Debriefing Collected stories

Actor Marlo masters Sontag's complex literary voice in these 11 stories, effortlessly navigating fractured expressions and disjointed configurations. In "The Letter Scene," Marlo smoothly handles a collage of back-and-forth shifts among multiple letter writers of multiple eras. In the satirical story "Baby," she's able to keep the listener in tune with the mother, the father, and the psychologist, whose questions and comments are unvoiced but implied in the answers. Others, like "An Unguided Tour," involve disjointed dialogues that meld into internal ruminations. Sontag was first and foremost a brilliant essayist, but these stories are occasions to experiment with other genres such as autobiography, allegory, diary, and even sci-fi. Stories such as the sci-fi piece "Dummy" involve Sontag's philosophical musings on the vacuous ways of modern life, retaining the underlying pedagogical quality of essays. Marlo's narrative skills guide listeners through each piece, but anyone who wants to delve into the layered meanings within Sontag's sentences may want to keep the book in hand for easy reference. A Farrar, Straus and Giroux hardcover. (Nov.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

This complete collection of National Book Award winner Sontag's (In America; The Volcano Lover) short fiction, edited by Taylor (Saul Bellow: Letters), contains 11 eclectic stories. "Pilgrimage," the first work, is a sweet, humorous, and expertly crafted tale of two teenagers meeting Thomas Mann. This is followed by a piece that reads more like a poem ("Project for a Trip to China") and then an imaginative, surreal tale ("American Spirits"). In "The Dummy," a man unsatisfied with his life makes a robotic replica of himself to perform what he views as daily drudgery, allowing him to devote all of his attention to pleasure. His family and coworkers are not able to tell the difference between the real man and the robot. "Debriefing," the title work, provides a friend's accounting of an elusive woman named Julia. Ultimately, these works cannot be easily defined; they are often experimental, quite beautiful, and represent the freedom and courage of a mind in love with language. VERDICT Sontag's status as an established novelist, essayist, and critic, and that this is the only collection of her short fiction, will make this a popular choice. [See Prepub Alert, 5/15/17.]-Stacy Russo, Santa Ana Coll. Lib., CA © Copyright 2017. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.