A review by emmashutup
People from Bloomington by Budi Darma

3.0

It's not every day you get to read a book about Bloomington, Indiana! I grew up really close to Bloomington, so other than a couple of John Green books, this is the closest thing I have to a book set in my hometown.

Story by story:

The Old Man with No Name
This story changed direction so many times my eyes got whiplash. I'm not really sure if it was in a good way, but if you're only working with twenty or so pages, suspense is a big selling point.
3 stars

Joshua Karabish
This one seemed similar to the first with the "something is wrong with this guy and I may be complicit in his woes" thing, but this one did it better IMO.
3.5 stars

The Family M
The narrator doesn't come off too well in these stories, does he? This one was a little on the nose, but poignant ending.
3.5 stars

Orez
I still don't really understand what happened here, but I think I like it.
4 stars

Yorrick
What??? Was that a wedding? It was the wildest not-wedding I've ever read about!
Also it's pretty obvious that the narrator of every story is just going to be a dick. This is unique. I kinda like it.
3.5 stars

Mrs. Elberhart
I'm not sure I get the topic switch here.
3 stars

Charles Lebourne
Not hard to see where this one is going.
2.5 stars

In conclusion: an exact average of all the stories would probably be more than 3 stars, but 3 stars is what this is getting. I appreciate the absurdism and literary references, as well as the variety of unpleasant narrators. But there's something stiff about full-throttle absurdism; something so silly doesn't leave much room for characters' development and emotions. It's almost as if by breaking the rules so dramatically, you have to adhere to new ones of your own making.

But it's still cool that this is set in Bloomington! And nice translation work by Tiffany Tsao.