Good bits, not so great bits, but I did enjoy this book. I think it's difficult to really say much about books of short stories because they are individual works as well as sort of a themed fiction playlist.īut yeah. I think maybe it was because the first story read like it was setting up an entire novel and I was expecting an entire novel that made me disappointed.īut also, there are some really good stories in it. Anyway, long story short I only like short stories when I know they are about to happen. I feel like I forgot to read the back and then in my vagueness failed to realise that this is short stories. I like the sense of solid satisfaction in mediocrity from the earlier stories, but that sort of dissipated into hastily written nanofiction for reading hastily in the post Omni-verse. The "32%" story is as cute as any story of failing relationships can be. Two of the last three stories are extremely sketchy, or really sketches in my mind. Of course it may be just that it is difficult to be Me when you are Yu?
Maybe so much that Yu's identity was often questioned (another recurrent theme in these stories). Although Yu starts out a little less sardonic, he goes on to get trapped in a pretty complex Elektra world with his mother. If anything this book made me appreciate George Saunders more (another modern author who has caught an upwind of popular notice) and maybe I was too tough on, tougher than he was on his protagonists. Yu's extremely short stories are ideas teased out like cotton candy to occupy a larger space than they will fill inside you once you've devoured them. The science student lapsing to fiction is always hard to pass up (wish there were more lapsing the reverse direction, but that is definitely upstream if not in fact illegal, and "The Kite Runner" doesn't count).Īnyways, my short review here is: Omni Magazine, wherefore art thou? I heard Yu on the radio, and decided to check out some of his work.
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