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Self-Help
From the national bestselling author of A Gate at the Stairs —and a master of contemporary American fiction—comes “a funny, cohesive, and moving collection of stories" ( The New York Times Book Review ).
In these tales of loss and pleasure, lovers and family, a woman learns to conduct an affair, a child of divorce dances with her mother, and a woman with a terminal illness contemplates her exit. Filled with the sharp humor, emotional acuity, and joyful language Moore has become famous for, these nine glittering tales marked the introduction of an extravagantly gifted writer.
In these tales of loss and pleasure, lovers and family, a woman learns to conduct an affair, a child of divorce dances with her mother, and a woman with a terminal illness contemplates her exit. Filled with the sharp humor, emotional acuity, and joyful language Moore has become famous for, these nine glittering tales marked the introduction of an extravagantly gifted writer.
163 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1985
About the author
Lorrie Moore
64 books2,326 followersLORRIE MOORE is the Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Professor of English at Vanderbilt University. She is the recipient of a Lannan Foundation fellowship, as well as the PEN/Malamud Award and the Rea Award for her achievement in the short story. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She lives in Nashville, Tennessee.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 1,385 reviews
December 11, 2020
Pick up this book. Worry that people who see you on your lunch break will think you're actually reading a self help book. Become instantly enamoured with the first story, How to be an Other Woman. Understand completely why David Sedaris drops everything for Lorrie Moore like a giggling fan-boy. Wish you'd written these stories first.
Cry at the second story, What is Seized. Be reminded of Billy Collins' poem "The Lanyard", except without the humour. Listen to Billy Collins read "The Lanyard" for the fiftieth time, on youtube, to recover from the heartbreak of What is Seized.
Feel slightly 'meh' about the use of the imperative in stories 3 and 4. Suspect that Moore might be overusing it. While it was brilliant in the first story, hope that this isn't the theme of the entire book.
Allow yourself to be completely destroyed by Go Like This. Marvel at the psychological range of the stories. Marvel at the fact that you've never read Lorrie Moore before. Cry.
The imperative is back in How to Talk to your Mother, but don't be bothered, because it's so good. Be impressed by the backwards chronology and the way the story invites you in, then slits your throat, and makes you love it anyway.
Story 7 sparkles with so many extraordinary, bejewelled sentences, mark up the pages like a maniac. Delight in how she describes her cat as a "whore", a "gorgeous nomad", an "unfriend", an "intent ballerina in a hairy body stocking".
Laugh, wildly, as you read How to Become a Writer. Remember all the heartless criticisms you received in a shitty undergraduate creative writing seminar from an asshole named Tavish. Feel a tiny, battered seed of hope stir in your heart. Think about the blank stares you receive when you share with friends that you are writing/have written a novel. Laugh some more.
Read the last story when you are really supposed to be working. Feel a terrible ache of understanding which is also sweet because you are reading the words of a totally unique and undeniable talent. Acknowledge that perhaps the imperative might have been used a few times too many, thus diluting the original zing, but feel ultimately unable to award this wonderful collection with anything less than 5 stars.
Cry at the second story, What is Seized. Be reminded of Billy Collins' poem "The Lanyard", except without the humour. Listen to Billy Collins read "The Lanyard" for the fiftieth time, on youtube, to recover from the heartbreak of What is Seized.
Feel slightly 'meh' about the use of the imperative in stories 3 and 4. Suspect that Moore might be overusing it. While it was brilliant in the first story, hope that this isn't the theme of the entire book.
Allow yourself to be completely destroyed by Go Like This. Marvel at the psychological range of the stories. Marvel at the fact that you've never read Lorrie Moore before. Cry.
The imperative is back in How to Talk to your Mother, but don't be bothered, because it's so good. Be impressed by the backwards chronology and the way the story invites you in, then slits your throat, and makes you love it anyway.
Story 7 sparkles with so many extraordinary, bejewelled sentences, mark up the pages like a maniac. Delight in how she describes her cat as a "whore", a "gorgeous nomad", an "unfriend", an "intent ballerina in a hairy body stocking".
Laugh, wildly, as you read How to Become a Writer. Remember all the heartless criticisms you received in a shitty undergraduate creative writing seminar from an asshole named Tavish. Feel a tiny, battered seed of hope stir in your heart. Think about the blank stares you receive when you share with friends that you are writing/have written a novel. Laugh some more.
Read the last story when you are really supposed to be working. Feel a terrible ache of understanding which is also sweet because you are reading the words of a totally unique and undeniable talent. Acknowledge that perhaps the imperative might have been used a few times too many, thus diluting the original zing, but feel ultimately unable to award this wonderful collection with anything less than 5 stars.
December 19, 2023
A good short story collection written by an American master of the short form. I've read them a few months ago and I do not remember much about the individual stories. Many of them were written in 2nd person, which worked well. 2nd person is hard to master so this is why it stuck with me. The stories are about women, love, adultery, death.
September 30, 2007
I can't remember which of her books it is, I think it's this one, in which a character observes: "This Danish is too Sweetish for me to Finnish!"
If you don't like that, you probably wouldn't like Lorrie Moore much.
And if you don't like Lorrie Moore, I probably wouldn't really like you.
If you don't like that, you probably wouldn't like Lorrie Moore much.
And if you don't like Lorrie Moore, I probably wouldn't really like you.
September 10, 2023
“a series of pictures here of mothers and daughters switching places- women switching places to take care of one another. you, the daughter, becoming the mother, the ceres, and she the daughter, kidnapped to hell, and you roam the earth to find her, to mourn her, leaving the trees and grain to wither, having no peace, you have no peace.”
jo march (2019): “women…”
this book has been on my shelf for five years, and i am so upset at how long it took me to pick this up. since my initial purchase, this book has followed me to live in three countries, and i’m confident it will continue to do so.
self help, although a short read, is a mighty one. shrouded in moore’s signature razor sharp wit and humor, the stories are simply moving and gut wrenching and brilliant. her writing style has a unique balance between clinical and lyrical and it brought a muted sort of melancholy—the kind that creeps up on you and then eventually overwhelms you without realizing it.
self help is never too light yet never too solemn. while some parts were so viscerally devastating (what is seized absolutely broke me), moore’s darkly funny narrative makes it bearable and entertaining. many of the short stories are ironically written in a ‘self help’ format. none of it is ‘helpful’.
what i love about books that are essentially character studies is the authorial kindness that is imbued into each of these characters. self help captures mundane and perhaps even humdrum everyday moments in such a sincere and empathetic light. her use of second person narrative enables her to do this in a way only she can.
my top five stories in this collection:
1. what is seized [completely shattered me. a woman reflects on her relationship with her parents & her parents' relationship in between descriptions of her mother's old childhood photographs.]
2. how to be an other woman [written in a ‘how to’ format, a woman has an affair with a married man.]
