Rate this book

Spectacle: Stories (2013)

by Susan Steinberg(Favorite Author)

3.83 of 5 Votes: 2

ISBN

155597631X (ISBN13: 9781555976316)

languge

English

genre

Poetry

publisher

Graywolf Press

review 1: Imagine being trapped in Sartre's vision of Hell with a humor-leeched Lena Dunham and someone who imagines that Lockerbie was all about *her*—despite the fact that her connection to the event was peripheral at best. Now think what it would be like if the latter were a tiresome drunk who forced you to listen to the same grating Goldberg Variations (my dad sucks, my brother sucks, this is not a metaphor, sometimes it is a metaphor, I'm a bad girl, I'm a good girl, I'm a girl who pretends that I am a guy because … shit, I don't know. Terrorism? Anomie? Ennui? A sort of mucky self-involvement that presupposes that other three-dimensional female characters simply cannot exist within the framework of this narrative? Seriously: Spectacle makes Neil LaBute's bilious screeds re... moread like Simone de Beauvoir.
review 2: Clipped rhythm and repetition. First person voice-heavy stories. A lot of sentence fragments beginning with "To say ___." Stories with line breaks. Stories with a single pages-long paragraph of semicolon-separated sentences. A lot of sentence fragments starting with "Meaning ___." The style will seduce you or drive you mad. The characters will seduce you or drive you mad. That being the point, I think. Seamless jumps of topic and time from line to line. A collage is built and then collapses in on itself. A lot of sentence fragments starting with "Listen to me." Starting with "You have to trust me." Themes of guilt and identity. Gender.Disconnection. The character will admit to lying or admit to guilt or surely confess something by the end. They always build to a shift at the end, if you're looking for one. It is surprisingly effective. Surprising and effective. To say it is hard to get that rhythm out once it has gotten in. Meaning you will love it or you will hate it. That being the point, I think. Listen to me. You have to trust me. This book is better than you even know. less

Download links for: Spectacle: Stories

Advertising