arturob's review against another edition
emotional
funny
lighthearted
reflective
sad
medium-paced
5.0
vtlism's review against another edition
5.0
gorgeous stories, gorgeous imagery, low plot - when you're dealing with kids' world, it's easy to get by on low plot since everything is steeped in attention and meaning. lush characters, strong & believable voice-- it's incredible this was dybek's first collection.
melanie_reads's review against another edition
5.0
Wonderful slice of life stories. How an ordinary life can seem so miraculous.
pearseanderson's review against another edition
2.0
I just didn't vibe with this in terms of conflict and character. Story after story I found myself not wanting to go on, so eventually I stopped reading like 60% of the way through. An interesting view of 50s and 60s Polish Chicago, yes, but not to the degree I wanted.
tdstorm's review
4.0
Ever read James Joyce's "Araby"? Dybek's stories are a lot like that. They have a nostalgic feel. Many of them are written from the perspectives of children/adolescents discovering new aspects of their worlds--namely, the ethnic neighborhoods of Chicago. These are places that may still exist, but surely not as described by Dybek, who writes of yesteryear. These kids inhabit a sort of wonderland (a time/place that no longer exists); as a result, the stories have a fabulist feel even though most of them are pretty realist (with the exception of "Visions of Budhardin," which is a little too weird to be plausible). A few of the stories dip into fantasy (often right at the end), but most remain in the natural world. The NYT review on the back cover says, "Dybek . . . bends his flair for naturalism on the anvil of fantasy, with bizarre results that yet seem utterly consistent with the logic of childhood." Yeah, more or less. Mostly less. He is pretty good at rendering the worlds of his characters, though. And his psychological insight is astute. All in all, this is a great collection with some wonderful storytelling.
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