3. how [a woman becomes disillusioned with her life and boyfriend. she records the process as she falls out of love with him.]
4. how to talk to your mother [on dealing with grief and the loss of a parent.]
5. go like this [a terminally ill woman contemplates ending her own life.]
at the core of self help are stories about lonely women. none of them are fully formed character profiles; we intrude on their lives during the most pivotal and perhaps most vulnerable moments, when their lives are on the precipice of changing forever. a woman becomes the other woman, another deals with terminal cancer and mortality, a third battles depression. of mothers and daughters, of daughters and mothers.
“we curl up on the couch together, under a blanket, whisper i love you, i missed you, confusing tenses i think.”
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mini review
so absolutely brilliant and gut-wrenching. some short stories in here are the best i've ever read.
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pre-read
i haven't really read a book in months so i'm excited for this to be the first book i pick up.
(mainly because it's been on my shelf for five years)
March 2, 2021
Con el permiso de la autora, la cosa podía ser algo así: sacas el libro de tu estantería, te acomodas en tu sillón preferido o bajas a tu cafetería de siempre o tomas el autobús de todos los días. Empiezas a leerlo. Puede que al principio te cueste un poco su forma de contar las cosas, pero congeniáis enseguida, te ríes de sus cosas, te compadeces también. Te sientes descubierto, consolado, ensimismado. Cuando estés triste o confuso, date un paseo, ponte un capítulo de alguna serie, hazte palomitas. Unos minutos, un rato, unas horas. Vuelve: el cuento siguiente puede ser aún mejor.
… nadie sabe cómo lidiar con el enorme espacio que año tras año se va interponiendo entre los miembros de una pareja…
“No me importa si soy un pez, todavía quiero una bicicleta.”No puedo negar que me gustan mucho los autores que tratan en sus libros las grandes cuestiones, esas que hemos convertido en enormes globos a punto de explotarnos en la cara de tantas respuestas que hemos metido dentro. Moore no es de estos y eso no le quita ni pizca de interés. Moore parece venir a decir, vale, lo que digáis, pero ya que de todos modos tenemos que vivir, como coño nos las apañamos. Moore parece venir a decir, quizás algunos de nuestros problemas lo sean solo porque creemos que tienen solución y que además solo hay una y debemos encontrarla. Y la verdad es que…
… nadie sabe cómo lidiar con el enorme espacio que año tras año se va interponiendo entre los miembros de una pareja…
“Eso es lo malo que tienen las personas frías… Para ellos, la sinceridad va siempre por delante de la amabilidad, la verdad por delante del arte. El amor es arte, no verdad.… cómo ser esa tercera persona que entra a formar parte de una ecuación de dos…
“Filosofa: eres una amante… Las esposas son como las cucarachas… Te sobrevivirán después de un ataque nuclear (son duras y resistentes y se desplazan en manadas), pero ahora mismo no lo están pasando nada bien. Y cuando miras en el espejo del baño las ves escabullirse por detrás de ti, por arriba, donde no las alcanzas.”… cómo ser la hija de tu madre abandonada, cómo abandonar a tu pareja cuando está a punto de morir y has dejado de quererla, cómo morir…
“Me he decidido por el Día de la toma de la Bastilla. Es una elección simbólica y práctica. Elliott tendrá tiempo suficiente antes de empezar a dar clases otra vez en otoño. Blaine no irá este año de colonias y podrá pasar algún tiempo en el campo con los padres de Elliott. Como estoy segura de que hará un calor insoportable, les pediré que todos lleven ropa clara. Ni ropa negra, ni corbatas, ni sombreros, ni abrigos. Los muertos son crueles cuando imponen esos sufrimientos en julio.”… cómo vivir la muerte de una madre, cómo soportar las infidelidades, cómo aguantar las ganas de clavarle un cuchillo a tu pareja infiel, cómo hacer cuando descubres en lo que te has convertido, en lo que se han convertido tus padres, tus parejas, tus amistades… cómo ser escritora.
“El perdón vive solo y lejos, carretera abajo, pero la amargura y el arte son vecinos próximos, chismosos, que comparten un mismo tendedero, que tienden sus cosas y confunden las prendas de la lavandería.”Nadie lo sabe, pero Moore está sobrada de inteligencia para plantear todas estas cuestiones y conmovernos y divertirnos al tiempo. Moore sabe cómo encontrar hermosas formas de decir las cosas sin decirlas e incluso cómo ponerse a prueba a sí misma (era su primera colección de cuentos, tenía 28 años) al imponerse al narrar una segunda persona nunca fácil de manejar y salir triunfante.
January 29, 2015
SIX WORD REVIEW: To think, she was twenty five.
August 2, 2019
Empathetic and clever, Self-Help muses about broken pasts and turbulent presents. In her 1985 debut short story collection Moore lends a compelling voice to the frustrations and hopes of an eclectic bunch of women living in New York. Common themes (divorce, illness, affairs, motherhood) link together the nine tales, which collectively draw an impressionistic sketch of bourgeois life in the city on the eve of Manhattan's rapid gentrification. Favorites include "How to Be an Other Woman," "Go Like This," and "How to Talk to Your Mother (Notes)."
Want to read
October 9, 2023if elle likes it, i read it
March 26, 2022
This is Lorrie Moore’s first book, a collection of stories that are wise and darkly funny – but the kind of funny that hides genuine pain and heartbreak.
Several of them are told in the second person and satirize the genre suggested by the title: “How to Be an Other Woman,” “How to Become a Writer” (both brilliant) and “How to Talk to Your Mother (Notes).” One story is simply called “How.”
Moore deals with affairs, divorce, cancer. There’s a poignant story that’s a snapshot of life from the point of view of a child of divorce. Another concerns a children’s book writer living with an incurable disease who informs her friends of her plans to kill herself.
While most of her writing is sharp and vivid, sometimes Moore tries too hard to reach for a poetic image – but I admire her for trying. There are hilarious puns and plays with language, with only a handful of duds when the jokes feel merely distracting.
I’ve read some of these stories several times, but a few I could never get through before this reading. I’m not a fan of the collection’s aimless final story, “To Fill,” about a depressed woman’s distance from her husband and mini-obsession with an old boyfriend, named Phil (the title is yet another pun).
Today, of course, Moore is rightly acknowledged as one of the best short story writers around. Although this book is uneven, her sardonic humour and insights into love, family and relationships are evident, even at what was the outset of her long and enduring career.
Several of them are told in the second person and satirize the genre suggested by the title: “How to Be an Other Woman,” “How to Become a Writer” (both brilliant) and “How to Talk to Your Mother (Notes).” One story is simply called “How.”
Moore deals with affairs, divorce, cancer. There’s a poignant story that’s a snapshot of life from the point of view of a child of divorce. Another concerns a children’s book writer living with an incurable disease who informs her friends of her plans to kill herself.
