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Loading... AM/PM (original 2009; edition 2009)by Amelia Gray (Author)
Work InformationAM/PM by Amelia Gray (2009)
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Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. Short stories for the twitter generation. Most were less than a half a page, but somehow had more impact than a regular sized story. I usually hate short stories, but I loved this book. ( ) 4 out of 5: AM/PM is a collection of 133 very short stories, each taking up no more than a single page. In concise and often brutal prose, these brief stories give surprisingly comprehensive glimpses into ongoing lives. Each story’s laser-beam focus on a single instant uncovers what’s really happening in the small moments of life, those moments that fit between two blinks of the eyes. Because it’s nearly impossible to describe what Amelia Gray accomplishes in these stories, here are a couple examples: "There is a poetry to the wasted life, but little beauty. The poetry to an empty bed is beauty, Charles recognizes, and there is a poetry to the second hand on a clock, which is a kind of beauty, but the only beauty in the wasted life is of efficiency, and grace, and a complete knowledge of a small portion of the world. Charles recognizes the grace of a trip to the store. He feels the efficiency in slipping the same type of milk into the same place in the refrigerator door, between the pickles and the mayonnaise. Charles accepts the knowledge of the second hand." And: "The trap in the attic was catching some seriously large squirrels. Rats too, but Reginald didn’t want to frighten Olivia by telling her there were rats crawling up through the walls. He installed a humane trap, a kill trap, and a poison trap, and left it up to the vermin to make the choice for themselves." This review also appears on my literary blog Literary License. no reviews | add a review
If anything's going to save the characters in Amelia Gray's debut from their troubled romances, their social improprieties, or their hands turning into claws, it's a John Mayer concert tee. InAM/PM, impish humor and cutting insight are on full display. Readers tour the lives of 23 characters across 120 stories full of lizard tails, Schrödinger boxes, and volcano love. June wakes up one morning covered in seeds; Leonard falls in love with a chaise lounge; Betty insists everything except flowers are a symbol of her love for her husband; Andrew talks to his house in times of crisis. Written every morning and night for two months, these brief vignettes (50 to 100 words) recall DonaldBarthelme in their whimsy and subtle yet powerful emotions. An intermittent love story as seen through a darkly comic lens,AM/PM mixes poetry and prose, humor and hubris to create a truly original work of fiction. No library descriptions found. |
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