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Better Living Through Plastic Explosives (2012)

by Zsuzsi Gartner(Favorite Author)

3.21 of 5 Votes: 1

ISBN

0670065188 (ISBN13: 9780670065189)

languge

English

genre

Humor

publisher

Pintail

review 1: The stories are good. Where I have an issue is with the style. Each and every one of them is extremely dense prose, with almost non-stop exposition. Scenes are rarely crafted or shown, they are revealed after the fact, often in reminiscence by the characters. Dialogue is rare and sparse, and is often disconnected from the scene, leaving it up to the reader to decide where it really fits in. So if you want to get to know a character in the story, hopefully it will be the character narrating it. And when you get to third-person narratives, well, good luck. Gartner is restrained to the point of withholding.
review 2: The stories in this collection are always unique and generally draw the reader on to the next page. Several have an element of surrealism, often isol... moreated to a single component that emerges as the story unfolds. Whether Gartner is writing a mother's letter to her daughter's narrow-minded art teacher or conveying the regrets of a recovering terrorist, her words often challenge the reader and her imagery comes via fresh metaphors. She also repeats a few characters and events across her stories. Suburban angst is a common theme. For me, there were a few too many points where the tone reflected a jaded, New Yorker perspective. Reading this collection will stretch your creative brain in a few new directions. less

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