While most of her writing is sharp and vivid, sometimes Moore tries too hard to reach for a poetic image – but I admire her for trying. There are hilarious puns and plays with language, with only a handful of duds when the jokes feel merely distracting.
I’ve read some of these stories several times, but a few I could never get through before this reading. I’m not a fan of the collection’s aimless final story, “To Fill,” about a depressed woman’s distance from her husband and mini-obsession with an old boyfriend, named Phil (the title is yet another pun).
Today, of course, Moore is rightly acknowledged as one of the best short story writers around. Although this book is uneven, her sardonic humour and insights into love, family and relationships are evident, even at what was the outset of her long and enduring career.
May 9, 2022
The second time I've tried Lorrie Moore and neither has been a success. She writes like someone trying to impress fellow creative writing students. All her narrators here resemble the central character of the novel of hers I read - a woman cleverer than everyone surrounding her who is thus alienated and embittered. It's like the only perspective she has on life and it isn't very original or compelling. There are scatterings of great sentences, but I can't help feeling there's a kind of soullessness at the heart of her work. As if she panders too much to current trends. Having recently finished Flannery O'Connor's stories these stories seemed in comparison like street corner con tricks.
April 28, 2023
4.5 stars
Stories told by females of different ages at varied stages of lives, of different generations. Their stories discuss topics like illness, death, suicide, grief, pain, love, motherhood, depression, loss, relationships, and adultery.
Humane and real stories. A mix of heartbreaking, relatable, witty and darkly humorous. A brilliant collection of short stories.
My favourites were Go Like This and To Fill
The writing style was crisp and very introspective. It gave a sense of being written in a private journal. All characters deeply explore their complicated situation, and themselves. These characters share some of their deepest and most personal thoughts, which could have been anyone’s. The book is called Self-Help and is stylized like a guide to navigate life as a woman by living through experiences of other women.
This read was a recommendation from a friend! And I am so glad for the recommendation :)
Some Quotes:
From What Is Seized :
"Cold men destroy women," my mother wrote me years later. "They woo them with something personable that they bring out for show, something annexed to their souls like a fake greenhouse, lead you in, and you think you see life and vitality and sun and greenness, and then when you love them, they lead you out into their real soul, a drafty, cavernous, empty ballroom, inexorably arched and vaulted and mocking you with its echoes -you hear all you have sacrificed, all you have given, landing with a loud clunk. They lock the greenhouse and you are as tiny as a figure in an architect's drawing, a faceless splotch, a blur of stick limbs abandoned in some voluminous desert of stone."
From How To Become A Writer :
First, try to be something, anything, else. A movie star/astronaut. A movie star/misionary. A movie star/kindergarten teacher. President of the World. Fail miserably. It is best if you fail at an early age say, fourteen. Early, critical disillusionment is necessary so that at fifteen you can write long haiku sequences about thwarted desire. It is a pond, a cherry blossom, a wind brushing against sparrow wing leaving for mountain. Count the syllables. Show it to your mom. She is tough and practical. She has a son in Vietnam and a husband who may be having an affair. She believes in wearing brown because it hides spots.
She'll look briefly at your writing, then back up at you with a face blank as a donut. She'll say: "How about emptying the dish-washer?" Look away. Shove the forks in the fork drawer. Accidentally break one of the freebie gas station glasses. This is the required pain and suffering. This is only for starters.
From To Fill :
I am becoming hugely depressed. Like last year. Just a month ago I was better, sporting a simpler, terse sort of disenchantment, a neat black vest of sadness. Elegant ironies leaped from my mouth fine as cuisses de grenouilles. Now the darkness sleeps and wakes in me daily like an Asian carnivore at the Philly zoo.
Stories told by females of different ages at varied stages of lives, of different generations. Their stories discuss topics like illness, death, suicide, grief, pain, love, motherhood, depression, loss, relationships, and adultery.
Humane and real stories. A mix of heartbreaking, relatable, witty and darkly humorous. A brilliant collection of short stories.
My favourites were Go Like This and To Fill
The writing style was crisp and very introspective. It gave a sense of being written in a private journal. All characters deeply explore their complicated situation, and themselves. These characters share some of their deepest and most personal thoughts, which could have been anyone’s. The book is called Self-Help and is stylized like a guide to navigate life as a woman by living through experiences of other women.
This read was a recommendation from a friend! And I am so glad for the recommendation :)
Some Quotes:
From What Is Seized :
"Cold men destroy women," my mother wrote me years later. "They woo them with something personable that they bring out for show, something annexed to their souls like a fake greenhouse, lead you in, and you think you see life and vitality and sun and greenness, and then when you love them, they lead you out into their real soul, a drafty, cavernous, empty ballroom, inexorably arched and vaulted and mocking you with its echoes -you hear all you have sacrificed, all you have given, landing with a loud clunk. They lock the greenhouse and you are as tiny as a figure in an architect's drawing, a faceless splotch, a blur of stick limbs abandoned in some voluminous desert of stone."
From How To Become A Writer :
First, try to be something, anything, else. A movie star/astronaut. A movie star/misionary. A movie star/kindergarten teacher. President of the World. Fail miserably. It is best if you fail at an early age say, fourteen. Early, critical disillusionment is necessary so that at fifteen you can write long haiku sequences about thwarted desire. It is a pond, a cherry blossom, a wind brushing against sparrow wing leaving for mountain. Count the syllables. Show it to your mom. She is tough and practical. She has a son in Vietnam and a husband who may be having an affair. She believes in wearing brown because it hides spots.
She'll look briefly at your writing, then back up at you with a face blank as a donut. She'll say: "How about emptying the dish-washer?" Look away. Shove the forks in the fork drawer. Accidentally break one of the freebie gas station glasses. This is the required pain and suffering. This is only for starters.
From To Fill :
I am becoming hugely depressed. Like last year. Just a month ago I was better, sporting a simpler, terse sort of disenchantment, a neat black vest of sadness. Elegant ironies leaped from my mouth fine as cuisses de grenouilles. Now the darkness sleeps and wakes in me daily like an Asian carnivore at the Philly zoo.
January 12, 2021
You pick up Lorrie Moore’s collection of short stories called Self-Help because you’ve always admired her writing. Plus, your own writing is often compared to hers. Not because you are a master of the form, like Moore, but more because your short stories are peppered with a sort of sad and self-deprecating humor.
What you love about reading short story collections over short story anthologies is that you can pick up the threads that move throughout the stories. Moore has a thing for opera singers and women who work in retail, women with cheating men and weird moms. You enjoy the collection because you enjoy Moore’s writing, however you are a little put off by the choice of the second person in so many of the stories.
You wonder what it is about the second person that you don’t like. Perhaps it’s the presumptuousness of what “you” would do. It immediately puts you on the defensive and the whole time you are reading a story you can’t help but think, “I would never do that.”
read the rest.
