About this title: In her newest collection of short stories, Eisenberg demonstrates once again her virtuosic abilities in precisely distilled, perfectly shaped studies of human connection and disconnection.
Note: This is a general synopsis. Each listing is described below.
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Farrar Straus Giroux
Date Published: 01/2006
ISBN-13:9780374299415ISBN:0374299412
Description: Very good in very good dust jacket. Very Good, In very good dust jacket. Glued binding. Cloth over boards. With dust jacket. 225 p. read more
Description: Very Good. Great condition for a used book! Minimal wear. Shipped to over one million happy customers. Your purchase benefits world literacy! read more
Description: Good. Former Library book. Shows some signs of wear, and may have some markings on the inside. Shipped to over one million happy customers. Your purchase benefits world literacy! read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Picador
Date Published: 2007-01-23
ISBN-13:9780312425937ISBN:0312425937
Description: Very Good. Every heavytail order includes with a sweet! We carefully hand clean and reinspect each and every item we ship. Our quality control process ensures items to be in the condition described or better. Heavytail is determined to earn your repeat business through old fashioned customer service. We love international orders. read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Picador
Date Published: 2007-01-23
ISBN-13:9780312425937ISBN:0312425937
Description: Like New. May be shiny, in some instances dust jackets are not included, no missing pages, no damage to binding, may have a remainder mark. read more
"Every critique I've seen of this book refers in some way to 9/11, which isn't terribly unexpected. While Eisenberg seems to dance around that date without directly addressing it, it's still clearly the dominant theme of each of her stories, chronicling worlds that have been oh-so-slightly tilted off their axes.
So maybe the fact that I was so unaffected by her stories has more to do with a certain weariness towards that particular date as some sort of crucial indicator that the world has forever changed, rather than just another milepost in the ever-evolving parade of inanity that comprises human existence.
For the most part, I couldn't manage to gear myself up enough to care or be interested by her plots or characters. It's almost as though she only cared about telling a story as a means of talking about her feelings on the transition from a pre-9/11 to a post-9/11 world."
"Wallace Shawn was in Lee Park (really!) and told me he was in town because Deborah Eisenberg had won a MacArthur "genius" grants, so, of course I had to read the book. Wow... While the situations are bleak, I was surprised by the author's ability to draw me into characters who in real life would probably repel me ("Some Other, Better Otto") and her range. While most of the characters are well educated, even privileged, the woman in "Window" is a heartbreaking stretch, poor and rural, gifted and unfulfilled. Eisenberg has a kind of humor I've not encountered before. It's not darkly funny, it's really funny in dark situations. Finally, less surprisingly, I thought her depiction of aging was spot on."
"I just finished this book a few days ago and, looking through the table of contents now, I'm already having trouble recalling most of the stories. Partly this is because most of the titles don't connect to their stories in any recognizable way, so when I see "Window," it doesn't trigger "oh, yeah, the one where that creepy guy takes the girl to his isolated cabin to babysit his kid." Partly it's also because the stories themselves often didn't stick with me. The two elements most contributing to my lackluster response here are: 1. choppy, disconnected segments. In "The Flaw in the Design," for example, the story of the tension between father and son is bookended by the mother's seemingly random one-time affair, and the family story sandwiched between the affair bits doesn't shed light on the affair or seem connected to it at all. Telling a story through chopped up segments can work, but (with the exception of the title story) I don't think it works overall in this collection. 2. Stories where nothing happens and there are no threads of interest to follow have an uphill battle to keep my attention. "Revenge of the Dinosaurs" is my example for this one. Family members visit a sick/dying relative, bicker a little, make small talk, and that's it. We have a first-person narrator, but we don't get much more than reporting and some bits and pieces of backstory from her outside of basic observation and dialogue. In the end, I'm not sure why I should care (or what I'm even supposed to be caring about), but I'm pretty sure she's not the person to get me there.
Bitch and moan. Here's the silver lining: "Some Other, Better Otto." "Twilight of the Superheroes" was good, and "Window" was the most elaborate and compelling plot-wise, but "Some Other, Better Otto" is the one I'll remember. Eisenberg does a beautiful job making this whiny, selfish man (Otto) sympathetic to the reader. Watching his protective and considerate interactions with his mentally unstable younger sister helps this along. Enough happens to keep me with the story (visit to sister, family gathering, quarrel with partner), the end works for me, and the title even makes sense. I would actually recommend this story, and the title one (where she uses choppy segments pretty effectively to weave separate threads together). The rest I can take or leave."
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