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vaticanscientist's review against another edition
2.0
I’d rate it lower if it wasn’t for the titular story. Sorry.
failedimitator's review against another edition
2.0
The title story is incredible. And there's another one about fish that I particularly like. But the rest mostly all blend into each other that I couldn't tell you which is which.
aoutramafalda's review against another edition
5.0
4.5*
- Story 4*
- The Fears of Mrs. Orlando 4*
- Liminal: The Little Man 3.5*
- Break It Down 5*
- Mr. Burdoff's Visit to Germany 4*
- What She Knew 4*
- The Fish 3*
- Mildred and the Oboe 4*
- The Mouse 4*
- The Letter 4.5*
- Extracts from a Life 3*
- The House Plans 4*
- The Brother-in-Law 4.5*
- How W.H. Auden Spends the Night in a Friend's House 4*
- Mothers 3.5*
- In a House Besieged 3.5*
- Visit to Her Husband 4*
- Cockroaches in Autumn 3*
- The Bone 4*
- A Few Things Wrong with Me 4.5*
- Sketches for a Life of Wassily 4.5*
- City Employment 4.5*
- Two Sisters 4.5*
- The Mother 5*
- Therapy 4.5*
- French Lesson I: Le Meurtre 4.5*
- Once a Very Stupid Man 4*
- The Housemaid 4*
- The Cottages 4*
- Safe Love 4*
- Problem 3.5*
- What an Old Woman Will Wear 4.5*
- The Sock 4*
- Five Signs of Disturbance 4.5*
- Story 4*
- The Fears of Mrs. Orlando 4*
- Liminal: The Little Man 3.5*
- Break It Down 5*
- Mr. Burdoff's Visit to Germany 4*
- What She Knew 4*
- The Fish 3*
- Mildred and the Oboe 4*
- The Mouse 4*
- The Letter 4.5*
- Extracts from a Life 3*
- The House Plans 4*
- The Brother-in-Law 4.5*
- How W.H. Auden Spends the Night in a Friend's House 4*
- Mothers 3.5*
- In a House Besieged 3.5*
- Visit to Her Husband 4*
- Cockroaches in Autumn 3*
- The Bone 4*
- A Few Things Wrong with Me 4.5*
- Sketches for a Life of Wassily 4.5*
- City Employment 4.5*
- Two Sisters 4.5*
- The Mother 5*
- Therapy 4.5*
- French Lesson I: Le Meurtre 4.5*
- Once a Very Stupid Man 4*
- The Housemaid 4*
- The Cottages 4*
- Safe Love 4*
- Problem 3.5*
- What an Old Woman Will Wear 4.5*
- The Sock 4*
- Five Signs of Disturbance 4.5*
hannahgadbois's review against another edition
4.0
“I thought that since I was better, my therapy should end soon. I was impatient, and I wondered: How did therapy come to an end? I had other questions too: for instance, How much longer would I continue to need all my strength just to take myself from one day to the next? There was no answer to that one. There would be no end to therapy, either, or I would not be the one who chose to end it.”
ominousevent's review against another edition
2.0
I'm not sure what I think of this one.
For the most part, the protagonists of all the stories felt very samey. Neurotic, alienated, self-obsessed, self-conscious. It's worse when written in the third person, as many of them are; a first-person catalogue of someone's every anxious thought feels a littel more genuine, at least. Still, the main effect these stories had was to make me feel disconnected, uncomfortable, and often bored.
At the same time, there were paragraphs here and there that struck me so strongly I had to stop and write them down, which rarely happens at all. I'll be interested to see if Davis' later work takes a more appealing direction, or if the small parts I liked in this collection will disappear entirely.
I did quite like many of the shortest stories in the collection; at only a very few paragraphs, perhaps they escape some unconscious expectation of mine, so that simply capturing a mood or a small sequence of thoughts feels less unfulfilling.
For the most part, the protagonists of all the stories felt very samey. Neurotic, alienated, self-obsessed, self-conscious. It's worse when written in the third person, as many of them are; a first-person catalogue of someone's every anxious thought feels a littel more genuine, at least. Still, the main effect these stories had was to make me feel disconnected, uncomfortable, and often bored.
At the same time, there were paragraphs here and there that struck me so strongly I had to stop and write them down, which rarely happens at all. I'll be interested to see if Davis' later work takes a more appealing direction, or if the small parts I liked in this collection will disappear entirely.