What you love about reading short story collections over short story anthologies is that you can pick up the threads that move throughout the stories. Moore has a thing for opera singers and women who work in retail, women with cheating men and weird moms. You enjoy the collection because you enjoy Moore’s writing, however you are a little put off by the choice of the second person in so many of the stories.
You wonder what it is about the second person that you don’t like. Perhaps it’s the presumptuousness of what “you” would do. It immediately puts you on the defensive and the whole time you are reading a story you can’t help but think, “I would never do that.”
read the rest.
June 22, 2021
I first read Self-Help back when I was 20 and it didn't make much of an impression on me. Over the years I've always chalked that up to the fact that I was kind of an idiot back then, but as I got older I couldn't test that theory because I had lent my copy to someone and she never gave it back (don't you hate that?). After a couple of GR friends gave this positive reviews last year, I decided to get a new copy and try again. And, you know, I still wasn't as wowed as I thought I would be. "How to Be an Other Woman" was by far my favorite; a lot of the others were a bit dull, and Moore's famous dark humor seemed to mainly consist of characters constantly making bad puns. Is it possible Moore's style has been so imitated since this book's release that I'm no longer able to appreciate its originality and groundbreaking qualities? Maybe. Is it possible I'm still kind of an idiot? Also maybe. But I really loved Birds of America, so maybe it's possible that Moore is just as susceptible to first-book unevenness as every other writer is. I will be reading more of her work in the future, so hopefully I can answer these questions at some later date. 3.5, rounded down.
September 25, 2022
might be one of the best short stories collection i've read. lorrie moore executed the short stories perfectly + her writing !!!!!!
January 31, 2015
“Meet in expensive raincoats, on a pea-soupy night.”
So begins the first story of Lorrie Moore’s first book, most of which she wrote as an M.F.A. student at Cornell University. Eight words, none of which would tax the vocabulary of a fifth-grader, and yet all of the signature elements that Moore built her award-winning career on are there: the fledgling attempts at urbanity so fragile they must be spelled out (“expensive raincoats”), the perfectly failed eloquence (“pea-soupy”), and the self-canceling main character, all grounded in a mood as specific and dense as bourbon.
I’m not here, Moore seems to say, but this is exactly where I might be if I were.
“Last night in bed you said, ‘...I usually don’t like discussing sex, but—’ And he said, ‘I don’t like disgusting sex either.’”
Moore’s writing can seem second-rate even to sympathetic readers. She is clever but not an analytical powerhouse, peppers her dialogue with some really bad puns, and cheerfully practices ignorance of any traditional notions about plot.
In short, Moore embraces many of the worst tendencies of M.F.A. fiction and then seems to double down on them.
“‘But does it work?’ ... ‘Have you earned this cliché?’”
And yet, the accumulated effect of these stories is that of a romantic temperament that has been profoundly disappointed, and who can’t relate to that? We are all former children, after all.
As funny as she can be, Moore’s vision is fundamentally tragic. It is the great ur-pun of Moore’s oeuvre that the wisecracks that she loves so much are not cracks of wisdom so much as cracks in the wisdom that her generation received from generations previous.
It’s worth noting that the third dictionary definition for “joke” (after “a thing that someone says to cause amusement or laughter” and “a trick played on someone for fun”) is “a person or thing that is ridiculously inadequate.”
“Understand that your cat is a whore and can’t help you.”
The step-by-step life instructions peddled by the self-help industry to the disappointed romantics that make up 100% of the American adult population are probably most readily classifiable as the third kind of joke, but, as long as you’re reading these stories, they can very nearly almost feel like one of the other two.
February 2, 2024
Every time I finish a book(this book finally made me do it), I want to go on the roof and scream. Scream, Thank You!!! (Its you, its all
YOU!
)
So, Last night at 4 am, after finishing the book, I wiped the final tear off my face and went straight to the roof. But, thoughtfully, I whispered instead, to the stars and the night sky, I whispered with all my heart, Thank You! Now as they have promised, these two words will keep reverberating across the galaxy until they reach their destination. Its a rather difficult task when destination is a person, they said.
Story 1: Painfully Funny. Funnily Painful. Its the pain though that lingers, men ARE the problem. This was a 5 star right from the first page.
Story 2: In a kinda "gradual" rush of emotions, I closed the book and ran off to hug my mother, realizing midway she is in Bangalore visiting my sister. Dejected, I returned to my room and started reading the next story. Love may not be the truth, but dont you dare question its existence.
Story 3: Not that its ever gonna happen(ofcourse I am not evil, I dont wish for it), but I will always choose Mom. Dad can manage, as he always has, in neglect. He lost his oldest friend today idk how he is coping 900 kilometers away.
Story 4: Hello "worst person in the world", haha. Well I do relate to Julie from the movie and our narrator here. You fall in love, slowly and gradually & sometimes all at once. You fall out of love, slowly and gradually & sometimes all at once.
Story 5: Honestly, I did not like this one much. Coz I think about suicide, about dying all the time and thought this story about "rational" suicide was a bit of cliche. Nevertheless I cried at the end.
Story 6: Mom I miss you why did you have to go to Bangalore this week(THIS WEEK?!?!?!?!) Come back soon.
Story 7: This line is something I dont want to agree with. I feel it isnt seasonal. It cant be right? Right????
This story though beautifully deconstructs a failing relationship.
also,
Story 8: Damn this was Meta!!!
Why do I HAVE TO HAVE a career?????? *Panic attack intensifies*
Story 9: Lorrie Moore, I Love You.....
Women! *Jo March voice*
So, Last night at 4 am, after finishing the book, I wiped the final tear off my face and went straight to the roof. But, thoughtfully, I whispered instead, to the stars and the night sky, I whispered with all my heart, Thank You! Now as they have promised, these two words will keep reverberating across the galaxy until they reach their destination. Its a rather difficult task when destination is a person, they said.
Philosophize: you are a mistress, part of a great hysterical you mean historical tradition. Wives are like cockroaches. Also part of a great historical tradition. They will survive you after a nuclear attack—they are tough and hardy and travel in packs—but right now they’re not having any fun.
Story 1: Painfully Funny. Funnily Painful. Its the pain though that lingers, men ARE the problem. This was a 5 star right from the first page.
For them (cold people) it is all honesty before kindness, truth before art. Love is art, not truth.it is like painting scenery.
Story 2: In a kinda "gradual" rush of emotions, I closed the book and ran off to hug my mother, realizing midway she is in Bangalore visiting my sister. Dejected, I returned to my room and started reading the next story. Love may not be the truth, but dont you dare question its existence.
Men can be so dense and frustrating
Story 3: Not that its ever gonna happen(ofcourse I am not evil, I dont wish for it), but I will always choose Mom. Dad can manage, as he always has, in neglect. He lost his oldest friend today idk how he is coping 900 kilometers away.
