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sarahforster's review against another edition
2.0
Total was totally not for me.
I'm not a very big fan of short story collections, so maybe I should have just stayed away, but I wanted to give Total a go.
The first story was interesting. It captured my attention and I really liked the characters and their situation.
Unfortunately, none of the other stories lived up to expectation. I found myself skipping sections and even whole stories. My mind would wander and I'd have to reread the same paragraph many times.
What I didn't like were the characters. None of them were very likable and the whole collection felt ever negative. The characters, and their situations, are all a bit of a vibe killer.
If you like short stories, you might have a better time with this one. I think they're just not for me.
I'm not a very big fan of short story collections, so maybe I should have just stayed away, but I wanted to give Total a go.
The first story was interesting. It captured my attention and I really liked the characters and their situation.
Unfortunately, none of the other stories lived up to expectation. I found myself skipping sections and even whole stories. My mind would wander and I'd have to reread the same paragraph many times.
What I didn't like were the characters. None of them were very likable and the whole collection felt ever negative. The characters, and their situations, are all a bit of a vibe killer.
If you like short stories, you might have a better time with this one. I think they're just not for me.
skmiles's review against another edition
3.0
Interesting reflections on femininity, sexuality, and motherhood. A lovely voice and a good collection.
b_arose's review against another edition
dark
emotional
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
I am shocked anyone could call this good writing. I tried reading this aloud to others and all said the same thing - the writing is terrible and the sentence structure is abhorrent. Miller has a love for the grotesque and describing everything in this fashion, using vocabulary that seems as though she has used a thesaurus to sound fancier than needed, often making the writing seem more clumsy and complicated than necessary . It becomes hard to read when the unusual descriptions find themselves contradicting or not making clear sense of what she's trying to say. It comes across rambled like she's using these words to avoid getting to the point. Sometimes using a thesaurus to find an unusual word isn't needed. Just say what you mean!
I don't understand how anyone could enjoy this extremely negative collection of 7 stories that centre around classist, homophobic at many points, and unsettling characters with no real purpose to the plot. It felt pointless, like Miller doesn't have a defined point of view other than making female characters ugly, twisted and ultimately unlikable with no personality, defining characteristics other than vapid and irrational behaviour. Extremely disappointed. I kept putting the book down because it was so much effort to try and get through this unenjoyable experience of reading.
1. Mrs Covet
Really interesting story, well paced with a quick twist and ending but easy to understand. A strong start to the book about a pregnant mother who is overwhelmed by domestic labour and is gifted a housekeeper/nanny/nurse by her Mother-in-Law who takes over the house. The husband is a wet fish who is irrelevant to the story.
2. I Want You To Know
Probably the most awful story I have ever read. I really wanted to give up on this book immediately as I read the first couple of pages of this story of a woman named Joad (yes really) who live in a dilapidated farm house bought off a man who lives with his Mother who sexually pleases her dog (I didn't appreciate that description) and gets day drunk, to discover a typewriter and letter about a woman who joined the army because she wanted free boots, got married and then killed her children. This felt so disconnected and all over the place and then went back to the original, incredibly boring story where Joad freaks out about living in a murder house.
Is long for the sake of being long, a lot of words about nothing but a woman masterbating a dog, then a story within about a woman who has shitting lions in her mind. Awfully random with no real substance or point. It was 2/3 stories in one and just felt so uncomfortable to read and underdeveloped as an idea, like she didn't know what she was writing as she was going and trying to make something stick.
3. Vapours
The main character Justine is a serial cheater on men who are nice and mean well, very into her with guys who are so dull and uninteresting (one guy repeatedly throws sand in her face on a beach date!?). There is a page where we find out she cheated on her high school boyfriend Hal, went to college and got a new boyfriend Elliot, broke up with him and got back together, meanwhile she went on a work trip and hooked up with her ex boyfriend Carlos, who she got together with by cheating on her boyfriend at the time Ben but Carlos ended it because she cheated on him with a guy named Larry. So she went back to her college boyfriend Elliot and cheated on him with Carlos and Hal. As if that is totally normal behaviour. Then we are introduced to Joseph, a weird ill looking photographer who takes pictures of dead things, skulls and her naked on plates of sausages!? She describes sex in this awful line "There was a slight bondage-y aspect to the sex, but that was really nothing compared to the bondage of everyday life." and then goes on to describe threatening, toxic and violent behaviour from him that is abusive to her.
