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kgwens's review against another edition
dark
emotional
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
sausome's review against another edition
4.0
Ranging from a single page, to several pages, the 42 stories that fill the pages of this collection are strange and poetic. Some of the stories were more prose poems than stories, but the collection is so packed and varied that one moves right into the next. It is clear that Jac Jemc is wordsmith of the highest order, whether or not I understand every word. I came to this collection after reading “The Grip of It” and needing more. I have “My Only Wife” to read next. Fair warning: if you seek a story that is traditional in its beginning, middle, and end, this collection is not going to be the one for you.
From “The Dark Spot” - “I had tried to turn the weekend into a science, to make it into a game I could learn the rules for, to escape the cliche of it being difficult to be home for the holidays. If you asked me who I loved most in the world, the people I would list were under that roof, but spending four days with their adult selves, with the spouses they’d chose and the children they’d wrought and the opinions they’d formed where curiosity once lived, was more than I could manage.
Alone in the furnace room, I thought of a person trying to remember a phone number while someone else shouted random numbers in their ear. I thought if trying to sync three clocks perfectly with only two hands. I thought of impossible pulses.
There are times I know I’m a part of something, even when I’m not actively adding to that thing. Like the dim spot on a fluorescent sign, I can feel the other sections buzzing around me, and I know people can make sense of the words, because the light of the working parts is enough.”
From “Somebody Else’s” - “I refused to admit my behavior was not normal. The outside world and I were like cracked magnets. We had been one and the same, but we’d broken apart and could now do nothing but resist. Every time I thought about leaving my home, I wondered what could be waiting for me out there and never came up with an attractive enough answer. It wasn’t even fear. That’s what I keep telling myself.”
From “The Tackiness of Souls” - “Bobby isn’t interested because Minnie isn’t a conventional bombshell and she doesn’t have the confidence that must support strange beauty. Minnie isn’t interested because she’s talked to Bobby before and finds nothing beyond his jawbone appealing. There is no sexual tension. The jokes are lame on both sides.”
From “The Things Which Blind Us” - “I hated when they made me wear the bear suit in public and hated it more for how comfortable it was when I was alone. A conundrum. ... At that point, I’d been confused for days, like trying to see through dense foliage. I hoped it was just the mescaline wearing off. When that effect faded, suddenly, random birds began falling from the sky every few minutes, and when I looked for them near the ground, they were nowhere.”
The last “story” was like a fun love poem, called “Let Me Be Your Tugboat King” - it opens with, “Listen, I’m ready for you to come right over here, darling, and dance with me. We’re pulling in the weight of what we’re waiting for. Dance it down for me. Let me see your sequins shimmer and shake.”
From “The Dark Spot” - “I had tried to turn the weekend into a science, to make it into a game I could learn the rules for, to escape the cliche of it being difficult to be home for the holidays. If you asked me who I loved most in the world, the people I would list were under that roof, but spending four days with their adult selves, with the spouses they’d chose and the children they’d wrought and the opinions they’d formed where curiosity once lived, was more than I could manage.
Alone in the furnace room, I thought of a person trying to remember a phone number while someone else shouted random numbers in their ear. I thought if trying to sync three clocks perfectly with only two hands. I thought of impossible pulses.
There are times I know I’m a part of something, even when I’m not actively adding to that thing. Like the dim spot on a fluorescent sign, I can feel the other sections buzzing around me, and I know people can make sense of the words, because the light of the working parts is enough.”
From “Somebody Else’s” - “I refused to admit my behavior was not normal. The outside world and I were like cracked magnets. We had been one and the same, but we’d broken apart and could now do nothing but resist. Every time I thought about leaving my home, I wondered what could be waiting for me out there and never came up with an attractive enough answer. It wasn’t even fear. That’s what I keep telling myself.”
From “The Tackiness of Souls” - “Bobby isn’t interested because Minnie isn’t a conventional bombshell and she doesn’t have the confidence that must support strange beauty. Minnie isn’t interested because she’s talked to Bobby before and finds nothing beyond his jawbone appealing. There is no sexual tension. The jokes are lame on both sides.”
From “The Things Which Blind Us” - “I hated when they made me wear the bear suit in public and hated it more for how comfortable it was when I was alone. A conundrum. ... At that point, I’d been confused for days, like trying to see through dense foliage. I hoped it was just the mescaline wearing off. When that effect faded, suddenly, random birds began falling from the sky every few minutes, and when I looked for them near the ground, they were nowhere.”
