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A review by duffypratt
Franz Kafka: The Complete Stories by Nabum N. Glazer, John Updike, Franz Kafka
challenging
dark
funny
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.0
The best of these -- A Hunger Artist, The Metamorphosis, In The Penal Colony -- are simply fantastic, pretty much as good as anything. The worst are worse than dreadful, they strike me as being both dull and pointless. Among those are Investigations of a Dog and The Burrow, both of which were unpublished, and I think justifiably so. The middling stories are remarkably uneven, as are the shorter works. Some of them seem to be like beautiful crystalline jewels, while others just seem like pointless fragments.
Overall, I liked these much more than I had expected. There's more than a touch of magical realism, surrealism, or the absurd. And Kafka is much funnier than I had supposed (or than I remember from reading The Trial a long time ago). I'm tempted to pick up The Castle, but in no rush. I also have for a long time thought I knew what people meant by "Kafkaesque," and I still do have a sense of what they mean by it, but it doesn't seem to have a whole lot to do with what's in these stories.
Overall, I liked these much more than I had expected. There's more than a touch of magical realism, surrealism, or the absurd. And Kafka is much funnier than I had supposed (or than I remember from reading The Trial a long time ago). I'm tempted to pick up The Castle, but in no rush. I also have for a long time thought I knew what people meant by "Kafkaesque," and I still do have a sense of what they mean by it, but it doesn't seem to have a whole lot to do with what's in these stories.