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Things We Didn't See Coming (2009)

by Steven Amsterdam(Favorite Author)

3.35 of 5 Votes: 3

ISBN

1740667018 (ISBN13: 9781740667012)

languge

English

genre

Fiction

publisher

Sleepers Publishing Inc.

review 1: Picked this up on a whim at the library and basically read the whole thing in one day. It helps that I'm a fan of post-apocalyptic fiction but even so, I found this collection of interconnected short stories to be more than its genre. The choices of details to carry across stories that seemingly could stand all on our their own gave the whole book a haunting reflective quality that I greatly admired. And the detail of leaving gaps between years of the narrators life that some have found annoying I embraced as a challenge to fill in the space with possibilities and my own idea of his reality. Cool stuff.
review 2: Really wish this site enabled half-stars. The difference between two stars (ugh) and three stars (this was good) can be expansive. This particular ... morenovel would be a 2.5; nothing ground-breaking but steady and with a sense of a negative reality dabbed with positive futuristic sensibilities. Books composed of connected short stories can be a chore when the final product isn't greater than the sum of its parts - especially when those parts range from ho-hum to mildly engaging. There are only a couple stories that resonated with me, which culminated the 2-star finality (I had switched from 3 stars at least once, and may do so again as the novel sets in further). I'd like to think, because of the glowing reviews, that I just didn't "get it." But, and perhaps more valid, I had expected too much from this book. This will not deter me from future works by the debut author, however. His style, while simple, painted a vivid scene no matter how barren the environment that the protagonist resided in was. Potential is the name of the game here. less

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