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Happiness Is a Chemical in the Brain: Stories
Populating a small town in the Pacific Northwest, the characters in Lucia Perillo’s story collection all resist giving the world what it expects of them and are surprised when the world comes roaring back.
An addict trapped in a country house becomes obsessed with vacuum cleaners and the people who sell them door-to-door. An abandoned woman seeks consolation in tales of armed robbery told by one of her fellow suburban housewives. An accidental mother struggles to answer her daughter’s badgering about her paternity. And in three stories readers meet Louisa, a woman with Down syndrome who serves as an accomplice to her younger sister’s sexual exploits and her aging mother’s fantasies of revenge.
Together, Happiness Is a Chemical in the Brain is a sharp-edged, witty testament to the ambivalence of emotions, the way they pull in directions that often cancel one another out or twist their subjects into knots. In lyrical prose, Perillo draws on her training as a naturalist and a poet to map the terrain of the comic and the tragic, asking how we draw the boundaries between these two zones. What’s funny, what’s heartbreaking, and who gets to decide?
An addict trapped in a country house becomes obsessed with vacuum cleaners and the people who sell them door-to-door. An abandoned woman seeks consolation in tales of armed robbery told by one of her fellow suburban housewives. An accidental mother struggles to answer her daughter’s badgering about her paternity. And in three stories readers meet Louisa, a woman with Down syndrome who serves as an accomplice to her younger sister’s sexual exploits and her aging mother’s fantasies of revenge.
Together, Happiness Is a Chemical in the Brain is a sharp-edged, witty testament to the ambivalence of emotions, the way they pull in directions that often cancel one another out or twist their subjects into knots. In lyrical prose, Perillo draws on her training as a naturalist and a poet to map the terrain of the comic and the tragic, asking how we draw the boundaries between these two zones. What’s funny, what’s heartbreaking, and who gets to decide?
224 pages, Hardcover
First published May 7, 2012
16 people are currently reading
717 people want to read
About the author
Lucia Perillo
20 books32 followersLucia Perillo published five books of poetry. Perillo graduated from McGill University in Montreal in 1979 with a major in wildlife management and subsequently worked for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. She completed her M.A. in English at Syracuse University, and taught at Saint Martin's College, and in the creative writing program at Southern Illinois University. Her work appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, and The Kenyon Review. Luck Is Luck was a finalist for the L.A. Times Book Prize and won the Kingsley Tufts Prize. A former MacArthur fellow, Perillo lived in Olympia, Washington with her husband.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 68 reviews
February 8, 2018
Lucia Perillo is a brilliant writer. There are many fans, since "in 2000, when she had been named a recipient of a MacArthur Foundation fellowship, the poet Rodney Jones told The Chicago Tribune: 'Her goal is lucidity. She does not like the idea of writing a poem that people cannot understand.' ” I had read her poetry and memoir and was already a fan before beginning this collection of short stories.
The San Francisco Chronicle blurb on the back cover assures readers that if they are fans of Ray Carver, they will love this collection of short stories. I am not a fan of Ray Carver but I admire these stories, and some of them I loved. I wondered if she had abandoned a novel as I read the stories narrated by a woman who has a mentally disabled sister and a most entertaining mother. I think I would have loved that novel. Her characters grew on me. Actually, this is true of the collection as a whole. I thought in the midst of the second story that I might not finish reading. By the time I was halfway through, I was clear why many people (I assume) have given it five stars.
These are people with trouble, with sorrow and error and the need to manage day to day. Life is not about easy choices—the easy choices are not the ones that keep us awake at night, and Perillo knows a little bit about that. I argued over some of the stories, maybe cried a little, and they will stick. By the time I finished this slim volume, I'd decided it went on my keeper shelves.
The 14 stories are pretty uniformly depressing. But they do not entirely dwell on depression, other than the ones about death, which might be my favorites. Most have a male protagonist, five have a woman at the center: Louisa's younger sister (in multiple stories), the logging worker, and the woman with the health issue and perhaps-unfaithful husband. I should go back through and count them up.
