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This Will Be Difficult To Explain And Other Stories (2012)

by Johanna Skibsrud(Favorite Author)

2.75 of 5 Votes: 3

ISBN

0434021709 (ISBN13: 9780434021703)

languge

English

genre

Fiction

publisher

William Heinemann

review 1: I almost gave this two stars, but I did enjoy a few of the stories, particularly the first one about the young woman who is working in France. Skibsrud's first book, The Sentimentalists, was beautiful, cerebral and poetic. These short stories are at times not comprehensible to me. The title story was extremely disturbing and I could not read it.I am also disappointed that as a Canadian, Skibsrud did not set any of these stories in Canada. She has been compared to Alice Munro. Both are wonderful writers, but Munro is without a doubt the winner in the short story department.
review 2: A somewhat dull stories you need to be in the right mood for.Each of these stories focuses on just a regular day (or 2 or more) for a regular person. And most of the narration is th... moree character thinking about things. Thoughts include the usual "the future never gets here, but how has 30 years gone by?"; to "even Paris becomes just a place to live and loses its allure" (I like this thought, because when I was 9 and we took a huge family road trip, I was amazed to find that Tennessee or Connecticut or Illinois or Wyoming wasn't all that different from California where I lived--kids were the same, life was more or less the same activities, worries, etc); "is this what our life will be like? a series of reversals?".Interesting and honest, but not particularly exciting. less

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