Review by Booklist Review
Eisenberg's short stories are fresh and sure. Her earlier stories were recently collected in The Stories (So Far) of Deborah Eisenberg (1997), and now a spectacular set of diverse new works is presented here, a rapid-fire release guaranteed to increase her readership. Eisenberg's speciality is depicting the carnival atmosphere of a mind coming slowly and reluctantly to terms with crisis. The very air turns visible and fragmented in "The Girl Who Left Her Sock on the Floor" when Francie, a rebellious student at an uptight boarding school, learns that her mother has died. In "Across the Lake," a young tourist in a war-torn Latin American country senses danger in everything, from a drop of water to the glint in a child's eyes. Whatever the setting, Eisenberg perfectly and instructively captures the baffling simultaneity of each moment--the indifference of sunlight, the presentiment of a misheard word--and our minds' stubborn preoccupation with the spin and crash of thoughts. --Donna Seaman
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Each of these seven original +short stories in Eisenberg's new collection (which follows close on the publication of The Stories (So Far) of Deborah Eisenberg), is better than the previous one. The last four stories overwhelm (and more than justify) the weaker, opening three. The satisfying "Rosie Gets a Soul" takes a look at a fairly stable ex-junkie's pitiful attempts to exercise control over her new, clean life. "Mermaids" presents a perceptive child's-eye view of adults' feeble attempts to hide obvious truths from their children. As in Eisenberg's previous fiction, displaced travelersyoung college types, long-term jaded hippies, expats, failed journalists and musiciansfind a south-of-the-border home between her pages. In this vein, "Across the Lake" stands out, playing a naïve college boy against the creepy couple of fellow Americans who recklessly lead him into a guerrilla war zone in a vaguely identified South American country. Capping this collection, the brilliant title story recounts a daughter's attempts, after the death of her mother, a Holocaust survivor, to piece together the remaining mysteries of her own childhood. In these short narratives, what is not said is almost as important as what is stated: stalls, pauses and unfinished thoughts open new vistas in the characters' minds. As usual, one marvels at Eisenberg's ability to ground her characters in habits of thought and feeling that are at once utterly private and at the same time perfectly, universally everyday. (Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
Check out Eisenberg's new collection of short stories, which often feature characters in the midst of startling change; she's a definite favorite of those looking for the next literary star. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
An impressive gathering of seven painstakingly wrought, ambitious stories by the critically acclaimed author of the collections Transactions in a Foreign Currency (1986) and Under the 82nd Airborne (1992). Eisenberg's stories typically explore unusually complex relationships among strongly realized characters who are often both inexorably drawn to--and hopelessly wrong for--one another. She has a flair for developing an initially simple story in unexpected directions, and something of (her exemplar?) Katherine Anne Porter's ability to bring a novel-like depth to the confines of her stories. One or two gathered here misfire--notably ``Rosie Gets a Soul,'' a sprawling tale about a screwed-up female painter's experiences with peers, lovers, art, and drugs: Eisenberg's heart doesn't seem to be in it. But there are several stunners, including the title story's ``imaginary conversation,'' which its unfulfilled middle-aged protagonist holds with the charismatic older man who had tutored her and, it appears, never noticed her; and ``The Girl Who Left Her Sock on the Floor,'' which traces with both irony and empathy its boarding-school protagonist's initiation into the facts of mortality, as well as of adult hypocrisy and folly. Another exploration of childhood, ``Mermaids,'' limns the fractious and contentious nature of an outwardly contented family through the eyes of its young daughter's schoolmate, who accompanies them on an eye-opening trip to New York City. And in the best of several stories set in, and redolent of, Mexico, the superb ``Someone to Talk To,'' Eisenberg reveals the rude political awakening of a pampered concert pianist in a series of ingeniously unfolding levels of emotion and meaning. Exceptional work from one of the contemporary masters.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
