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A review by wentingthings
Portraits of a Few of the People I've Made Cry: Stories by Christine Sneed
4.0
the title was impossible to resist & the first story won my attention completely. i kept announcing to people:i am reading this book and it is wonderful. i tried to parcel out the stories, which ran out quickly. wasn't impressed by the final 2 stories (the author diversified their offerings, but possibly to their detriment) - the rest was an excellent selection of small, subtle feelings stretched and pulled apart, presented to their banal, devastating conclusions. characters who cannot resist their human foibles and do not necessarily want to - hallways full of mirrors.
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'we keep savaging our own hearts when we look back and wonder what has happened to us, why we all have to suffer the hardship of losing who we once were, even as we know we're lucky to be around to grow older. we watch our faces and bodies change into something we knew was coming but still are ashamed. i love who i once was, i do not know if i will ever love who i am becoming' ("by the way").
'now, however, she knows herself to be a woman afraid of engagement, of exposure, of experience, of change, of strangers, of obsolescence and loneliness. she does know how much she has lived, or what in face living really means, other than the attempt to do things that inspire admiration and envy in others' (alex rice inc.).
'she had seen much worse, and had been part of a very small scandal herself, the one with her husband kris and the divorce no one in their families had understood the need for. there had been no other man, no abuse, nothing truly wrong except that to her mind it had ended - like a pretty good movie, one she hadn't regretted seeing, as she told kris, who hadn't liked this analogy' ("for once in your life").
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'we keep savaging our own hearts when we look back and wonder what has happened to us, why we all have to suffer the hardship of losing who we once were, even as we know we're lucky to be around to grow older. we watch our faces and bodies change into something we knew was coming but still are ashamed. i love who i once was, i do not know if i will ever love who i am becoming' ("by the way").
'now, however, she knows herself to be a woman afraid of engagement, of exposure, of experience, of change, of strangers, of obsolescence and loneliness. she does know how much she has lived, or what in face living really means, other than the attempt to do things that inspire admiration and envy in others' (alex rice inc.).
'she had seen much worse, and had been part of a very small scandal herself, the one with her husband kris and the divorce no one in their families had understood the need for. there had been no other man, no abuse, nothing truly wrong except that to her mind it had ended - like a pretty good movie, one she hadn't regretted seeing, as she told kris, who hadn't liked this analogy' ("for once in your life").