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A review by marshamudpuddle
Your Duck Is My Duck by Deborah Eisenberg
challenging
emotional
funny
reflective
sad
5.0
This really is the work of a master. They are short stories, yes, but they almost read like poems: the concision of language; the evident care that has been taken over it; the surprise in the sentences; the startling juxtapositions and metaphors; the lightness and deftness with which she moves between ideas, images, time periods, points of view, sometimes mid-sentence. I was just continually dazzled by how these stories moved with so much freedom and risk, like a daring jazz solo.
At the same time, they read like novels, too, in miniature: there are webs of interweaving characters, with different, conflicting versions of events; there is movement back and forth across long spans of time; characters' perceptions of each other and themselves and the world around them all shift and change.
I can think of other short story writers who have the same poetic concision (Lydia Davis, for example) and others whose stories have the depth and breadth of novels (Alice Munro, for example) but cannot think of anyone else who does both these things in quite the way Eisenberg does. They are not easy stories, exactly: they do not hold your hand, but require you to pay attention, to piece things together, to make your own connections between things. But put the effort in and they are incredibly rewarding.
At the same time, they read like novels, too, in miniature: there are webs of interweaving characters, with different, conflicting versions of events; there is movement back and forth across long spans of time; characters' perceptions of each other and themselves and the world around them all shift and change.
I can think of other short story writers who have the same poetic concision (Lydia Davis, for example) and others whose stories have the depth and breadth of novels (Alice Munro, for example) but cannot think of anyone else who does both these things in quite the way Eisenberg does. They are not easy stories, exactly: they do not hold your hand, but require you to pay attention, to piece things together, to make your own connections between things. But put the effort in and they are incredibly rewarding.