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Battleborn (2012)

by Claire Vaye Watkins(Favorite Author)

4.09 of 5 Votes: 5

ISBN

1594488258 (ISBN13: 9781594488252)

languge

English

genre

Fiction

publisher

Riverhead Hardcover

review 1: A very satisfying collection. As someone who teaches writing and talks about short stories non-stop, I admit that I have trouble being a pleasure reader of them; I'm always thinking about what I'll say, and noticing how things are put together in a distracting way. The prose here is perfectly attuned, which keeps a person focused. And the stories themselves accrete and resonate; the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Maybe I'd take one or two out, but hey. For me, "The Diggings" is the most amazing and inspired; other highlights: "The Last Thing We Need" and "The Archivist." A pleasure.
review 2: I was surprised by how much I liked this, since I don't generally love the short story as a form. But generally if I read stories it's one at a time in... more a magazine, and, of course, reading the book straight through made Watkins' themes and ideas resonate across the boundaries of the separate stories, rather than each needing to stand alone. The author (usually through the voice of the narrator) can be very funny, funnier the darker the subject matter is. And her sense of location, not so much the physical or visual setting but the mood and psychic or emotional impulses of Nevada and desert California, is unusual and wonderful. less

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