A review by rara2018
Can't and Won't by Lydia Davis

3.0

As a sum of its parts, this is a mediocre collection at best. I respect what Lydia Davis was doing here with the super short stories, but they just weren’t interesting after a while. Reading this made me understand the comments people make when they’re like “I don’t want to hear stories about your dreams.” I will say, the stories that actually had something to say did make me tear up a little. There were a few stories about dogs that made me a little emotional, and another about losing a sister that, being one of the longest in the collection, actually gave the reader a little time to connect with the story being told. Davis also included some humorous stories about things like being vaguely annoyed and the vastness of Illinois. If this had been trimmed a bit to remove the more basic and uninteresting stories, this could’ve been a four or even five star read, but as it stands, there was just too much bogging down the collection—I couldn’t care less about those damn Flaubert stories.