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ingagle 's review for:
I Hold a Wolf by the Ears: Stories
by Laura van den Berg
I became a huge fan of Laura from her first book and super short story “Parakeets” which for me is undeniably the best short story ever written. It seems like I will never get enough of these carefully crafted tales about mysterious women, interesting phobias, odd obsessions and newly seen iconic places (in this case – Italy, Iceland, Mexico). For me it’s really doesn’t matter whether it seems like it’s the same one character in all stories. I even can noticed that from her first book it felt that there was always the same character and in “I Hold…” she is just a little older (mid-thirties). By the way, it is wonderful to get older with characters from one of your favourite authors. Anyway, van den Berg is undeniably the master of masters and it seems that with every book she uses less words and says more. As European, I also deeply enjoy clear, as we say here in the north of continental Europe, American structure of this stories with its fantastic abrupt ends. But still I gave the book just 3 because as some reviewers already noticed, true fans of the author won’t find anything new in this collection and deep down I anticipate for Laura to write something much more ambitious, something that will amplify her talent and bring her tales to the next level.