A quick review of her background reminds me why the logging story feels so authentic, but also informs me of something I missed. Perillo died a little over a year ago at the age of 58. "In an interview for The American Poetry Review in 2014, she presented her situation straightforwardly. Asked about battling her disease, she said: 'I don’t battle M.S. I relent to its humiliations.' How did she manage not to fall into despair? 'I’ve already fallen. This is the voice from the swamp.' ”
She is a great loss to her family, friends, and the literary community.
[When you get to the point where your quarrel is the tiniest details and one sentence, the reader is splitting hairs. That is me, I am afraid. I am one of those readers who have a hard time getting past details that strike me wrong. The Douglas fir is always spelled with a capital D. Puget Sound is always "Puget Sound" and never "the Puget Sound," though we do say "the Sound" sometimes. I discovered there is a black and white species of porpoise that might have been found cast up and rotting on the shores of the Strait of Juan de Fuca, but I have also discovered enough marine mammals to be certain that the smell reaches fifty yards ahead of the animal.]
She deserved a fan letter. I am sorry not to have had that privilege.
The San Francisco Chronicle blurb on the back cover assures readers that if they are fans of Ray Carver, they will love this collection of short stories. I am not a fan of Ray Carver but I admire these stories, and some of them I loved. I wondered if she had abandoned a novel as I read the stories narrated by a woman who has a mentally disabled sister and a most entertaining mother. I think I would have loved that novel. Her characters grew on me. Actually, this is true of the collection as a whole. I thought in the midst of the second story that I might not finish reading. By the time I was halfway through, I was clear why many people (I assume) have given it five stars.
These are people with trouble, with sorrow and error and the need to manage day to day. Life is not about easy choices—the easy choices are not the ones that keep us awake at night, and Perillo knows a little bit about that. I argued over some of the stories, maybe cried a little, and they will stick. By the time I finished this slim volume, I'd decided it went on my keeper shelves.
The 14 stories are pretty uniformly depressing. But they do not entirely dwell on depression, other than the ones about death, which might be my favorites. Most have a male protagonist, five have a woman at the center: Louisa's younger sister (in multiple stories), the logging worker, and the woman with the health issue and perhaps-unfaithful husband. I should go back through and count them up.
A quick review of her background reminds me why the logging story feels so authentic, but also informs me of something I missed. Perillo died a little over a year ago at the age of 58. "In an interview for The American Poetry Review in 2014, she presented her situation straightforwardly. Asked about battling her disease, she said: 'I don’t battle M.S. I relent to its humiliations.' How did she manage not to fall into despair? 'I’ve already fallen. This is the voice from the swamp.' ”
She is a great loss to her family, friends, and the literary community.
[When you get to the point where your quarrel is the tiniest details and one sentence, the reader is splitting hairs. That is me, I am afraid. I am one of those readers who have a hard time getting past details that strike me wrong. The Douglas fir is always spelled with a capital D. Puget Sound is always "Puget Sound" and never "the Puget Sound," though we do say "the Sound" sometimes. I discovered there is a black and white species of porpoise that might have been found cast up and rotting on the shores of the Strait of Juan de Fuca, but I have also discovered enough marine mammals to be certain that the smell reaches fifty yards ahead of the animal.]
She deserved a fan letter. I am sorry not to have had that privilege.
November 12, 2014
The narrators of these stories are not doing so well, financially or personally or whatever (some worse than others mind you). But the strangely jaunty tone of the author (and essentially all of the narrators) kept me feeling like there could be a laugh in the next paragraph or with the turn of a page. Which, even realizing that was not likely, allowed me to keep reading without feeling like some sort of emotional vampire drinking in the pain and misfortune of others (even if they are imaginary).
One gets so used to short story authors having some ulterior motive or theme to their collection these days that, to some degree, I was a bit distracted about deciphering what that could possibly be, and was relieved to see, at the end, all these works had been published previously. Obviously, I have been scarred by an inability to reason on such elevated literary planes.