I did quite like many of the shortest stories in the collection; at only a very few paragraphs, perhaps they escape some unconscious expectation of mine, so that simply capturing a mood or a small sequence of thoughts feels less unfulfilling.
thndrkat's review against another edition
3.0
This unclassifiable book is fun at times and ponderous at others. Davis is at her best when she mixes humor and irony into a grim, surreal view of life as a single mom. Her prose poems (or short shorts) are often otherworldly and surprising. She totally lost me in the longer, seemingly autobiographical, pieces that drone on and on about anxiety and lost love.
ampersunder's review against another edition
4.0
This book has been on my to-read shelf for ages because I was repeatedly turned off from continuing past the beginning of the first story, because the first story is a piece of Davis's later novel The End of the Story which made me kind of depressed when I read it on our honeymoon. Of all times to read that novel, on a honeymoon! It's the only sour impression I have of Davis's work, because I made the dumb decision to read a depressing book during a holiday that was meant to be even a better time than other holidays. So I would try to read this book but never get through the first story. Well, this time I braved it and finished and even moved on to the second story. Yay for me, because this collection is great and Davis is definitely a writer worth reading.
From "Break It Down":
"Then you forget some of it all, maybe most of it all, almost all of it, in the end, and you work hard at remembering everything now so you won't ever forget, but you can kill it too even by thinking about it too much, though you can't helping thinking about it nearly all the time."
From "Sketches for a Life of Wassilly":
"Working on a list, he would send himself into a certain room to check a book title or the date and forget why he had gone there, distracted by the sight of another unfinished project. He received from himself a number of unrelated instructions which he could not remember, and spent entire mornings uselessly rushing from room to room. There was a strange gap between volition and action: sitting at his desk, before his work but not working, he dreamt of perfection in many things, and this exhilarated him. But when he took one step toward that perfection, he faltered in the face of its demands. There were mornings when he woke under a weight of discouragement so heavy that he could not get out of bed but lay there all day watching the sunlight move across the floor and up the wall."
From "Five Signs of Disturbance":
"Each time she looked down at them, the three quarters separated into groups of one quarter and two quarters, but each time she was prepared to put one back it appeared to her as one of a pair, so that she couldn't put it back. This happened over and over again as she rolled closer to the booths, until finally, against her will, she put one quarter back. She told herself the choice was arbitrary, but she felt strongly that it was not. She felt that it was in fact governed by an important rule, though she did not know what the rule was."
From "Break It Down":
"Then you forget some of it all, maybe most of it all, almost all of it, in the end, and you work hard at remembering everything now so you won't ever forget, but you can kill it too even by thinking about it too much, though you can't helping thinking about it nearly all the time."
From "Sketches for a Life of Wassilly":
"Working on a list, he would send himself into a certain room to check a book title or the date and forget why he had gone there, distracted by the sight of another unfinished project. He received from himself a number of unrelated instructions which he could not remember, and spent entire mornings uselessly rushing from room to room. There was a strange gap between volition and action: sitting at his desk, before his work but not working, he dreamt of perfection in many things, and this exhilarated him. But when he took one step toward that perfection, he faltered in the face of its demands. There were mornings when he woke under a weight of discouragement so heavy that he could not get out of bed but lay there all day watching the sunlight move across the floor and up the wall."
From "Five Signs of Disturbance":
"Each time she looked down at them, the three quarters separated into groups of one quarter and two quarters, but each time she was prepared to put one back it appeared to her as one of a pair, so that she couldn't put it back. This happened over and over again as she rolled closer to the booths, until finally, against her will, she put one quarter back. She told herself the choice was arbitrary, but she felt strongly that it was not. She felt that it was in fact governed by an important rule, though she did not know what the rule was."
ananyabhargava's review against another edition
4.0
i read the titular story, which is probably the most ambitious story in this collection, two years ago and it has stayed with me since. this was my first time reading this collection in its entirety; and this time around, i gravitated towards the simpler stories that chronicled everyday domestic problems, like the story about the mouse that became a staple in an unhappily married couple's kitchen, and the one about the man who lives in a shed on the land he has purchased and draws heaps of blueprints of his dream house but never acts on his plans. i savored and kept (keep) returning to these uncharmed stories because the straightforward manner in which they delved into the minutiae of the narrators' lives made them feel a lot more profound than the stories that pushed for meaning or cloaked it under clever literary devices.
kham's review against another edition
5.0
This is my favorite collection of short stories, by far. Davis impeccably enumerates the multitude of data that exists in all of our everyday interactions and gives a beautiful look into her character's minds as they try to quantify the qualitative parts of our existence.
My favorite story is the namesake, about a man who tries to break down the financial cost of a lost love. By trying to attach a dollar value to something so ephemeral, he shows how much of lust and love is an experience one feels alone, regardless of the actions of the other person.
Davis approaches her work with a poignancy and wit that is unforgettable. Read this, now.
My favorite story is the namesake, about a man who tries to break down the financial cost of a lost love. By trying to attach a dollar value to something so ephemeral, he shows how much of lust and love is an experience one feels alone, regardless of the actions of the other person.
Davis approaches her work with a poignancy and wit that is unforgettable. Read this, now.
mohogan2063's review
4.0
I read this for a literary class. Lydia Davis gets to the heart of emotion in a simple moment or act. Her words are placed exquisitely to convey what others write volumes to say.