But I love you, he will say in his soft, bewildered way, stirring the spaghetti sauce but not you, staring into the pan as if waiting for something, a magic fish, to rise from it and say: That is always enough, why is that not always enough?
Story 4: Hello "worst person in the world", haha. Well I do relate to Julie from the movie and our narrator here. You fall in love, slowly and gradually & sometimes all at once. You fall out of love, slowly and gradually & sometimes all at once.
everything I can see from the round eye of this empty saucer, faintly making out a patch of droughted trees and a string of wildebeests, one by one, like the sheep of a child’s insomnia, throwing in the towel, circling, lying down in the sun silently to decompose, in spite of themselves, god, there’s no music, no trumpet here, it is fast, and there’s no sound at all, just this white heat of July going on and on, going on like this
Story 5: Honestly, I did not like this one much. Coz I think about suicide, about dying all the time and thought this story about "rational" suicide was a bit of cliche. Nevertheless I cried at the end.
Clutch her hair in your fist. Rub it against your cheek.
Story 6: Mom I miss you why did you have to go to Bangalore this week(THIS WEEK?!?!?!?!) Come back soon.
Every adoration is seasonal as Christmas.
Story 7: This line is something I dont want to agree with. I feel it isnt seasonal. It cant be right? Right????
This story though beautifully deconstructs a failing relationship.
Switch majors. The kids in your nursery project will be disappointed, but you have a calling, an urge, a delusion, an unfortunate habit. You have, as your mother would say, fallen in with a bad crowd.
also,
Begin to wonder what you do write about. Or if you have anything to say. Or if there even is such a thing as a thing to say. Limit these thoughts to no more than ten minutes a day; like sit-ups, they can make you thin.
Story 8: Damn this was Meta!!!
Why do I HAVE TO HAVE a career?????? *Panic attack intensifies*
I’m bonkers, aren’t I? I ask with my mouth full.
You’re unhappy, says Mr. Fernandez. It can be the same thing. You are unhappy because you believe in such a thing as happy.
Story 9: Lorrie Moore, I Love You.....
Women! *Jo March voice*
January 2, 2021
This is not your usual short story collection, beginning with the prose style chosen in several of the stories (use of imperative sentences). While effective at creating an interesting narrative, the result was a group of stories that kept me at an emotional distance. If you like to sink your teeth and heart into characters, this might not be a style that appeals to you. The stories using a more traditional style were more enjoyable to me.
That said, the stories did offer much food for thought and appreciation for an unusual read on common human states of being--dissolving relationships, anxiety/paranoia, childhood versus adult views of our parents, divorcing parents. falling in and out of love, contemplating ending a life due to illness, trying to become a writer. These are heady themes and this could sound like a real downer of a book. But Moore keeps the tone light, despite the content, often in ironic or downright amusing ways. She nails a concept with the precision of a dart:
"Cold men destroy women." "They woo them with something personable that they bring out for show, something annexed to their souls like a fake greenhouse, lead you in, and you think you see life and vitality and sun and greennness, and then when you love them, they lead you out into their real soul, a drafty, cavernous, empty ballroom, inexorably arched and vaulted and mocking you with its echoes..."
Or divorce:
"When your parents divide, you, too, bifurcate. You cleave and bubble and break in two, live two lives, half of you crying every morning on the dock at sunrise, black hair fading to dusky gray, part of you traveling off to some other town...."
Or, regarding a needed discussion:
"But we didn't. Not really. Oh, it drifted piecemeal into subsequent dialogues like a body tossed out to sea and washed days later back into shore, a shoe there, a finger here, a breastbone in weed tide-bumping against the sand. But we never truly discussed it, never truly. Instead, allusions, suggestions, clues, silent but palpable, crawled out of the night ocean, as in a science fiction movie: black and slow they moved in and arranged themselves around the apartment like precocious, breathing houseplants, like scavengers."
These are not quick or frivolous reads. They are stories dense with meaning and packaged in boxes within boxes. I enjoyed some more than others, with my personal favorite being How to Become a Writer, which was both witty and skeweringly apropos.
"Begin to wonder what you do write about. Or if you have anything to say. Or if there even is such a thing as a thing to say. Limit these thoughts to no more than ten minutes a day: like sit-ups, they can make you thin."
An interesting collection that reads like a blend of story-essay. Moore does have a unique voice and astute powers of observation on the human condition.
That said, the stories did offer much food for thought and appreciation for an unusual read on common human states of being--dissolving relationships, anxiety/paranoia, childhood versus adult views of our parents, divorcing parents. falling in and out of love, contemplating ending a life due to illness, trying to become a writer. These are heady themes and this could sound like a real downer of a book. But Moore keeps the tone light, despite the content, often in ironic or downright amusing ways. She nails a concept with the precision of a dart:
"Cold men destroy women." "They woo them with something personable that they bring out for show, something annexed to their souls like a fake greenhouse, lead you in, and you think you see life and vitality and sun and greennness, and then when you love them, they lead you out into their real soul, a drafty, cavernous, empty ballroom, inexorably arched and vaulted and mocking you with its echoes..."
Or divorce:
"When your parents divide, you, too, bifurcate. You cleave and bubble and break in two, live two lives, half of you crying every morning on the dock at sunrise, black hair fading to dusky gray, part of you traveling off to some other town...."
Or, regarding a needed discussion:
"But we didn't. Not really. Oh, it drifted piecemeal into subsequent dialogues like a body tossed out to sea and washed days later back into shore, a shoe there, a finger here, a breastbone in weed tide-bumping against the sand. But we never truly discussed it, never truly. Instead, allusions, suggestions, clues, silent but palpable, crawled out of the night ocean, as in a science fiction movie: black and slow they moved in and arranged themselves around the apartment like precocious, breathing houseplants, like scavengers."
These are not quick or frivolous reads. They are stories dense with meaning and packaged in boxes within boxes. I enjoyed some more than others, with my personal favorite being How to Become a Writer, which was both witty and skeweringly apropos.
"Begin to wonder what you do write about. Or if you have anything to say. Or if there even is such a thing as a thing to say. Limit these thoughts to no more than ten minutes a day: like sit-ups, they can make you thin."
An interesting collection that reads like a blend of story-essay. Moore does have a unique voice and astute powers of observation on the human condition.
March 7, 2022
Lorrie Moore’s Self-Help was a pleasant surprise. This collection of short stories is excellent, the writing crisp and wry. I often don’t love short stories, unless they serve together to create a whole. In a collection of stand-alones, I’m lucky if there’s a single stand out that stays with me throughout the years. In this group I only found one or two that I didn’t fully enjoy. I suppose there is a feeling of connectedness between the pieces here, they do feel they emerge from the same life, the same voice, and maybe that helped. I also think the narrator on audible, Jane Oppenheimer, was a perfect choice. (And I don’t usually enjoy audio books as much as physical ones, although I’m grateful that they’re an option). I’d read a physical copy of A Gate at The Stairs some years ago, and although it came highly recommended by a reader I trust, and I normally love coming-of-age stories, I didn’t enjoy it all that much. So, yeah, a surprise. It took me a long time to try Moore again, and now I’m looking forward to reading her again.
