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charlottekook's review against another edition
2.0
deeply disappointed by this. most of these were pretty dull and the last one was actually offensive. i'm such a fan of middlesex and the virgin suicides and this has nothing of what made them so magical.
ladyj317's review against another edition
3.0
mixed bag. really enjoyed some of the stories (like complainers and air mail) and thought the others were fine. maybe i should have saved middlesex for last :)
erboe501's review against another edition
3.0
I have enjoyed all of Eugenides' novels. These stories were well-written and easy to get into, but I wasn't really blown away by any of them.
I found myself frustrated by the very male-centric viewpoints in the stories. Particularly in "Fresh Complaint"--do we really need stories that perpetuate the narrative that young girls are responsible and/or lying about sexual assaults perpetrated by older men? Multiple stories in the collection involve older men lusting after young women: "Capricious Gardens,""Find the Bad Guy,"--as well as an encounter between an older man and young boy in "The Oracular Vulva." And I was horrified by the end of "Baster." But I did like how "The Oracular Vulva" dovetailed with Eugenides' most famous work, Middlesex.
A lot of these stories are writing from the same perspective of the dissatisfied, disappointed middle-aged straight man.
I found myself frustrated by the very male-centric viewpoints in the stories. Particularly in "Fresh Complaint"--do we really need stories that perpetuate the narrative that young girls are responsible and/or lying about sexual assaults perpetrated by older men? Multiple stories in the collection involve older men lusting after young women: "Capricious Gardens,""Find the Bad Guy,"--as well as an encounter between an older man and young boy in "The Oracular Vulva." And I was horrified by the end of "Baster." But I did like how "The Oracular Vulva" dovetailed with Eugenides' most famous work, Middlesex.
A lot of these stories are writing from the same perspective of the dissatisfied, disappointed middle-aged straight man.
bibi_hlr's review against another edition
dark
emotional
mysterious
reflective
tense
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? N/A
- Loveable characters? N/A
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
etakloknok's review against another edition
reflective
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
5.0
emilyinparis's review against another edition
challenging
funny
reflective
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.0
‘Tomasina loved me, though. She was crazy about me for a while. Some dark hook in our brains, which no one could see, linked us up’
‘Sometimes you thought you heard the music, especially when you were young, and then you spent the rest of your life trying to reproduce the sound’
‘She looks at me, into my eyes. While she does this, she’s not so much my mother as just a fellow human being, with troubles and a sense of humour’
‘Skulls make better pillows than you’d think. Dr Peter Luce (the famous sexologist) rests his cheek on the varnished parietal of a Dawat ancestor, he’s not sure whose. The skull tips back and forth, jawbone to chin, as Alice himself is gently rocked by the boy on the next skull over’
‘All around the village, from the swampy ground up to the tops of the trees, animals are eating each other and digesting with open, burpy mouths’
‘the Dawat word for “vagina” translates literally as “that thing which is truly no good”.’
‘For sixteen years now, Chicago had given Kendall the benefit of the doubt’
‘But Kendall had his doubts as to whether their home achieved an authentic state of interiority. For instance, the outside was always breaking in. Rain leaked through the master bedroom ceiling’
‘With the twisted sheets and blankets on the bed, the pillows either mashed or denuded of their pillowcases to show saliva stains or spew feathers, and the socks and underpants littered like animal skins across the floor, the bedroom was like a den where two bears had recently hibernated’
‘One’s country was like one’s self. The more you learned about it, the more there was to be ashamed of’
‘The clouds, as they always do here, hang low in the sky. It’s as if, having travelled across the ocean, they’re surprised to find land beneath them, and haven’t withdrawn to a respectable distance’
‘The glittering nonsense surrounding the holiday all came down to this, to light and its brevity. You lived, you burned, you spread your little light—then poof’
‘He’d reached the stage of the evening—of evenings like this on the road—when a rosiness came over things, a slow, flavourful, oozing light invading the restaurant almost like liquid’
‘Matthew has the feeling that he is fingering a wound. Not compulsively, as he used to do, risking reopening or reinfection, but just to check if it’s healing’
ridgewaygirl's review against another edition
2.0
Usually in a collection of short stories by a single author there are a few duds; stories that you begin forgetting as soon as you've turned the last page. And there are a few that are fine and at least one that knocks your socks off and leave you light-headed. In a good collection, they'll be a few stories of the knock-out variety and in a great collection, there might be three or four. Fresh Complaint, Jeffrey Eugenides's collection of short stories falls short of even the first variety. Composed over several decades, the stories here are often stale, usually forgettable and in a few cases, misguided to an unsettling degree.
