I Live with You

This is a tough book to rate, and it's one of those collections where I think some of the short stories suffer from being paired with all of the others. Some of the stories here are ones which I fell in love with and will remember for some time--"I Live With You and You Don't Know It", "Boys", "Coo People", and "My General" all stood out to me as being fantastic. On the other hand, other stories that engaged with some of the same themes ended up feeling more like variations on a theme than anything because the same themes were so oft repeated within the collection. In a few other cases, the stories were hard to engage with to such an extent that while I could appreciate moments, the stories themselves were tough to decipher, and based show more on my overall mixed feelings, I still haven't decided whether or not to revisit them at a later date. Certainly, if I do, I think I'll read them in isolation rather than dealing with the potential issue of a single theme becoming tiresome within the larger work.

All told, I think many of the stories here are worth reading and rereading, and I'm surprised it took me so long to have discovered Emshwiller's work, though I'm glad I finally did. show less

Though Emshwiller calls herself a sci-fi writer, many people would classify these stories as magic realism: surreal things happen in an all-too-real background. The first few were interesting, but then the plots got repetitively annoying: woman will do anything to "get" a man, usually changing something essential about herself. Man is willing to betray his group to be with woman. But never both at the same time.

These stories are peppered with so many awkward turns of phrase and typos that I was sure they were translated (maybe from German?). Nope, just awkward.

Later stories by this great writer. Late in her long career, Emshwiller is writing better than ever.

A collection of good short stories, mostly on the theme of war.