December 1, 2016
This was my first Lorrie Moore collection, and I really truly enjoyed it. However, I wasn't expecting the stories to be so brutally depressing - although there was a great amount of tongue-in-cheek humour throughout the collection (Moore has a truly biting wit), the subjects of the stories in question are not ideal for picking up if you are in a tired or low headspace.
Moore's writing is jaunty and staccato, her prose biting, and she covers a myriad of topics in this collection - everything from adultery and illness to suicide, motherhood, and more. Each story is told from a female perspective, but I don't necessarily think that this limits the collection to being accessed by men as well - the stories are told well enough, and for the most part the images are generally universal enough to appeal not only to women. However, some of the stories are considerably longer than others, and there were points during the last story in particular in this collection that I found my attention waning... until that ending. That ending.
Overall I'm so happy that I finally got to this book, and I'm also happy that I unintentionally started with Lorrie Moore's first collection - I will for sure be picking up more of her work.
Moore's writing is jaunty and staccato, her prose biting, and she covers a myriad of topics in this collection - everything from adultery and illness to suicide, motherhood, and more. Each story is told from a female perspective, but I don't necessarily think that this limits the collection to being accessed by men as well - the stories are told well enough, and for the most part the images are generally universal enough to appeal not only to women. However, some of the stories are considerably longer than others, and there were points during the last story in particular in this collection that I found my attention waning... until that ending. That ending.
Overall I'm so happy that I finally got to this book, and I'm also happy that I unintentionally started with Lorrie Moore's first collection - I will for sure be picking up more of her work.
December 4, 2019
BA from Lawrence College
MFA from Cornell University
At the time of this book she was probably an Assistant Professor at University of Wisconsin-Madison. In 1976 she was awarded first prize in the Seventeen magazine short story contest (she was ~19 at the time).
In review of two books of hers including Self-Help Vince Passaro says this in Harper's (August 1999): Two particular features...make her stories fundamentally different from the mainstream books of short fiction then being published: her caustic humor, which almost none of her contemporaries shared, and her book's central, structural conceit-that this was a self-help book. The first story in the volume, "How to Be an Other Woman," stands as a clear example. He gives a quote from that short story and I am reminded of why I liked her so much!
MFA from Cornell University
At the time of this book she was probably an Assistant Professor at University of Wisconsin-Madison. In 1976 she was awarded first prize in the Seventeen magazine short story contest (she was ~19 at the time).
In review of two books of hers including Self-Help Vince Passaro says this in Harper's (August 1999): Two particular features...make her stories fundamentally different from the mainstream books of short fiction then being published: her caustic humor, which almost none of her contemporaries shared, and her book's central, structural conceit-that this was a self-help book. The first story in the volume, "How to Be an Other Woman," stands as a clear example. He gives a quote from that short story and I am reminded of why I liked her so much!
October 29, 2013
This book was a lyrical masterpiece of interconnecting words, meanings, and emotions. It was the cat's pajamas--that is, if the cat had just broken up with her boyfriend and stayed at home watching old Ingrid Bergman movies, getting over it by darkly observing the world and making the saddest jokes a cat will ever meow. That is an example of an overextended metaphor and is not that accurate in describing the amazing, heartbreaking soulfulness that is this book.
It's funny, sad, dark, and uplifting. Read it. You will not regret it, although you will regret that you will never be able to read it for the first time ever again. So there's that.
It's funny, sad, dark, and uplifting. Read it. You will not regret it, although you will regret that you will never be able to read it for the first time ever again. So there's that.
October 25, 2022
Historically I’m not great with short stories, for me
they often lack enough depth to draw me in. But not so with Lorrie Moore.
These are razor sharp. Serious subjects, yet darkly hilarious. I ate them all up! Wonderful.
Any recommendations on which Moore to read next?!
they often lack enough depth to draw me in. But not so with Lorrie Moore.
These are razor sharp. Serious subjects, yet darkly hilarious. I ate them all up! Wonderful.
Any recommendations on which Moore to read next?!
September 11, 2009
The blurbs and reviews on this one praised its author's sense of humor and great writing style, but I should've paid more attention to the mentions of her ability to pick out the poignant, heartbreaking moments we all share--apparently, that means parents' divorce, bad relationships, and general inability to make good choices. Yes, she's very good at description, and can turn a nice phrase. "How to Be an Other Woman" caught me with evocative imagery and a cynical but true take on what it's like to have an affair with a married (and separated, and multiply-cheating) man, but it wasn't funny enough to make up for the fact that at the end, the narrator hasn't realized her mistake isn't just falling for that guy, but for having a completely screwed up internal morality. The other stories continue in the same, blinkered, Cheryl-Crow vein, all about people who can't seem to understand the relationship between action and consequence, or to experience honestly caring relationships. A well-written and occasionally amusing downer.
April 12, 2008
Years ago I read Lorrie Moore's excellent Who Will Run the Frog Hospital for a grad school class (on memoirs?) and I have been a fan ever since. Every so often I will run across one of her essays or stories and find myself in stitches, although her humor almost always comes with a healthy dose of irony or solemnity to keep it from being a pure laugh fest. This semester I began my Creative Writing course with an out loud, round-the-class, reading of an essay (which turns out to be from Self-Help) called "How to Become a Writer Or, Have You Earned This Cliché?" Another teacher I know (recommender of David Schickler from last week) does the same thing and it turned out to be a hit for us both.
I picked up Self-Help after reading another flat-out amazing Moore story (this time in a Paris Review Collection) called "Terrific Mother," which so far ranks in my top ten short stories of all time. Self-Help turns out to contain some more definite Moore gems, though not quite so many as I was hoping for. In my Moore-zeal I also bought Anagrams (fine, I stole it from my fiance's parents) and Birds of America, which contains "Terrific Mother" as well. It also turns out that Moore may be best enjoyed in smaller doses - so it may take me a little while to get around to those other ones.
The best stories in Self-Help follow the same model that "How to Become a Writer..." does, addressing the reader in short instructive sentences... the first story, "How to be an Other Woman," opens with the sage advice to, "Meet in expensive beige raincoats on a pea-soupy night..." The advice is always fun and specific, and as the piece progresses it becomes clear that this is not a general outline for readers hoping to sleep with married men, but really a story about the instructor's affair with one, particular man.
Stories in similar form, like "A Kid's Guide to Divorce", "How", "Go Like This", and "How to Talk to Your Mother (Notes)" are all great. It made me wonder why she didn't stick with it throughout, because the random, more traditional stories like "What is Seized" end up feeling oddly lacking. Luckily, these are in the minority. Still, by the end of the collection I found I was laughing less, cringing more, and generally having had enough angst for one week. I attempted to segue right into Birds of America, thinking ambitiously that I'd do a double-post this time, but this was not to be. Self-Help was thoroughly enjoyable, very original, and often very poignant, but as I said earlier, I've hit my Moore-limit for the moment.
