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Granta 117 (2011)

by Granta: The Magazine of New Writing(Favorite Author)

3.59 of 5 Votes: 5

ISBN

1905881363 (ISBN13: 9781905881369)

languge

English

genre

Horror

publisher

Granta Books

series

Granta

review 1: Let's cut to the chase: Will Self can be a bit overbearing in his stylistic excess, but the essay he offers here held my interest and made me consider giving his nonfiction a go. Paul Auster is always worth reading and this piece was no exception, really liked his way of describing his mother, his difficulty in expressing grief or more so with the reality of it, and just coping with love and aging. Yes, I'm going to gloss over everything here. Don DeLillo's story was the standout. Plain and simple. Stephen King's was almost like a parody of his writing. Blah blah bleeding heart on a bunch of them. Roberto Bolano's story was entirely amusing describing a low budget zombie flick. I really should read his longer works since I'm always impressed with his shorter ones. Then the... morere's the dumb tiger tale. Rajesh Parameswaran wants us to believe that a tiger thinks like a human and knows right from wrong but then again doesn't and has lived his life in an enclosure so he knows very little but then again everything. It made no sense and was a set up for some cheap gasps. It read like a high school writing exercise from a better than average student. Well worth a dollar and 86 cents.
review 2: I am a total scaredy-cat so was trepidacious about reading this collection, but I thoroughly enjoyed it. The only story that 'scared' me was the Stephen King piece. The other stories are more loosely connected to the horror genre, including several excellent non-fiction pieces. I loved Sarah Hall's creepy short story about a breakup, Julie Otsuka's lovely piece about a mother's dementia, and Will Self's non-fiction piece about his blood disease and growing fear of needles. All in all, this collection made for a fascinating week of reading - a meditation on what is horrific about our daily lives, and the world we live in. less

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