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A review by micaelabrody
Anagrams by Lorrie Moore
4.0
It took me about 5 pages to fall in love with this book, when the incomparable Lorrie Moore put these two passages on the exact same page:
I've loved Lorrie Moore's stories since I first read Self-Help in nerd camp the summer after 7th grade (when I was probably a little too young to read it). This was a novel (the only other one of hers I've read since A Gate at the Stairs, which I didn't love), but retained some of that short-story tradition, presenting us with a few scenarios for Benna and Gerard, rearranging their lives, until finally arriving at the most ordinary one: two lonely people, living lives touched by their own fantasies.
This book felt in many ways like how I finally felt about Duplex - it's confusing at first, but once you let it wash over you, the whole thing just works. Her prose is great and her characters are sharp. Lorrie Moore knew, as always, knows what she's doing.
"It was important to dizzy yourself with stars, he thought. Too often you forgot they were even there...."
""I watched my friend Eleanor give birth," she said. “Once you’ve seen a child born you realize a baby is not much more than a reconstituted ham and cheese sandwich. Just a little anagram of you and what you’ve been eating for nine months.""
I've loved Lorrie Moore's stories since I first read Self-Help in nerd camp the summer after 7th grade (when I was probably a little too young to read it). This was a novel (the only other one of hers I've read since A Gate at the Stairs, which I didn't love), but retained some of that short-story tradition, presenting us with a few scenarios for Benna and Gerard, rearranging their lives, until finally arriving at the most ordinary one: two lonely people, living lives touched by their own fantasies.
This book felt in many ways like how I finally felt about Duplex - it's confusing at first, but once you let it wash over you, the whole thing just works. Her prose is great and her characters are sharp. Lorrie Moore knew, as always, knows what she's doing.