The randomness of the stories and the abruptness of their endings, with not only a lack of closure (not uncommon) but a lack of context was rather like peering through a hole in a fence and able to see only what is directly revealed. It created some curiosity but not necessarily enough to want to get up close and personal with their dysfunction or sadness for any length of time.
I will note that there are three stories narrated by a young woman referencing her mother and handicapped sister, Louise. In spite of the nameless narrator's penchant for very poor decisions wrt men, her mordant description of her relationship with her sister and her mother, and of her life, made me willing to read more about her and Louise.
3.5 but will give it a 4, uncharacteristically, just because I think it deserves more than the present 3.45 and frankly there are more badly written books that have higher (and undeserved) ratings (no matter how well-loved they may be).
One gets so used to short story authors having some ulterior motive or theme to their collection these days that, to some degree, I was a bit distracted about deciphering what that could possibly be, and was relieved to see, at the end, all these works had been published previously. Obviously, I have been scarred by an inability to reason on such elevated literary planes.
The randomness of the stories and the abruptness of their endings, with not only a lack of closure (not uncommon) but a lack of context was rather like peering through a hole in a fence and able to see only what is directly revealed. It created some curiosity but not necessarily enough to want to get up close and personal with their dysfunction or sadness for any length of time.
I will note that there are three stories narrated by a young woman referencing her mother and handicapped sister, Louise. In spite of the nameless narrator's penchant for very poor decisions wrt men, her mordant description of her relationship with her sister and her mother, and of her life, made me willing to read more about her and Louise.
3.5 but will give it a 4, uncharacteristically, just because I think it deserves more than the present 3.45 and frankly there are more badly written books that have higher (and undeserved) ratings (no matter how well-loved they may be).
November 19, 2013
QUICK AND ENTERTAINING.
"Why it matters I don't know, because inside is always dim so that you can't see that the only decorating theme is duct tape…"—'Bad Boy Number Seventeen'
Lucia Perillo is a skillful, lyrical, wordsmith. HAPPINESS IS A CHEMICAL IN THE BRAIN, is a collection of fourteen clever and imaginative, darkly melancholy, short stories—overall an entertaining listen.
Recommendation: Worth a read/listen.
"So there was beauty and decay, and the passing years the factory turning one into the other"—'Ashes'
MP3 Audio Book edition, (5 hours, 19 minutes).
"Why it matters I don't know, because inside is always dim so that you can't see that the only decorating theme is duct tape…"—'Bad Boy Number Seventeen'
Lucia Perillo is a skillful, lyrical, wordsmith. HAPPINESS IS A CHEMICAL IN THE BRAIN, is a collection of fourteen clever and imaginative, darkly melancholy, short stories—overall an entertaining listen.
Recommendation: Worth a read/listen.
"So there was beauty and decay, and the passing years the factory turning one into the other"—'Ashes'
MP3 Audio Book edition, (5 hours, 19 minutes).
July 10, 2018
#bookbingoNW2018 #characterhasadisability
February 22, 2021
The stories are wild and often weird. I had just finished her collection of her essays: . And had read several of her poetry collections. I hadn't realized that she also wrote fiction. Three of the stories are linked. A wild woman, her sister with Down's Syndrome, who is often her sidekick, and their mother who is angry about her life. In fact, many of these characters are women who feel they've somehow been cheated. The review in Good Reads introducing the writes, "The characters in Lucia Perillo’s story collection all resist giving the world what it expects of them and are surprised when the world comes roaring back." That's a good way of putting it. I was sad for most of them. Their views were daring, their actions often careless, and their lives fairly aimless. The writing is wonderful and surprising, but I was glad I didn't have to live in those stories myself. They seem like they could have been written by girls in high school who were much wilder, more daring than I was. Occasionally I tried on their styles, but I never pulled it off. I was much to romantic and melodramatic, plus I had a chipped tooth, a broken nose and a foot long scar on my knee. So I was shy. None of my friends had lives this tough. Good to immerse ourselves in all the ways there are for humans to be in the world. She catches moments perfectly.
