jwmcoaching's review against another edition
3.0
A few of these stories are pretty half-baked - they resemble sketches or first drafts of stories than actual finished products - but more than half of them are well done, touching, sometimes humorous, always affecting slices of life. Simpson touches on global warming in over a third of them, but not in a preachy, annoying way.
hkar0610's review against another edition
4.0
A nice collection of short stories, each relates to death or environmental apocalypse. These stories all make me want more from this author. Humorous, tragic, thought-provoking.
larrys's review against another edition
This collection of short stories is mischaracterised by 'comic' and 'funny' on the cover copy. Those descriptors led me to expect something that makes me laugh, like Samantha Irby or Bill Bryson. Helen Simpson isn't that kind of funny. She's a dark, satirical humorist and if the cover said something more like that, readers wouldn't feel duped to find so many 'unlikeable' characters. (All of them, actually.) Satire and likability do not go together.
Some of these stories are masterful. Others are more like well-done sketches, but a little undercooked by comparison.
One thing that really irritated me about this collection was use of a term 'emotionally autistic', in not one but two stories about unpleasant men ("I'm Sorry But I'll Have To Let You Go" and "Sorry?"). 'Emotional autism' is not a thing. I resent writers who bolster (and create) unhelpful stereotypes. Helen Simpson is astute in so many ways -- you have to be if you write satire. Her casual neuro-ableism is a significant blindspot.
*Up At A Villa*
This opening story is my favourite of the collection. If you read the characters by the pool as a sirens scene from classic art, especially if you look at the history of symbolism of sirens -- freaky bird women as well as seductive poolside creatures -- the symbolism works to convey the disturbing idea that the young are also old. That's why youth is frightened of age. This is a feminist story, though it does require the reader to bring feminism to it. It'd be equally easy to take the internalised male gaze of the young woman and agree with her -- that the spectacle of a mother breastfeeding by the pool with those droopy wheels of camembert breasts is disgusting. There's a lot going on here, with the mise en abyme effect of the bodies of water, starting with the Mediterranean, moving to the pool, finally mentioning the baby bath. The world of 'the woman' has grown smaller. Then there's the difference between the imagined holiday space vs the reality of it -- forever changing the characters after they visit in person.
*In-Flight Entertainment*
This is the story which seems to have garnered the most attention. I like it because it pisses off the climate crisis deniers. The whole entire point. Will it change anyone's mind? (What does?)
*Squirrel*
In the ironic utopian setting of a suburban garden, this story is a snapshot of a three-person family. Teenage daughter and husband are not easy people to live with. The mother is our focalising character and has been having an affair. For a moment she thinks she's been found out, I'm guessing because her computer password is squirrel. Conversation about Henry the Eighth doesn't set her at ease. Eventually she realises she's safe -- both husband and daughter are too self-absorbed to notice her having an affair. Since this is the very attribute that annoys her most she'll continue using it to her advantage.
*Ahead of the Pack*
A second-person monologue, addressed to an unseen narrate, supposedly someone in charge of financing new business ideas. Instead of a weightless diet to lose fat, this diet is designed to cut down on people's carbon footprints -- the next big thing.
*Scan*
Starts off with the spatial horror of entrapment on the tube, then moves into another kind of entrapment as a woman goes for a scan. The message in this story is similar to that in Smile or Die by Barbara Ehrenreich, and her later writing as well -- that when things go wrong with our bodies it is presumed to be our own fault. After her scan she visits a place which displays and manufactures old porcelain. She reads the informational pamphlets and finds it comforting that the language of these pamphlets is similar to the language of medicine. She sees all kinds of clocks which, after her coffin-like experience in the scan, reminds her of imminent death. She feels annoyed that hospitals go out of their way to avoid reminding people of death. The patient must go elsewhere for that. Hinted in the background: This woman's partner has recently left her. She conflates this partnership with health itself -- the ending of the relationship coinciding with the end of her good health. The ending is left open -- has she died, or has she experienced some kind of epiphany?
*I'm Sorry But I Have To Let You Go*
This story is a character sketch of a young man who treats his live-in girlfriend as casually as anything else in his privileged life. He can't understand why she wouldn't want to go on living with him and servicing his sexual and emotional needs if he doesn't want to commit. The B. J. Novak character of The Office is a more nuanced version of a similar wunderkind. This story is too brief to do the psychology justice.
*Sorry?*
A horrible old man's new hearing aid creates 'compensatory brain activity' as he tries to adjust to it. But Helen Simpson turns this hearing aid into a Dickensian ghost -- it comes back to haunt him with regrets and other unpleasant emotions. He deals with this by flushing the thing down the toilet, because he doesn't want to confront these feelings at this stage of his life.
*In The Driver's Seat*
This story is the sketch of a woman stuck in a car with the boyfriend of a friend. The boyfriend is driving too fast. There's no satisfying resolution -- the women let him keep driving fast, endangering everyone's life.