To be fair, I don't know of any short story writers that could make me want to read two collections back-to-back... as I said last week, I hardly ever finish the ones I start. More next week...
March 15, 2021
Como dicen por aquí otras reseñas, tiene algunos cuentos más flojos que otros. Eso sí, entre el estilazo, la ironía que corta como un cuchillo y el manejo de la segunda persona que se gasta... un conjunto brutal. Me gusta bastante la autora y leeré más de ella, sin duda.
July 9, 2007
Every single short story I wrote in my undergrad creative writing workshops was a ripoff of Lorrie Moore in some way. I'm sure I'm not the only one.
August 8, 2020
"Eres infeliz, dice el señor Fernández. Puede ser lo mismo. Eres infeliz porque crees que existe una cosa que se llama ser feliz".
Nueve cuentos que nos enfrentan al sentido trágico de la vida a través del humor más seco, de la ironía y de una marcada sinceridad que llegado un punto nos puede resultar irreverente por parte de Lorrie Moore, porque hablar de la muerte, de la senilidad de una madre, de la maternidad, de una enfermedad terminal o del adulterio con este humor seco y esta fina ironía como carcajeándose de estas cuestiones vitales, es todo un talento. Para más inri si descubres que Lorrie Moore tenía 28 años cuando publicó esta colección de cuentos, más sorprendente me parece su hazaña: solo 28 años y narrar estos temas como los narra, solo puede hacerlo una grande.
Mientras vas leyendo los cuentos quizás te pueda sorprender su estilo, seco y punzante, y lo que en un momento parece casi cómico, deriva en una melancolía que te va calando. La mayoría de los cuentos están narrados en primera persona, y el título es una especie de vuelta de tuerca, de sátira descarnizada de esas esas guías de autoayuda que te aconsejan cómo conseguir la felicidad absoluta y de cómo ser el ser humano perfecto y feliz. Aquí Lorrie Moore deconstruye estas autoayudas y nos muestra personajes que hacen justo lo contrario a lo que se les recomienda, nos enfrenta al día a día de sus personajes, que sí que buscan de alguna forma desesperadamente ser felices, pero la honestidad con que Lorrie Moore retrata estas vidas humanas en eterna búsqueda de felicidad nos ayuda a entender mucho mejor la condición humana. Su estilo puede resultar incómodo porque estamos acostumbrados a lo lineal, pero una vez que te ubicas, resultan unos cuentos asombrosos, que derivan en auténticos manuales de desentrañar la condición humana.
De los nueve cuentos tengo que destacar dos, que me han maravillado por cómo retrata esta autora sobre todo, la relación madre/hija:
- “De lo que se apoderan”: Puede que este cuento se haya convertido en uno de mis cuentos favoritos para siempre. Lo terminé de leer, y lo volví a releer una vez más. En este cuento se nos muestra la relación de los padres de la narradora y a medida que avanzan los años, este matrimonio va cambiando y vas siendo testigo a través de su hija de la decadencia mental y física de su madre. Las pinceladas en las que nos va mostrando la evolución de esta pareja y el estado mental de su madre, son una maravilla.
“Cuando tus padres se separan, también tu te bifurcas. Te partes, crujes y te divides en dos, vives dos vidas: una mitad de tí que llora todas las mañanas en el embarcadero al salir el sol, con pelo negro que se destiñe hasta un gris oscuro, una parte de ti que se marcha a otra ciudad donde eres maestro de escuela y cuentas chistes con acento italiano en un bar y haces reir a la gente”.
(…)
"Y cuando tu madre empieza a perder la cabeza, tú también. Empiezas a tener miedo de la gente que ves por la calle. Vuelves a ver formas (viejos y arañas) en el papel de la pared, como cuando eras pequeña y estabas enferma. El reflejo de la luna en el lago empieza a parecer un pez muerto que flota con el vientre dorado hacia arriba. Pregúntaselo a cualquiera. Pregúntaselo a cualquiera cuya madre esté perdiendo la cabeza·”.
(…)
“Los hombres fríos destrozan a las mujeres, me escribió mi madre años más tarde. Las cortejan con algo llamativo de lo que presumen, algo que llevan unido a su alma como un falso invernadero; te hacen pasar y te crees que ves vida, optimismo, sol y verdor, y cuando los amas, te hacen pasar a su alma verdadera, un salón de baile vacio, cavernoso, lleno de corrientes de aire, con arcos y cúpulas inexorables y que se burla de tí con sus ecos”.
- “Cómo hablar a tu madre”: Es un cuento dividido en pequeños segmentos que marcan años concretos dónde se narra la relación de la narradora con su madre mientras que al mismo tiempo va contando momentos de su vida. El primero comienza en 1982 y el último en 1939, la gracia es que está contado hacia atrás en el tiempo. Una vez terminado el cuento te dan unas ganas inmensas de volver a leerlo porque ya en una segunda lectura, cambia tu perspectiva. Me recordó mucho a Alice Munro. Una genialidad
“Tu madre te llama a veces por el nombre de su hermana. Dile:
- No, mamá, soy yo, Virginia.
Aprende a repetir las cosas. Aprende que teneís una manera de reconoceros la una a la otra que de algún modo se desborda y llega más allá de las maneras que tenéis de no reconoceros.
Haz manzanas asadas por primera vez”.
https://kansasbooks.blogspot.com/2020...
Nueve cuentos que nos enfrentan al sentido trágico de la vida a través del humor más seco, de la ironía y de una marcada sinceridad que llegado un punto nos puede resultar irreverente por parte de Lorrie Moore, porque hablar de la muerte, de la senilidad de una madre, de la maternidad, de una enfermedad terminal o del adulterio con este humor seco y esta fina ironía como carcajeándose de estas cuestiones vitales, es todo un talento. Para más inri si descubres que Lorrie Moore tenía 28 años cuando publicó esta colección de cuentos, más sorprendente me parece su hazaña: solo 28 años y narrar estos temas como los narra, solo puede hacerlo una grande.
Mientras vas leyendo los cuentos quizás te pueda sorprender su estilo, seco y punzante, y lo que en un momento parece casi cómico, deriva en una melancolía que te va calando. La mayoría de los cuentos están narrados en primera persona, y el título es una especie de vuelta de tuerca, de sátira descarnizada de esas esas guías de autoayuda que te aconsejan cómo conseguir la felicidad absoluta y de cómo ser el ser humano perfecto y feliz. Aquí Lorrie Moore deconstruye estas autoayudas y nos muestra personajes que hacen justo lo contrario a lo que se les recomienda, nos enfrenta al día a día de sus personajes, que sí que buscan de alguna forma desesperadamente ser felices, pero la honestidad con que Lorrie Moore retrata estas vidas humanas en eterna búsqueda de felicidad nos ayuda a entender mucho mejor la condición humana. Su estilo puede resultar incómodo porque estamos acostumbrados a lo lineal, pero una vez que te ubicas, resultan unos cuentos asombrosos, que derivan en auténticos manuales de desentrañar la condición humana.