I think of of the title of a collection of poems I'm reading: Lucky Wreck by Ada Limon. Perillo's character often strike me as "lucky wrecks. " Here's an example from the story "House of Grass." Madame Yvonne Beauchemin runs a restaurant, Le Maison D'Herbe in the town where Henry, the narrator of this story also lives. He resents Yvonne because she is so healthy, kayaking every day on the Puget Sound, and Henry's wife has cancer. Five years later, Yvonne has cancer and is as bald as his wife had been. "One of the ironies of cancer," Henry ruminates, is that cancer gives women the body they've always wanted as a kind last bequest. The high cheekbones and flattened bellies." Yvonne has invited her friends and other town people to a party catered by Le Maison D'Herbe. She directs the teenagers (servers) with meaningful glances and tilts of her head, But I could tell that her attention lay elsewhere, as if she'd packaged it before the evening fell and already sent it drifting on her kayak.
I think of of the title of a collection of poems I'm reading: Lucky Wreck by Ada Limon. Perillo's character often strike me as "lucky wrecks. " Here's an example from the story "House of Grass." Madame Yvonne Beauchemin runs a restaurant, Le Maison D'Herbe in the town where Henry, the narrator of this story also lives. He resents Yvonne because she is so healthy, kayaking every day on the Puget Sound, and Henry's wife has cancer. Five years later, Yvonne has cancer and is as bald as his wife had been. "One of the ironies of cancer," Henry ruminates, is that cancer gives women the body they've always wanted as a kind last bequest. The high cheekbones and flattened bellies." Yvonne has invited her friends and other town people to a party catered by Le Maison D'Herbe. She directs the teenagers (servers) with meaningful glances and tilts of her head, But I could tell that her attention lay elsewhere, as if she'd packaged it before the evening fell and already sent it drifting on her kayak.
June 12, 2021
Lucia Perillo is known for her poetry. From the Northeast originally, she moved to, and lived in the Northwest until she died, too young (58) from MS. This was her only book of stories after publishing seven books of poetry and a book of essays. I heard her read at Open Books when she was in a wheelchair.
This book is set in a northwest town interlaced with some of the same characters, each story has it's own arc. I was drawn in immediately. We meet people living life the best they know how. She has a keen sense of the work world and how it plays out between the sexes. The story "Slash (1976)" is set during a summer job to slash burn the first year they added women onto the team. "So a few weeks go by and they burn a few piles. All the guys from last year go first. Of course, everyone's waiting to see one of the women take her turn, and the women fear that waiting until last will prove that they're afraid." There is tension, one of the men gets trapped and has to be taken to the local hospital. The smallest woman steps up first and is fast and successful. We feel the tension and stress of this kind of rural labor.
In "Doctor Vicks," a lonely addicted housewife has a son who escapes the confines of the country home they moved to keep him out of trouble. Really it was her husbands idea. The wife goes driving at night because her husband doesn't like to shop, "The night is a tunnel that shrinks as the year draws to a close, contracting to fit inside the circumference of your headlights." The title refers to her addiction, "And there is also lying in your upstairs bedroom with a bottle of cough syrup, Doctor Vicks." She sees ghosts, hawks, angels that embarrasses her husband. She asks, "are you an embarrassment to your son Jason? Hard to tell. For now, you are two dogs circling each other, using your paws to travel sideways. Knowing that you are not going anywhere, knowing that you are only headed back to where you were."
I enjoyed each quirky and real story in this book. It was great to read a book set in rural Washington, although fiction, it captures well the rural life and people. There is a Downs syndrome young woman who brings levity and sexual yearning into several stories as she assists her younger sister with dating. I highly recommend reading this book and Lucia's poetry as well.
This book is set in a northwest town interlaced with some of the same characters, each story has it's own arc. I was drawn in immediately. We meet people living life the best they know how. She has a keen sense of the work world and how it plays out between the sexes. The story "Slash (1976)" is set during a summer job to slash burn the first year they added women onto the team. "So a few weeks go by and they burn a few piles. All the guys from last year go first. Of course, everyone's waiting to see one of the women take her turn, and the women fear that waiting until last will prove that they're afraid." There is tension, one of the men gets trapped and has to be taken to the local hospital. The smallest woman steps up first and is fast and successful. We feel the tension and stress of this kind of rural labor.
