Deborah Eisenberg

Deborah Eisenberg is a favorite short story writer of mine, and while this wasn't my top favorite collection of hers there was plenty here to like. Her wonderfully knotty plots and un-pin-downable relationships, and the language is, as ever, really unexpected and full of delights. Language and what it does/can do/can't do is a theme that runs through many of the stories here (and many of her stories in general, but it was thrown into particularly sharp focus in this collection). My show more favorites, “Cross Off and Move On" and "Recalculating," I had read in the NY Review of Books, and they felt to me to be the most fully realized of the bunch—the others had varying ratios of offbeat, marvelous writing to too much punctuation, a quirk of Eisenberg's that sometimes drives me nuts. But it's a neat collection, never boring, and definitely worth a read for anyone who likes a lot to chew on in their short fiction. show less

The six stories collected here range from dystopian horror to elegiac memorial to quirky social forensics. Most involve extended families, some non-traditional, weariness at the state of the world, and, often, incomprehension. For me, the collection was front-loaded with the best of the stories at the start of the book. I especially liked the title story, “Your Duck is My Duck,” in which the protagonist is very much at sea when drawn into opulent but distasteful surroundings. Her show more sideways look at things is charming. “Taj Mahal” contrasts multiple views of a milieu, focussing on a clutch of actors and the director who helped make them famous. It has lovely shifting perspectives and just enough ennui to captivate but not so much as to irritate. “Cross Off and Move On” is a retrospective of an extended family filled with misperceptions and well-preserved bile. Again, the protagonist has a unusual take on her situation that holds the reader’s attention.

At their best these stories are very good indeed. But the book as a whole suffers from the inclusion of weaker stories that seem to be just filling it out.

Gently recommended. show less

Really wonderful, really dense... it took me what, a month to read? Such a fine-tuned literary prism onto the world, you read it and wonder, Why didn't I think of that?

It's funny because I just loved Twilight of the Superheroes when it first came out, but attached to the other collections that came before, it pales a little. The early stuff is so immediate. Anyway, more later... stay tuned.

Well I read one story and that's "The Girl Who Left Her Socks on the Floor". It was more than a girl leaving her socks on the floor, it was so much more. I guess the problem I have with short stories is that they are too short. I love getting to know about the characters. I like taking my time. This is a 10-minute read so plus for that.