the difficulties of skilled novelists pivoting to short stories, instead of the more-commonly-seen other way around (not that the inverse scenario can't also be true -- George Saunders' "novel" being the most notable recent example). Not that Ferris was ever a novels-only kind of author, if such a thing exists, just that he's been mostly lauded for his longer books.
My point is that it seems as though Ferris took a handful of thin novel concepts and fleshed out a vague episode for each one, neglecting to come up with a satisfying ending in favor of what we're supposed to interpret as "requisite short story ambiguity."
And I just think that's a cheap way to write fiction. Again, I could be missing the forest for the trees here, and part of me went into this read already critical because of the title. The dinner party is perhaps the lodestone of drama in modern Western literature, though that may be my theatre bias peaking through a little. You'd expect a book named after one of our most-used narrative vehicles to live up to its implied weight class. I don't think this "Dinner Party" is definitive enough to earn its name.
Whether or not that's a flaw instead of a feature is up for debate -- it's entirely possible I'm missing some masterful Flannery-O'Connor-like narrative iceberg beneath the surface -- but "The Dinner Party" seems to me to exemplify the difficulties of skilled novelists pivoting to short stories, instead of the more-commonly-seen other way around (not that the inverse scenario can't also be true -- George Saunders' "novel" being the most notable recent example). Not that Ferris was ever a novels-only kind of author, if such a thing exists, just that he's been mostly lauded for his longer books.
My point is that it seems as though Ferris took a handful of thin novel concepts and fleshed out a vague episode for each one, neglecting to come up with a satisfying ending in favor of what we're supposed to interpret as "requisite short story ambiguity."
And I just think that's a cheap way to write fiction. Again, I could be missing the forest for the trees here, and part of me went into this read already critical because of the title. The dinner party is perhaps the lodestone of drama in modern Western literature, though that may be my theatre bias peaking through a little. You'd expect a book named after one of our most-used narrative vehicles to live up to its implied weight class. I don't think this "Dinner Party" is definitive enough to earn its name.
It's not that I didn't like the stories in this book. I think maybe I'm just not a short story person? Many of these jumped right into the middle of a scenario, and by the time I had a good handle on what was happening and/or related to the characters it was over. Many without resolution of any kind. I found it difficult to jump from one story to the next, and overall felt relieved when I had finished. This was a very underwhelming "meh" for me.
Thanx to Netgalley and the publisher for providing me with an ARC of this book in exchange for this honest review.
Ferris is one of the few writers who can actually make me LOL, and he doesn't disappoint with this short story collection; although many of them are on the more dour side, and chronicle, for the most part, lives of quiet desperation. I usually don't enjoy short stories, and rarely read them, and although a few of these are not QUITE up to his usual 5 star excellence, they are all readable and some even quite memorable. But I will look forward to Ferris returning to the novel form, at which he is an undisputed master.
Ferris is one of the few writers who can actually make me LOL, and he doesn't disappoint with this short story collection; although many of them are on the more dour side, and chronicle, for the most part, lives of quiet desperation. I usually don't enjoy short stories, and rarely read them, and although a few of these are not QUITE up to his usual 5 star excellence, they are all readable and some even quite memorable. But I will look forward to Ferris returning to the novel form, at which he is an undisputed master.
The first story was different and odd, leaving me eager to read the rest. The subsequent stories didn't grab me and didn't seem to live up to the first. I was beginning to regret reading this book. Ah, but then I read the last story which I described to my husband as devastating. That last story has led me to rethink what I thought were the ho-hum stories in the middle. The mostly male main characters are all what I'd call overthinkers to the extreme, and the passage from John Milton's "Paradise Lost" keeps coming into my head to describe the collection: "The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven."
It took awhile to get into the book as the stories were slow to develop somewhat difficult to get through. There were a few good stories such as More Abandon, Fragments and The Stepchild, but overall it was just a bit of slog to get through.