In "Doctor Vicks," a lonely addicted housewife has a son who escapes the confines of the country home they moved to keep him out of trouble. Really it was her husbands idea. The wife goes driving at night because her husband doesn't like to shop, "The night is a tunnel that shrinks as the year draws to a close, contracting to fit inside the circumference of your headlights." The title refers to her addiction, "And there is also lying in your upstairs bedroom with a bottle of cough syrup, Doctor Vicks." She sees ghosts, hawks, angels that embarrasses her husband. She asks, "are you an embarrassment to your son Jason? Hard to tell. For now, you are two dogs circling each other, using your paws to travel sideways. Knowing that you are not going anywhere, knowing that you are only headed back to where you were."
I enjoyed each quirky and real story in this book. It was great to read a book set in rural Washington, although fiction, it captures well the rural life and people. There is a Downs syndrome young woman who brings levity and sexual yearning into several stories as she assists her younger sister with dating. I highly recommend reading this book and Lucia's poetry as well.
February 10, 2018
Lucia Perillo 1958 - 2016, first came to my attention when I read her poem: “After Reading The Tibetan Book of the Dead” in The Poetry of Impermanence, Mindfulness, and Joy. This led me to her fiction, “Happiness is a Chemical in the Brain.”
Excellent short stories with sharp and startling imagery, wondrously told. What a voice, what powerful use of language. I’m especially taken with: Big-Dot Day****/ Doctor Vicks**** / The Water Cycle ***** / House of Grass ***** In the story House of Grass, a doctor living in a gated retirement community, Infinite Vistas (nick named IVs by its elderly residents) recounts a touching story of one Yvonne Beauchemin, who takes her own life when faced with the prolonged agonies of dying from cancer. The description of Infinite Vistas is vivid: where for “an immodest monthly fee, one will never have to attend to the physical work of living.” The word play throughout the collection is wonderful. This from “Ashes” —“the whiskey gave him a suntan from the inside out.” Perillo knows the power of showing rather than just telling. Great writing.
Excellent short stories with sharp and startling imagery, wondrously told. What a voice, what powerful use of language. I’m especially taken with: Big-Dot Day****/ Doctor Vicks**** / The Water Cycle ***** / House of Grass ***** In the story House of Grass, a doctor living in a gated retirement community, Infinite Vistas (nick named IVs by its elderly residents) recounts a touching story of one Yvonne Beauchemin, who takes her own life when faced with the prolonged agonies of dying from cancer. The description of Infinite Vistas is vivid: where for “an immodest monthly fee, one will never have to attend to the physical work of living.” The word play throughout the collection is wonderful. This from “Ashes” —“the whiskey gave him a suntan from the inside out.” Perillo knows the power of showing rather than just telling. Great writing.
December 28, 2019
Hello I am extremely behind on my Goodreads reviews so time for some rapid fire. Happiness is a Chemical in the Brain was a provoking collection with incredible voice and narrators who showed as much character in their first paragraph as some writers can't even manage across a whole series. Tend to be everyday, ordinary situations told with such a wry wit and bleak humor that you can't help chuckle and wince. Not sure why exactly I'm not rating this higher--maybe because 3 or 4 weeks after I've finished it and am writing the review I find I can recall very few of the stories in detail. There was nothing especially stand-out for me, but the writing is good and I'd still suggest it to certain people.
May 3, 2024
Fourteen not-too-happy short stories set around the Puget Sounds in the Pacific Northwest. I thought they were terrific for the most part - interesting characters, engaging narratives.
3.5 rounded up
Just as I got snuggled in they ended abruptly and left me hanging like the cord was cut on a tv. Then the next one started so swiftly I had to stop the audio and go do something else. Such it is with short stories though.
3.5 rounded up
Just as I got snuggled in they ended abruptly and left me hanging like the cord was cut on a tv. Then the next one started so swiftly I had to stop the audio and go do something else. Such it is with short stories though.