*The Tipping Point*
An English teacher and academic writes a slightly pleading letter to his(?) long-distance lover. This woman has called off their romantic entanglement because she's choosing the environment over him -- she can't live with the air miles he's clocking up on her behalf. This story is peppered with pompous references to various literary devices (explained within the text, which is partly what makes him sound pompous). The story concludes with deus ex machina -- an unlikely plot device that appears in a story to make everything all right. This English lecturer is not expecting one of those, but like the climate scientist on the flight in "In-flight Entertainment", everyone else is flying, so why not him, too?
*Geography Boy*
This is another story of a couple in which one has given up the climate change fight, the other hasn't. They are on a cycling tour in France. The woman is researching for her thesis on the end of the world. Brendan has faith in the world's adaptive powers. The road trip they're taking is at first reminiscent of fairytales but by lunchtime they've left the beautiful castles behind and now they're at a fortress, famous for Apocalypse tapestries. The young man is inclined to explain things to the woman. The woman thinks that despite them getting on very well this past ten days on holidays, their differing attitudes towards the impending real-world Apocalypse might prove problematic for them as a couple. This is all shown to the reader via their discussion of the tapestries in the fortress. For her, the end of the holiday might as well coincide with the end of the world. He is still deluded by the thought of a relationship more permanent. The closing imagery lets the reader imagine these two will balance each other out, and are therefore compatible, unlike the majority of other couples in this collection.
*Channel 17*
Three couples converge in different French hotel rooms along a corridor and have a different reaction to the scene of a girl rolling a white stocking up and down her leg on the free porn channel. Their reactions help describe how each character feels about their relationship. The first couple is established and comfortable if a little bored. The second is extramarital and exciting, if dangerous. The third couple have a new baby and could almost be the same from "Up At A Villa", as the husband is jealous of the attention required by the breastfeeding mother.
*Homework*
A meta-story -- a story about story -- and the ridiculousness of asking a young person to write something profound.
*The Festival of the Immortals*
At this fantasy festival, long-dead authors come back to life and answer questions about their lives so that modern audiences are afforded the opportunity to better understand their work. Of course this is a commentary on how writers are nowadays expected to give themselves over, alongside their work -- writer privacy is dead. And this story is a natural follow-on from "Homework" which comes before.
*Diary of an Interesting Year*
Written in diary format, a woman tries to survive in an apocalyptic world. A lot of story is packed into very few words, masterful in itself. More than that, this is a satire of dystopian stories in which the reader is encouraged to take comfort from the idea that people (able bodied men, in other words) can survive in awful conditions given sufficient ingenuity and grit. The conversation about the pig sausages epitomises the story's dark humour. Husband and wife have petty grievances about him being right about end-of-days. Being right doesn't help.
*Charm For A Friend With A Lump*
The narrator imagines she's a witch and writes an incantation to her friend who has cancer, part witch stuff, part talk about her garden. The message pairs with that in "Scan" -- we can't actually do anything about the illnesses that befall us, but we can employ mind tricks to help us get through our ordeals.
Some of these stories are masterful. Others are more like well-done sketches, but a little undercooked by comparison.
One thing that really irritated me about this collection was use of a term 'emotionally autistic', in not one but two stories about unpleasant men ("I'm Sorry But I'll Have To Let You Go" and "Sorry?"). 'Emotional autism' is not a thing. I resent writers who bolster (and create) unhelpful stereotypes. Helen Simpson is astute in so many ways -- you have to be if you write satire. Her casual neuro-ableism is a significant blindspot.
*Up At A Villa*
This opening story is my favourite of the collection. If you read the characters by the pool as a sirens scene from classic art, especially if you look at the history of symbolism of sirens -- freaky bird women as well as seductive poolside creatures -- the symbolism works to convey the disturbing idea that the young are also old. That's why youth is frightened of age. This is a feminist story, though it does require the reader to bring feminism to it. It'd be equally easy to take the internalised male gaze of the young woman and agree with her -- that the spectacle of a mother breastfeeding by the pool with those droopy wheels of camembert breasts is disgusting. There's a lot going on here, with the mise en abyme effect of the bodies of water, starting with the Mediterranean, moving to the pool, finally mentioning the baby bath. The world of 'the woman' has grown smaller. Then there's the difference between the imagined holiday space vs the reality of it -- forever changing the characters after they visit in person.
*In-Flight Entertainment*
This is the story which seems to have garnered the most attention. I like it because it pisses off the climate crisis deniers. The whole entire point. Will it change anyone's mind? (What does?)
*Squirrel*
In the ironic utopian setting of a suburban garden, this story is a snapshot of a three-person family. Teenage daughter and husband are not easy people to live with. The mother is our focalising character and has been having an affair. For a moment she thinks she's been found out, I'm guessing because her computer password is squirrel. Conversation about Henry the Eighth doesn't set her at ease. Eventually she realises she's safe -- both husband and daughter are too self-absorbed to notice her having an affair. Since this is the very attribute that annoys her most she'll continue using it to her advantage.
*Ahead of the Pack*
A second-person monologue, addressed to an unseen narrate, supposedly someone in charge of financing new business ideas. Instead of a weightless diet to lose fat, this diet is designed to cut down on people's carbon footprints -- the next big thing.
