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A review by jcschildbach
Stories for Nighttime and Some for the Day by Ben Loory
4.0
The stories in this book would be excellent for teaching literature--especially literary interpretation--and I mean that as a high compliment. Most of the stories do not have a clear resolution; and Loory rarely nails down much of anything to the point where specific meanings can be definitively assigned. I imagine English classes from grade school to grad school selecting any one of the very short stories in this book, and engaging in lengthy debates about what each element means--then trying to determine if the end of the story is really the end, and if so..., and if not...
Almost in contrast to the notion of open interpretation, the imagery Loory uses is quite vivid. The deceptively simple language projects clear mind movies--for me those were most often like pleasantly twisted cartoons. Strangely enough, some of those images seem forever burned into my brain, as if I really had seen cartoons based on the stories in the book.
If I have one 'complaint', it's that the book can be overly dense at times. Somewhat like my aversion to reading poetry, I had to be in the right space to take on each story. But also like with poetry, by giving myself the time to wander through at a leisurely pace, the reading became more rewarding. That is, while it would be possible to blast through this book in an afternoon or a part of an afternoon, this isn't a book meant for speed-reading.
With the feel of fable or parable, or perhaps even mythology or religion, Loory's work here has much more weight than it's 200-ish pages (with frequent gaps between paragraphs) suggests.
Almost in contrast to the notion of open interpretation, the imagery Loory uses is quite vivid. The deceptively simple language projects clear mind movies--for me those were most often like pleasantly twisted cartoons. Strangely enough, some of those images seem forever burned into my brain, as if I really had seen cartoons based on the stories in the book.
If I have one 'complaint', it's that the book can be overly dense at times. Somewhat like my aversion to reading poetry, I had to be in the right space to take on each story. But also like with poetry, by giving myself the time to wander through at a leisurely pace, the reading became more rewarding. That is, while it would be possible to blast through this book in an afternoon or a part of an afternoon, this isn't a book meant for speed-reading.
With the feel of fable or parable, or perhaps even mythology or religion, Loory's work here has much more weight than it's 200-ish pages (with frequent gaps between paragraphs) suggests.