A review by coronaurora
The Dinner Party and Other Stories by Joshua Ferris

2.0

Found these stories somewhat amateur with the characters wearing their desperation so obviously that if you missed it there's always an intruding narrator or some contrived observer-character lurking a line away to restate the bleeding obvious. Richard Yates has covered this ground so slickly- the quiet tragedy and violence lurking underneath the mannered civility of urban yuppies, the "trapped" married-too-soon couples and families drifting in indifferent sprawling American metropolises who wake up one day to find themselves employment they don't want, kids they can't believe they've had, homes they can't believe they have to pay for, the thwarted American Dream if you will- that Ferris' admirable but failing attempts to retread it seven decades on made me yearn for Yates suicidal prose which had characters that spoke in ways I could imagine real despairing people whole and the all-too-obvious anxieties and desperations bled through without the author calling my attention to it again and again. Sadly for Ferris, a master has cast the same knowing eye over this landscape.