*Scan*
Starts off with the spatial horror of entrapment on the tube, then moves into another kind of entrapment as a woman goes for a scan. The message in this story is similar to that in Smile or Die by Barbara Ehrenreich, and her later writing as well -- that when things go wrong with our bodies it is presumed to be our own fault. After her scan she visits a place which displays and manufactures old porcelain. She reads the informational pamphlets and finds it comforting that the language of these pamphlets is similar to the language of medicine. She sees all kinds of clocks which, after her coffin-like experience in the scan, reminds her of imminent death. She feels annoyed that hospitals go out of their way to avoid reminding people of death. The patient must go elsewhere for that. Hinted in the background: This woman's partner has recently left her. She conflates this partnership with health itself -- the ending of the relationship coinciding with the end of her good health. The ending is left open -- has she died, or has she experienced some kind of epiphany?
*I'm Sorry But I Have To Let You Go*
This story is a character sketch of a young man who treats his live-in girlfriend as casually as anything else in his privileged life. He can't understand why she wouldn't want to go on living with him and servicing his sexual and emotional needs if he doesn't want to commit. The B. J. Novak character of The Office is a more nuanced version of a similar wunderkind. This story is too brief to do the psychology justice.
*Sorry?*
A horrible old man's new hearing aid creates 'compensatory brain activity' as he tries to adjust to it. But Helen Simpson turns this hearing aid into a Dickensian ghost -- it comes back to haunt him with regrets and other unpleasant emotions. He deals with this by flushing the thing down the toilet, because he doesn't want to confront these feelings at this stage of his life.
*In The Driver's Seat*
This story is the sketch of a woman stuck in a car with the boyfriend of a friend. The boyfriend is driving too fast. There's no satisfying resolution -- the women let him keep driving fast, endangering everyone's life.
*The Tipping Point*
An English teacher and academic writes a slightly pleading letter to his(?) long-distance lover. This woman has called off their romantic entanglement because she's choosing the environment over him -- she can't live with the air miles he's clocking up on her behalf. This story is peppered with pompous references to various literary devices (explained within the text, which is partly what makes him sound pompous). The story concludes with deus ex machina -- an unlikely plot device that appears in a story to make everything all right. This English lecturer is not expecting one of those, but like the climate scientist on the flight in "In-flight Entertainment", everyone else is flying, so why not him, too?
*Geography Boy*
This is another story of a couple in which one has given up the climate change fight, the other hasn't. They are on a cycling tour in France. The woman is researching for her thesis on the end of the world. Brendan has faith in the world's adaptive powers. The road trip they're taking is at first reminiscent of fairytales but by lunchtime they've left the beautiful castles behind and now they're at a fortress, famous for Apocalypse tapestries. The young man is inclined to explain things to the woman. The woman thinks that despite them getting on very well this past ten days on holidays, their differing attitudes towards the impending real-world Apocalypse might prove problematic for them as a couple. This is all shown to the reader via their discussion of the tapestries in the fortress. For her, the end of the holiday might as well coincide with the end of the world. He is still deluded by the thought of a relationship more permanent. The closing imagery lets the reader imagine these two will balance each other out, and are therefore compatible, unlike the majority of other couples in this collection.
*Channel 17*
Three couples converge in different French hotel rooms along a corridor and have a different reaction to the scene of a girl rolling a white stocking up and down her leg on the free porn channel. Their reactions help describe how each character feels about their relationship. The first couple is established and comfortable if a little bored. The second is extramarital and exciting, if dangerous. The third couple have a new baby and could almost be the same from "Up At A Villa", as the husband is jealous of the attention required by the breastfeeding mother.
*Homework*
A meta-story -- a story about story -- and the ridiculousness of asking a young person to write something profound.
*The Festival of the Immortals*
At this fantasy festival, long-dead authors come back to life and answer questions about their lives so that modern audiences are afforded the opportunity to better understand their work. Of course this is a commentary on how writers are nowadays expected to give themselves over, alongside their work -- writer privacy is dead. And this story is a natural follow-on from "Homework" which comes before.
*Diary of an Interesting Year*
Written in diary format, a woman tries to survive in an apocalyptic world. A lot of story is packed into very few words, masterful in itself. More than that, this is a satire of dystopian stories in which the reader is encouraged to take comfort from the idea that people (able bodied men, in other words) can survive in awful conditions given sufficient ingenuity and grit. The conversation about the pig sausages epitomises the story's dark humour. Husband and wife have petty grievances about him being right about end-of-days. Being right doesn't help.
*Charm For A Friend With A Lump*
The narrator imagines she's a witch and writes an incantation to her friend who has cancer, part witch stuff, part talk about her garden. The message pairs with that in "Scan" -- we can't actually do anything about the illnesses that befall us, but we can employ mind tricks to help us get through our ordeals.
chramies's review against another edition
4.0
A varied collection of short stories although a common theme of global climate change and impending environmental disaster pervades throughout.
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