The last “story” was like a fun love poem, called “Let Me Be Your Tugboat King” - it opens with, “Listen, I’m ready for you to come right over here, darling, and dance with me. We’re pulling in the weight of what we’re waiting for. Dance it down for me. Let me see your sequins shimmer and shake.”
erineph's review against another edition
challenging
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? N/A
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.0
lifeinpoetry's review
These felt less like fully realized short stories than short works of poetic prose that defy convention in just about every way which can go either way for me.
silverberry's review against another edition
2.0
I gave this 2 for a small minority of pieces in this book which I thought were good, clever and interesting. The rest were over the top poetry like ramblings that was just lost on me. I don’t want to have to read every single line 6 times to try and work out what is going on. I just want to enjoy a collection of short stories which this is certainly not. It’s a selection of nonsense creative writing pieces, no more than about 7 pages max, most a page and a half, one was a paragraph. Did not enjoy it at all, I fell asleep multiple times trying to get through it and I won’t be reading anything else by this author.
varo's review against another edition
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? N/A
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
2.75
fortheloveofnerd550's review against another edition
1.0
I guess I see what everyone was raving about, but this is not what I'm looking for when I pick up a book.
8little_paws's review against another edition
5.0
This is my new favorite short story collection. Well, really, it's a mix of short stories, microfiction, and poetry, I suppose. Some of the "stories" are only a page long. A lot of the sentences you'll read here might be hard to decipher in the traditional sense, but the words together create a mood. Most of them aren't plot based. This is not the kind of book you want to read quickly, even though it's short. Read a few stories at a time, really think about the sentences and the words, and I think this'll work best. I see Ms. Jemc at various book events around Chicago, I picked this one up after seeing some good reviews at the Empty Bottle during a Pop-up Book Fair. I hope she brings copies of her novel because I'll be buying that next time I see her if she has it with her.
nexttotheblues's review
5.0
Favorites:
A Violence, Marbles Loosed, Bent Back, The Wrong Sister, Judgment Day, The Crickets Try to Organize Themselves into Some Raucous Pentameter, Before We Pass This Way Again, Engrossed, Felted, A Willingness And Warning, The Tackiness of Souls, Hospitable Madness, Recipe for Her Absence, The Hush of the Party.
That's a lot of favorites.
A Violence, Marbles Loosed, Bent Back, The Wrong Sister, Judgment Day, The Crickets Try to Organize Themselves into Some Raucous Pentameter, Before We Pass This Way Again, Engrossed, Felted, A Willingness And Warning, The Tackiness of Souls, Hospitable Madness, Recipe for Her Absence, The Hush of the Party.
That's a lot of favorites.
windycitybookshelf's review
5.0
A Different Bed Every Time is a collection of short stories, and when I say short, I mean short. Several are only two to three pages, and a few were even shorter than that. This collection is perfect for reading during the morning commute on the train, or, like me, for devouring in the span of one afternoon.
Jemc has carried on with her instinctual sense of poetry and signature abstract style. The stories all read like metaphors, and even if there isn't a moral at the end of the story, they kept my brain digging for more insight. The surrealism of her writing makes the stories seem, though they are standalone stories with no self-references, like they all exist within the same strange context, and the same weird world.
I was reminded of the book reports we used to do in high school, and how we'd read a fairly straightforward book (think Frankenstein, or The Great Gatsby, or Catcher in the Rye), and have to analyze it to absolute death, spending hours explaining symbolism that was pretty obvious to the eye. Not to say that these books aren't symbolic, significant, and enthralling, but we get it, the green light is Gatsby's fantasy and Daisy is the American Dream. We get it.
Jemc forces us to scratch and claw our way deeper into the heart of her stories. The impact isn't face-value; it is buried beneath many layers of prose and imagery and abstraction. Even then, the morals may never really appear to us; the stories are ultimately open to interpretation. Personally, I find this desperate digging and all of gratification incredibly gratifying. A book that makes me think, and also keeps me thinking, is a perfect book, and this, A Different Bed Every Time is a perfect book.
Jemc has carried on with her instinctual sense of poetry and signature abstract style. The stories all read like metaphors, and even if there isn't a moral at the end of the story, they kept my brain digging for more insight. The surrealism of her writing makes the stories seem, though they are standalone stories with no self-references, like they all exist within the same strange context, and the same weird world.
I was reminded of the book reports we used to do in high school, and how we'd read a fairly straightforward book (think Frankenstein, or The Great Gatsby, or Catcher in the Rye), and have to analyze it to absolute death, spending hours explaining symbolism that was pretty obvious to the eye. Not to say that these books aren't symbolic, significant, and enthralling, but we get it, the green light is Gatsby's fantasy and Daisy is the American Dream. We get it.
Jemc forces us to scratch and claw our way deeper into the heart of her stories. The impact isn't face-value; it is buried beneath many layers of prose and imagery and abstraction. Even then, the morals may never really appear to us; the stories are ultimately open to interpretation. Personally, I find this desperate digging and all of gratification incredibly gratifying. A book that makes me think, and also keeps me thinking, is a perfect book, and this, A Different Bed Every Time is a perfect book.
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