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The Man Who Built Boxes And Other Stories (2013)

by Frank Tavares(Favorite Author)

3.16 of 5 Votes: 1

languge

English

genre

Fiction

publisher

Bacon Press Books

review 1: I started reading this book on a whim. I saw it in the Kindle library, realized it was a short story collection written by the NPR voice guy, and decided to give it a try.Overall, I would say there were some hits and some misses. The stories were creative and there was a twist to each one, which I liked. Still, a few of the short stories left me wanting more. The one about the tattooed girl comes to mind; I wanted to know more about how she was going to spend her remaining days. I really liked the idea of the guy talking to his dead friend—the story about what happened in Austin could’ve been its own novel, in my opinion. The she-devil story was entertaining; again, loved the twist at the end. I also thought he was too focused on describing the way people look and men�... more��s ages; he was very precise about the age of his characters, which I thought was unnecessary. The title story, “The Man Who Built Boxes,” was quite good, interesting and metaphorical. On the other hand, the story about the girl in the box was just odd. As a whole, he had some very creative ideas. I’m glad I gave this a try.
review 2: This took a long time, and really was sheer thick-headedness that I didn't just give up. The writing itself isn't bad, but none of the short stories actually carried the punch I am used to in good ones. Some of the later ones manage some cohesion and some idea that they are actually meant as a short story, but they failed to excite me. And what annoyed me more, almost all of them carry that deep feat/hated of women, and reading it as a woman is really really painful.Women in this book are pretty much either sluts and whores or evil/oppressive to the men they are with. Sometimes both. There was maybe one or two story where a woman was an actual human being and a three-dimensional character the way the men in the stories were. Collected together like this it made me really uncomfortable. less

Download links for: The Man Who Built Boxes and other stories

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