De los nueve cuentos tengo que destacar dos, que me han maravillado por cómo retrata esta autora sobre todo, la relación madre/hija:
- “De lo que se apoderan”: Puede que este cuento se haya convertido en uno de mis cuentos favoritos para siempre. Lo terminé de leer, y lo volví a releer una vez más. En este cuento se nos muestra la relación de los padres de la narradora y a medida que avanzan los años, este matrimonio va cambiando y vas siendo testigo a través de su hija de la decadencia mental y física de su madre. Las pinceladas en las que nos va mostrando la evolución de esta pareja y el estado mental de su madre, son una maravilla.
“Cuando tus padres se separan, también tu te bifurcas. Te partes, crujes y te divides en dos, vives dos vidas: una mitad de tí que llora todas las mañanas en el embarcadero al salir el sol, con pelo negro que se destiñe hasta un gris oscuro, una parte de ti que se marcha a otra ciudad donde eres maestro de escuela y cuentas chistes con acento italiano en un bar y haces reir a la gente”.
(…)
"Y cuando tu madre empieza a perder la cabeza, tú también. Empiezas a tener miedo de la gente que ves por la calle. Vuelves a ver formas (viejos y arañas) en el papel de la pared, como cuando eras pequeña y estabas enferma. El reflejo de la luna en el lago empieza a parecer un pez muerto que flota con el vientre dorado hacia arriba. Pregúntaselo a cualquiera. Pregúntaselo a cualquiera cuya madre esté perdiendo la cabeza·”.
(…)
“Los hombres fríos destrozan a las mujeres, me escribió mi madre años más tarde. Las cortejan con algo llamativo de lo que presumen, algo que llevan unido a su alma como un falso invernadero; te hacen pasar y te crees que ves vida, optimismo, sol y verdor, y cuando los amas, te hacen pasar a su alma verdadera, un salón de baile vacio, cavernoso, lleno de corrientes de aire, con arcos y cúpulas inexorables y que se burla de tí con sus ecos”.
- “Cómo hablar a tu madre”: Es un cuento dividido en pequeños segmentos que marcan años concretos dónde se narra la relación de la narradora con su madre mientras que al mismo tiempo va contando momentos de su vida. El primero comienza en 1982 y el último en 1939, la gracia es que está contado hacia atrás en el tiempo. Una vez terminado el cuento te dan unas ganas inmensas de volver a leerlo porque ya en una segunda lectura, cambia tu perspectiva. Me recordó mucho a Alice Munro. Una genialidad
“Tu madre te llama a veces por el nombre de su hermana. Dile:
- No, mamá, soy yo, Virginia.
Aprende a repetir las cosas. Aprende que teneís una manera de reconoceros la una a la otra que de algún modo se desborda y llega más allá de las maneras que tenéis de no reconoceros.
Haz manzanas asadas por primera vez”.
https://kansasbooks.blogspot.com/2020...
November 8, 2009
A quick read. I liked the first few stories best, but it may be because the later ones seemed to reiterate the early ones: there is not a lot of range in this collection, and the tone and style got old. There are some gems in here, though: reading "How," a story about a woman falling out of love, was an uncomfortable and devastatingly familiar experience. The following passage slayed me:
Many of the stories are written in that self-help style. These aren't stories with fairytale endings or melodramatic plot devices, and that's refreshing. Most are from the point of view of twenty- or thirty-something women. Apart from sporadic, brutally honest passages (like the one quoted above), though, I feel sort of "eh" about the collection. I don't feel much urgency to read more Moore(!), but I'm curious about how her other collections compare; I know she has quite a following.
Pace around the kitchen and say that you are unhappy.
But I love you, he will say in his soft, bewildered way, stirring the spaghetti sauce but not you, staring into the pan as if waiting for something, a magic fish, to rise from it and say: That is always enough, why is that not always enough?
Many of the stories are written in that self-help style. These aren't stories with fairytale endings or melodramatic plot devices, and that's refreshing. Most are from the point of view of twenty- or thirty-something women. Apart from sporadic, brutally honest passages (like the one quoted above), though, I feel sort of "eh" about the collection. I don't feel much urgency to read more Moore(!), but I'm curious about how her other collections compare; I know she has quite a following.
August 21, 2015
I discovered Lorrie Moore only recently in fact, but I'm certain the timing is just right, any younger I wouldn't have really 'got' her. It's like reading Scott Adams' God's Debris when you're sixteen, or something comparable to that.
I discovered Lorrie Moore while listening to the audio book of The Best American Short Stories Of The Century edited by John Updike. She was reading her story, You're Ugly Too.
I was immediately sold.
Now comes the hard part: I'm not so good at reviewing books that blow me away. I like to think their merits speak for themselves. This is one of those books. Self-Help is a literary masterpiece, simple as that. Smart, funny, articulate about subjects like suicide, divorce, relationships and love. Lorrie Moore's command of humour is unrivalled, she does it so masterfully, it doesn't feel like she's dumbing down just for the sake of it or throwing jokes around just for the sake of being funny. The stories in this collection are both tragic and comic, poignant and wholesome, and it's very hard to pick out favourites as you'd traditional do when reviewing any anthology. All the stories here are gems in their own right and collectively, the aesthetic feel of the book is flawless.
I discovered Lorrie Moore while listening to the audio book of The Best American Short Stories Of The Century edited by John Updike. She was reading her story, You're Ugly Too.
I was immediately sold.
Now comes the hard part: I'm not so good at reviewing books that blow me away. I like to think their merits speak for themselves. This is one of those books. Self-Help is a literary masterpiece, simple as that. Smart, funny, articulate about subjects like suicide, divorce, relationships and love. Lorrie Moore's command of humour is unrivalled, she does it so masterfully, it doesn't feel like she's dumbing down just for the sake of it or throwing jokes around just for the sake of being funny. The stories in this collection are both tragic and comic, poignant and wholesome, and it's very hard to pick out favourites as you'd traditional do when reviewing any anthology. All the stories here are gems in their own right and collectively, the aesthetic feel of the book is flawless.
September 16, 2021
it's been almost a month since i read this and i still can't get over just how good it was 😭😭😭
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wow wow wow. lorrie moore's writing.......i truly have no words. these stories left me dumbfounded and enthralled and i probably won't be able to stop thinking about them for a long while
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wow wow wow. lorrie moore's writing.......i truly have no words. these stories left me dumbfounded and enthralled and i probably won't be able to stop thinking about them for a long while
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