crabbygirl's review
5.0
i first happened upon diane schoemperlen back in my university days with 'The Man of my Dreams', a collection of short stories. i loved it; she used cyndi lauper lyrics as an epigraph and it felt so relevant, so NOW. heck - i never understood the purprose of an epigraph before i read her stories.
maybe i loved her even more because i'd found her on my own - not directed by literary critics or a fellow reader. i found her and she felt like mine. i've read everything else she's written - her growing up in experience and material right along side me. she broke the form of fiction long before it became in vogue (or a marketing ploy) to do so.
reading her latest collection of short stories Red Plaid Shirt: Stories New and Collected, is a tiny bit like visiting the suck fairy (you'd have to read the girl detective blog to understand that term)... i can see where critics may have been harsh - some repetitive metaphors, some constant themes. but i defend her to the end: they are good metaphors, real ones... and don't our own lives revolve around 2 or 3 pivotal moments that WE keep going back to - how are authors any different?
in particular, i've retold the following analogy of love for decades: a horse running headlong down a track while a train barrels towards it - which would you rather be? the one being crushed, or one doing the crushing?
i'd forgotten where that image - that story - came from. i rediscovered it this book :) it was from The Man of my Dreams - to think i've carried it for some 20years...
and lastly, maybe more importantly, reading diane shoemperlen makes me want to write again
maybe i loved her even more because i'd found her on my own - not directed by literary critics or a fellow reader. i found her and she felt like mine. i've read everything else she's written - her growing up in experience and material right along side me. she broke the form of fiction long before it became in vogue (or a marketing ploy) to do so.
reading her latest collection of short stories Red Plaid Shirt: Stories New and Collected, is a tiny bit like visiting the suck fairy (you'd have to read the girl detective blog to understand that term)... i can see where critics may have been harsh - some repetitive metaphors, some constant themes. but i defend her to the end: they are good metaphors, real ones... and don't our own lives revolve around 2 or 3 pivotal moments that WE keep going back to - how are authors any different?
in particular, i've retold the following analogy of love for decades: a horse running headlong down a track while a train barrels towards it - which would you rather be? the one being crushed, or one doing the crushing?
i'd forgotten where that image - that story - came from. i rediscovered it this book :) it was from The Man of my Dreams - to think i've carried it for some 20years...
and lastly, maybe more importantly, reading diane shoemperlen makes me want to write again
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