peeled_grape's reviews
158 reviews

Hmm. A lot of these stories are stunning, though you have to be okay with being confused with a lot of this, I think. Part One was my favorite of the three, which is strange because I tend to like stories more like those in Part Three. Many of the stories in this section seem to end right before the protagonist comes to an understanding of something. It's like the moment the story has been leading to is left just barely outside the story. What makes this writing so incredible is I still found the stories complete and satisfying. I may not have understood everything, but I also felt like I wasn't supposed to immediately get the purpose of the stories or even where they were leading.

What I didn't like: I am so tired of reading stories of girls with "daddy issues" or girls in pain who try to solve all their problems with sex. It's fine if you're using these stereotypes to mess with them or change them somehow, but this just reinforced it. This was so present in these stories. I also wasn't cheering for some of the protagonists some of the stories seemed to want me to, and that, at times, dulled what these stories could have been.

I super liked the form of this. There isn't much of a plot -- it just kind of cuts between different events in different points of time -- but there is still some kind of tension. I think it's because we know there's this big, bad event waiting for us at the end (

and man, that ending is heartbreaking

). It also doesn't like to get deep into any character's mind, but this removal is thematically fitting, and I found that harmony satisfying. There is also so much white space, which is also thematically fitting.

I mean, Julio doesn't even find out that Emilia is dead for a year (or a year and a half! I love this detail!) later. We don't even get to know why she committed suicide. She's just dead, suddenly, and it's treated so commonly that it doesn't feel like this big thing, which both makes sense and doesn't make sense all at once. It's satisfying, though. The white space! The passage of years! The not-knowing! It all just fits.

I'm so disappointed to hear this became a movie. Filling in all the details and making things concrete takes away so much of the magic of this piece. The white space and the unsureness of the narrator add to the story so much. Super fast, super easy read. It's deceptively simple.

A disclaimer: I'm not a huge sci-fi or romance fan, nor am I a fan of things set in the past. Those are all major elements in "Mem."

It's not that I didn't like this book -- I just never really engaged with this book. The concepts it presents and the questions it poses just aren't ones I really care about. It reads a little like YA fiction. Again, not bad, but in reading this, I didn't get anything new out of it.

I do like that it was about memory and the story was split between the past in the present (which is exactly what memories are). It's thematically fitting. The protagonist is likeable and, unlike most YA (or near-YA novels), she is completely functional and autonomous. Fantastic.

I don't know. It just wasn't anything new and exciting for me.

My brutally honest review: I hated this book. I disagreed deeply with the narrative it was pushing. I hate this "you should be loyal to your family just because they're your family" message. I hated that this was the view she conceded to, even though the book details a number of messed up things about the way she was raised. I hate that this was what won out. I hated how passive the protagonist was. I hated how the whole book praised her passiveness like it is some noble conclusion. There is this victim-blaming undertone, an “everything will be alright if you just remember the positive things and look on the bright side” subtext. I HATE it. As someone who had to work really hard for her anger, I am pissed that this book creates a narrative that would try to undermine that work. Reading this was entirely unpleasant in the wrong ways, and I spent quite a bit of time just fuming. On the other hand: it is well-written, albeit too long and a bit boring at times. Most of my hatred toward this is its rhetorical message.

I really wanted to like this--I read "The Story of an Hour" and I was taken by it--but Chopin writes like she's yelling at everyone all the time. She also can't write endings, and this is no exception. I don't want to use this term to describe her writing, but it's very accurate: she's the poster child for the 19th century hysterical woman. She's overly dramatic, I think. I wish this had been more complex, as I feel Edna's marriage and her feelings both toward her husband and toward Robert would call for something less straightforward than what's here. Her marriage isn't bad, it's just not what she wants it to be--but it's treated like it's the worst thing ever. Despite being considered a feminist text, Chopin lets Edna's life be absolutely ruled by her relationship with the men in her life.

Edna is crushed when Robert leaves, and she drowns herself. All Chopin stories I've read end like this: the female lead realizes she's still married and dies at the thought of it.)

It wasn't bad. It just also wasn't good.

All of these stories are vague, which works (really well!) in some cases. The vagueness often contributes to this sense of "almost-horror," where dread is created by the way characters act in an unquestioning manner without explaining their actions. In other stories, though, I think this keeps a story from being as smart as it could've been. It feels lazy, like an "I don't want to tell you what this is because I couldn't think of anything it could be" type feel. There's 20 stories in this collection, and the vagueness is at play in every one of them. In other words, you start to anticipate it, and it gets less effective. Things start to lose their punch. However, the shorter length of the stories made them easy to get through, especially if you like me and find it hard, at times, to finish short story collections.

My favorite stories were "Toward Happy Civilization," "Mouthful of Birds" and "Underground" (with "Butterflies" as a runner-up). "Toward Happy Civilization" was the most unsettling to me (nothing bad happens but there is this desperate sense of a need to escape throughout it, and this is managed beautifully), though "Mouthful of Birds" was definitely the creepiest. "Underground" and "Butterflies" have nice plot twists.

Russell definitely flexes her range in this collection, but some stories are much better than others. The first two, "Vampires in the Lemon Grove" and "Reeling for the Empire" are incredible for entirely different reasons; the first has perfect comedic timing, and the second, although slow to start, becomes surprisingly cathartic and satisfying. Others are less so ("Dougbert Shackleton's Rules for Antarctic Tailgating" and "Proving Up," in my opinion), which was a little disappointing. "The Graveless Doll of Eric Mutis" is haunting, but stunning, and there's so much happening there. What a great way to end it. This writing is thick in a way I can't quite place--I couldn't tear through the whole book at once; I had to pause and let the stories sink in before continuing. In places, I wanted these stories to dig deeper, like in "The New Veterans." Overall, it's fantastic, and I want to absorb this through my skin.

WOW, okay. I am so interested in all of this. There is so much going on here. I am interested in moral dilemmas, moral grayness and the way people do bad things for good reasons (and the way we feel while reading those decisions unfold). I love that there are unlikable characters. I like the subverted expectations. There are moments when these stories just seem silly, and then it gets smart, and all of it just works. God. It's so good.

It's hard to pick out my favorite stories from this collection because I really liked them all for some reason or another. "Escape from Spiderhead" probably tops the list, maybe followed by "Puppy" and "Tenth of December." The endings of "Home" and "The Semplica Girl Diaries" were surprising and amazing, though I was frustrated for a solid ten seconds before realizing "wait, I like that."

They're so abrupt, but that abruptness gives it this incredible realistic quality -- no neat, happy endings, just real ones. It works really well in the case of a soldier who can't quite adjust to home life, and of a poor family struggling with unexpected bills. Saunders explores those spaces without patronizing or making light of them, which I really liked.

I think this is one of my favorite short story collections. Highly recommended.

It was hard for me to get into this one (though maybe that's because I read this in the strange time of quarantine, where I can focus on very little). Some of these stories read like dreams -- nothing makes sense, and only follows a loose line of logic. For me, this randomness was a little much at times, and I found myself agreeing with Link when she writes that other people's dreams aren't particularly interesting. Still: "Flying Lessons" is one of my favorite short stories ever let alone one of the best in the collection. Link has endings mastered, and that shows in this story a lot. "Shoe and Marriage" and "Travels with the Snow Queen" are the other two I really liked. There is this quirkiness to "Shoe and Marriage" I admire quite a bit. There is a lot of turning stories that are familiar to us (Greek mythology, fairytales, etc.) into something both ordinary and magical, and I think that sticking those stories in the same collection unified it. The reconstruction of these more classic stories worked really well, and I really loved them.