3.75 stars

It can always be a bit of a risk reading a short story collection as your first book by a particular author, but I think the stories in this collection gave me a great taste for William Saroyan’s style and the themes he addresses in his work! While I wasn’t blown away by every one, there was more than enough tucked away in this collection to make me eager to read one of his novels one day... and there is the fact that he’s very well known for his short stories, so maybe it wasn’t that much of a risk after all...
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Born to Armenian parents in California, a lot of Saroyan’s stories deal with immigration in some way, with feelings of displacement and not belonging running through them, but I thought he really excelled when writing about the struggles of being a writer and of America during the Great Depression. A lot of the stories in this collection would appeal to those of you who harbour ambitions to become a writer, and a lot of my favourites were on that topic, including Fight Your Own War (a young writer steadfastly refusing to be conscripted for the war), A Cold Day (a poor writer reflects on the necessity of writing every day no matter your circumstances) and Myself Upon the Earth (a reflection on the need to write for yourself and not to be published).
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A few of the stories were forgettable or a bit hard to follow, but for the most part they were enjoyable and his style is very readable! Although a lot of his characters are writers, they all feel individual and very well developed considering you’re only with them for ten pages or so - it makes me think that the characters in his novels will be the kind that will stay with you for a long time!