Eugenides is a great novelist, one who does amazing things when given the room to develop his characters and his story, but when restricted to a minimal length, he shows that he's not able to create characters that are anything other than one-note. His stories (with a single exception) center on white middle-aged men of the hapless variety. It's not a type that lacks for representation in American literature, but fine, Eugenides is writing-what-he-knows or something like that, but these sad sack men are written so carelessly as to make any sort of connection or sympathy for them impossible to achieve. I watched them flail and didn't care much one way or the other how things panned out.
There were things I did like. Eugenides writes well, and the stories that involved characters from The Marriage Plot and Middlesex had interest for me as someone who loved both those novels, although they brought nothing new to the table, it was at least interesting to see Eugenides develop his ideas. And the single story that wasn't about a middle-aged white dude had a little meat to it.
Were that it, this would be a lackluster, but fine collection by an author whose heart doesn't beat for brevity. But there were two stories that were much worse than they should have been. One, Capricious Gardens concerns a well-off middle-aged divorced man who picks up a hitch-hiking tourist, an attractive young woman, and offers her lodging at a house he occasionally lives in. Unfortunately, the attractive young woman has a traveling companion who is less attractive and who thwarts the guy's plans of conquest. The story appeared to be aiming for screw-ball comedy, and ended up feeling skeevy, with the middle-aged man's attempted seduction of a woman half his age. But this was written decades ago, and a pass of sorts might be given for a story written in the 80s. Inclusion in this book, however, is less excusable. And, finally, the newest story in the collection involved a teenage girl sexually preying on a much, much older and more powerful man. There was just so much wrong in this tale of a married man who innocently begins a sexual relationship with a teenager that it soured my view of the author.
Eugenides is a great novelist, one who does amazing things when given the room to develop his characters and his story, but when restricted to a minimal length, he shows that he's not able to create characters that are anything other than one-note. His stories (with a single exception) center on white middle-aged men of the hapless variety. It's not a type that lacks for representation in American literature, but fine, Eugenides is writing-what-he-knows or something like that, but these sad sack men are written so carelessly as to make any sort of connection or sympathy for them impossible to achieve. I watched them flail and didn't care much one way or the other how things panned out.
There were things I did like. Eugenides writes well, and the stories that involved characters from The Marriage Plot and Middlesex had interest for me as someone who loved both those novels, although they brought nothing new to the table, it was at least interesting to see Eugenides develop his ideas. And the single story that wasn't about a middle-aged white dude had a little meat to it.
Were that it, this would be a lackluster, but fine collection by an author whose heart doesn't beat for brevity. But there were two stories that were much worse than they should have been. One, Capricious Gardens concerns a well-off middle-aged divorced man who picks up a hitch-hiking tourist, an attractive young woman, and offers her lodging at a house he occasionally lives in. Unfortunately, the attractive young woman has a traveling companion who is less attractive and who thwarts the guy's plans of conquest. The story appeared to be aiming for screw-ball comedy, and ended up feeling skeevy, with the middle-aged man's attempted seduction of a woman half his age. But this was written decades ago, and a pass of sorts might be given for a story written in the 80s. Inclusion in this book, however, is less excusable. And, finally, the newest story in the collection involved a teenage girl sexually preying on a much, much older and more powerful man. There was just so much wrong in this tale of a married man who innocently begins a sexual relationship with a teenager that it soured my view of the author.
lkthomas07's review against another edition
4.0
I'm a big fan of short stories and Jeffrey Eugenides is one of my favorites. These were great pieces. There was a couple I didn't love as much, but by the end, they all redeemed themselves :-)
abbywdan's review against another edition
5.0
Listen, am I ever going to give a Eugenides book fewer than five stars? No. [Looks back, realizes she gave Middlesex FOUR STARS and corrects that problem, since she has been thinking about Middlesex since reading Middlesex and has leant her paperback copy out at least three times and DOES expect it back every time, like an actual monster, which is really saying something since she only ever reads on Kindle now, almost. Realizes she also gave The Marriage Plot four stars, which was frankly a little generous, but she went to a reading and got a signed copy, so SHRUG.]
Somehow, like by barely reading books in my current life stage and never really reading magazines/journals, except for certain lengthly phases of keeping up with the New Yorker, to the detriment of all other consumption of the written word, I had managed to not read any of these stories in their previously-printed locations. The fact that they contain the seeds of some of the novels that I so love does not phase me. In fact, it makes me want to go back and re-read them, but I don't think that will actually happen.
Men are trash, Jeff knows it, these stories are great. I wish the title story had been a novel. That is all!
Somehow, like by barely reading books in my current life stage and never really reading magazines/journals, except for certain lengthly phases of keeping up with the New Yorker, to the detriment of all other consumption of the written word, I had managed to not read any of these stories in their previously-printed locations. The fact that they contain the seeds of some of the novels that I so love does not phase me. In fact, it makes me want to go back and re-read them, but I don't think that will actually happen.
Men are trash, Jeff knows it, these stories are great. I wish the title story had been a novel. That is all!