Reviews

Pool-Hopping and Other Stories, by Anne Fleming

ljpapp's review

5.0

I ordered Fleming's Gay Dwarves of America three-fourths of the way through Pool-Hopping, if that's any indication of how much I liked this collection of stories. Some of the stories didn't resonate with me, but the ones that did, wow. I sobbed almost the entire way through You Would Know What to Do, which was narrated by arguably the least likable character from a logical point of view. It is particularly nice to read stories about lesbians, about lesbians who are friends with lesbians, lesbians who have family members who are lesbians, and so on. It's rare to find good representation of queer identity that doesn't feel like it's exploiting that identity while also not having solely queer identities throughout each story.

caseythecanadianlesbrarian's review

5.0

Anne Fleming’s short story collection Pool-Hopping and Other Stories (1998), above all else, reminded me how much I love reading short stories. I’ve never really understood why so many readers who are keen to pick up novels are somehow reluctant to check out a book of short stories. Are people really so lazy they don’t want to take the trouble to reorient themselves a few more times throughout a book instead of just at the beginning? Fleming’s short stories are definitely worth the effort: I would count Pool-Hopping among some of the best short fiction I’ve ever read, up there with Ivan E. Coyote’s thousand-word one-time punches and Alice Munro’s strangely familiar tales. In fact, the short stories in Pool-Hopping recall the everyday queerness of Ivan Coyote and the precision and impeccable narrative timing of Alice Munro. You couldn’t really ask for a better combination than that, now could you?

See the rest of my review at my blog: http://caseythecanadianlesbrarian.wordpress.com/2012/07/02/the-extraordinary-in-the-everyday-a-review-of-anne-flemings-short-story-collection-pool-hopping/