A review by jmiae
Drinking Coffee Elsewhere by Z.Z. Packer
5.0
I took my time reading this lovely collection of short stories, in an attempt to savour the prose and prolong the time I spent with each character. Gorgeous, vivid writing that is astonishingly descriptive without feeling clunky or overwrought. Incredibly memorable and sympathetic characters. I never cease to marvel at how writers of short stories can craft the perfect way to end their short stories without making the endings feel too abrupt or incomplete.
It's tempting to describe these vignettes as "slice of life" stories, but the term evokes - for me, at least - a sort of bucolic sensibility that doesn't do justice to the experiences of the characters depicted. This is not to say that these are dark stories. There is humour and levity but it's juxtaposed and often embedded within stories about Black people, particularly Black women, in the American South and second tier urban cities along the East Coast, as well as an exploration of being a Black women in Tokyo. So it's not so simple as "slice of life". But to explore the complexities of each short story and attempt to suss out why this collection reads so beautifully would require a much longer and painstaking process that I don't want to subject any readers (or myself) to.
It's tempting to describe these vignettes as "slice of life" stories, but the term evokes - for me, at least - a sort of bucolic sensibility that doesn't do justice to the experiences of the characters depicted. This is not to say that these are dark stories. There is humour and levity but it's juxtaposed and often embedded within stories about Black people, particularly Black women, in the American South and second tier urban cities along the East Coast, as well as an exploration of being a Black women in Tokyo. So it's not so simple as "slice of life". But to explore the complexities of each short story and attempt to suss out why this collection reads so beautifully would require a much longer and painstaking process that I don't want to subject any readers (or myself) to.