Elliott gets married and notices Justine is being abused, tells her father who sends her to France. She meets a French horse vet and gets pregnant 6 months later.
She doesn't describe the men at all apart from Joseph and slightly Hal, but Elliot deserves more expansion as he seems nice and stable but that's me projecting as there is no description of him other than he cares for his brother's sick dog whilst his brother works at a hospital.
Justine is not described either as anything other than a photographer and a girl who smoked at school. There are no qualities that we as a reader can connect or clutch to. It's just a basic describing of events with extensive vocabulary. Hardly good writing.
4. Total
An unusual sci-fi story about a mother who invents a phone that curses women with alien babies who have deformed triangular heads, big eyes and tiny teeth - unable to care for themselves and have to go to a facility to be cared for until they die.
The 16 year old sister of this 'Total' named E breaks her out of the care centre with her friend at boarding school and takes her on a tour bus with a band to LA where she has a crush on one of the guys and whilst giving a blowjob in this music venue E tries to fend for herself and bleeds to death.
We then jump to the sister Roxanne pregnant with a fear of having a Total but in the space of a paragraph has the child who is normal and healthy and describes how amazing breast feeding is and the story ends.
The writing has a mix of over complicated description and repetitive language, some words literally next to each other and dialogue described as 'he said, I said, he said, I said' which is so boring. The fact some of the sentences are over fussing makes it difficult to get a sense of flow and read with a nice pace. Especially as the story is packing a lot of different scene changes, characters and movements in, most of whom are totally unnecessary and add nothing to the story or narrative. It's like a lot of abandoned ideas strung together and pushed into one plot. There's a real focus on how sexy she finds her friend Holly, constantly describing her body (even though she's a minor) and her doing sexual acts with boys and drugs and aspirations to be a stripper. Placing these characters as school girls who run away with a band is just odd.
This story alone took me so long to read as I kept putting the book down and just couldn't bring myself to finish it.
5. She Came To Me
An ironic story about a novellist looking for their next book in such poor writing that is just filled with description and no substance. Three descriptive words in a row for a single sentence that is out of context forming unnecessary barriers to understand what is actually being said. Again more he said, she said to describe a single interaction.
The novellist goes to town and the opening is the longest way to describe parking I have ever read. He picks up his old book and puts in back, goes to a pub meets an ugly American girl who pays for his drink and sandwich he doesn't eat and he cheats on his long term marriage and children with this random woman who he claims he doesn't want to have sex in and has no interest in. There are no redeeming qualities to any of the characters, they are simple there being unlikable and weird. The American is an obsessive who bought a separate hotel room to have sex with strangers and becomes attached to him so he literally runs home to his wife.
If the character didn't want to sleep with the American, why did he? There's no reason or justification, he describes all the gross things about her and how he doesn't want to experience her. But does.
This has potential to be more interesting as a story but fell short figuratively and literally as it was one of the shorter stories in the book.
6. Receipts
The opening is as a jumpy as a frog in a box, chaotically trying to pull sentences together like a train of thought that isn't connected. Referring to a child as it rather than they was a grammatical annoyance that really sets up the rest of the writing. The editing of this book is so poor and this story is no exception. Things that shouldn't be in the same paragraph pushed together incoherently. If you ever had doubts about writing a book, this is proof that anything can get published.
In her cups and termite queen as normal phrases about a girl telling a story of her parents at a party when she's a child, then on an aeroplane leaving her partner alone on their anniversary to sell inhalers at a conference before flirting with a sales rep and when he kisses her and she sees it as one sided, instead of stopping she blows him.
She goes home, her partner has ordered them food and wants children, they break up and 10 years later she is happy in her dream apartment with her own company. The title is so forced based on a few lines and if this story wasn't so short it may have had more depth to go somewhere but it just felt rushed like she had a word count and was trying to pack as much in as she could.
7. The Chekhovians
One of the more readable stories jumping between 2 families, one new money with wealth, one old money without as next door neighbours. Where the new money family are celebrating the marriage of a girl Alex and her partner Mac who doesn't know she's rich and does a charcoal drawing on a white sofa and then leaves a black mark on it (why of all the places to use charcoal you would choose a white sofa is just annoying) and then the second family are made into a joke where the author fat shames a pubescent 14 year old who somehow in 8 months has gone from being skinny and flat chested to over weight and clumsy knocking into things because she's so huge. It's really uncomfortable to read her shaming a child so horribly.
The jumps between the families is a bit random in some parts but not too bad, it just feels very disconnected at times.
The scene were she details her breasts and people looking at them is weird and just not needed. There's so much focus on sexualising her it's odd. Then the groom kisses this child on the beach, again gross. Then she goes home and sleeps.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Adult/minor relationship, Body shaming, Child death, Fatphobia, Infidelity, Misogyny, Sexual content, Toxic relationship, Grief, Pregnancy, Cultural appropriation, and Classism
Minor: Ableism, Adult/minor relationship, Body shaming, Child death, Cursing, Death, Homophobia, and Alcohol
theeuphoriczat's review against another edition
3.0
Good collection of short stories. Similar to other short story collections, I had some favourites. MRS COVET and SHE CAME TO ME are my favs
matthewkeating's review against another edition
4.0
An engaging and unique collection of short stories. The strongest is the title story, "Total," a story about family ties, and regret tied up in a very well-executed speculative fiction framework. Second to this, my favorites were "The Chekhovians" and "Receipts." The stories center around fraught relationships, in general, some of them romantic, some of them familial (some neither, like the first story, "Mrs. Covet"). There's an atmosphere common to most of the stories here of floating, almost dissociatively, and a recurrent theme of life interrupted. I'd recommend to fans of Mary Gaitskill and Miranda July. Some of these stories have been haunting me for a while after finishing, now, especially "Total" and "The Chekhovians." I plan to re-read sometime in the future because I think there's a lot of food for thought in the way Miller manages information, i.e. what we know about the characters and what we don't, and I have the sense that there's a world teeming with possibility between the lines, ripe for interpretation.
mtomchek's review against another edition
4.0
"The price for love, we all know, is eventually loss, and it's a stiff price, let me tell you."
"Talking only leads to misunderstandings. Silence is perfect."
"Why bother feeling so much in life if it all turns to vapor."
What an interesting collection of short stories by Rebecca Miller. Some about love, one interesting almost science fiction-style piece, and a common theme about overcoming darkness. Really enjoyed her work and was so impressed at her breadth of skill with each story.
"Talking only leads to misunderstandings. Silence is perfect."
"Why bother feeling so much in life if it all turns to vapor."
What an interesting collection of short stories by Rebecca Miller. Some about love, one interesting almost science fiction-style piece, and a common theme about overcoming darkness. Really enjoyed her work and was so impressed at her breadth of skill with each story.
daniellewalsh's review against another edition
4.0
It's been a long time since I've read a collection of short stories, so this was something fairly new for me.
I enjoyed being able to take a dip into so many different worlds and characters for a short period of time. I actually really liked experiencing a whole well-rounded story in around 20 pages, and it's incredible that Rebecca Miller manages to convey the background, context, and setting of characters and deliver a dark twist within each one.
As with many dystopian stories today, there are elements that don't seem too far removed from our current society, and even though 'Total' (the short story, not the collection) is a futuristic tale, the terror of it is that it doesn't seem
Compared to the others, 'Total' is the most different in terms of its setting, however all of the short stories revolve around relationships and families. It shows how the mundane in our lives can change in an instant, and the scandalous things that go on behind closed doors.
Many of the shorts also include infidelity as a theme, and it never fails to anger me, so well done to Miller for doing that several times.
The writing is vivid and powerful, with each story immersing you into a different family or relationship.
Thank you to Canongate for sending me this copy. Total is out on 1st September and I highly recommend it if you want to be thrown into seven different moods in just 173 pages.
I enjoyed being able to take a dip into so many different worlds and characters for a short period of time. I actually really liked experiencing a whole well-rounded story in around 20 pages, and it's incredible that Rebecca Miller manages to convey the background, context, and setting of characters and deliver a dark twist within each one.
As with many dystopian stories today, there are elements that don't seem too far removed from our current society, and even though 'Total' (the short story, not the collection) is a futuristic tale, the terror of it is that it doesn't seem
Compared to the others, 'Total' is the most different in terms of its setting, however all of the short stories revolve around relationships and families. It shows how the mundane in our lives can change in an instant, and the scandalous things that go on behind closed doors.
Many of the shorts also include infidelity as a theme, and it never fails to anger me, so well done to Miller for doing that several times.
The writing is vivid and powerful, with each story immersing you into a different family or relationship.
Thank you to Canongate for sending me this copy. Total is out on 1st September and I highly recommend it if you want to be thrown into seven different moods in just 173 pages.
jpineau_k's review against another edition
dark
emotional
funny
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.75