"when she closes her eyes, she sees herself lying on her back as the fire passes over her, her eyelids burning like a piece of film stuck in a projector."
May 11, 2019
I really enjoyed this collection of short stories. I'd like to give it somewhere closer to a 4.5. All of the stories were very well written, and most of them were very engaging. There were a few stories that tested my patience, but overall, this is a very solid collection. Highly recommended.
August 22, 2020
Somehow these stories about unlucky people struggling through their days in the northwest comes off as a feel-good book. This one came out of a free box years ago and I’m not sure how it made the cut when I was downsizing my literary possessions, but I’m glad it did. Tempted to keep and loan.
March 7, 2018
Good not great.
January 30, 2019
Great collection of short stories from the PNw. I love the “everyday” language and themes contrasted with the depth of character.
April 18, 2021
I was pretty bored, but I did enjoy a few extended metaphors of the common experiences of women.
July 26, 2021
This was an easy in-between-books book. Well written, slice-of-life stories, often sad but not depressing to read. Nothing mind-blowing or particularly attention-grabbing, but perfectly digestible.
July 13, 2024
…and my brain is too hollow for these stories to have clicked
August 5, 2016
I am growing more fond of short story collections by the week it seems. I think I have confessed before that short stories were hard for me to get into. Most often when I read I want a fully immersive experience and it always seemed to me that the long form of a novel allows for immersion better than the short form of a story. I had some idea that by being with a set of characters in a particular place for a longer time I would become more immersed in their world and the happenings there. But what I am finding by reading really good short stories is that an author can write characters that are just as rich and settings as clearly rendered as in a good novel. And then stories have the added benefit that they do not grow tiresome. It seems to me that it helps if the author is a poet as these folks have honed their wordsmithing skills to a very fine point. This collection by Lucia Perillo is a wonderful example of exactly that. All of the stories here are set in the Pacific Northwest and most have a melancholy greyness about them that seems suited to the place. From alcoholics to addicts to abused women and a woman who hosts her own pre-suicide party, it is not the bubbly collection one might expect from a book with happiness in the title and dandelions on the cover. Yes, the stories are often funny, but in the style of the dark humor of permeates so much of adult life. As a narrator, MacDuffie does a wonderful job straddling that line between humor and despair, hope and small satisfactions. And I have a hunch that these characters and the lessons they had to teach about living a life that is adequate if not exquisite will be with me a good long while.
June 19, 2013
In "Happiness is a Chemical in the Brain" Lucia Perillo has captured the very abnormally-normal people of the Pacific Northwest in a series of short stories. Her imagery is stunning; there are often entire paragraphs composed of images, but for some reason I didn't get tired of them. For example, "when she closes her eyes, she sees herself lying on her back as the fire passes over her, her eyelids burning like a piece of film stuck in a projector. Her glasses exploding like windows in an abandoned burning shed.". She describes common and average things with amazing beauty and clarity, sort of like the PNW (the silvery look of water, which I see from my window right now). Another favorite passage is this; "And even though I'm the one in the filmy shirt, if you look close enough you can see in fact he's the one who's insubstantial, as if at any moment he might turn into smoke. And when he does, I'll make a ninety-degree turn and walk right through him. Ad my solidness will churn whatever's left of him to wisps."
While she does describe the PNW and it's settings, she does it in a slightly disguised way. Place names have been changed but us locals can essentially figure them out (or come close). And even if you're not from the capital of seasonal affective disorder, the characters in "Happiness is a Chemical in the Brain" should resonate with you as well.
While she does describe the PNW and it's settings, she does it in a slightly disguised way. Place names have been changed but us locals can essentially figure them out (or come close). And even if you're not from the capital of seasonal affective disorder, the characters in "Happiness is a Chemical in the Brain" should resonate with you as well.
August 18, 2015
Even if it's true that too many American short story writers over-mine the fertile interface of addiction, poverty and heartbreak, that doesn't mean they're not superb at catching the tone of ennui, hopelessness and occasional triumph that mark the lives of those not living the SUVurban dream. And in the US, someone has to pay attention, even if it's only short fiction writers with an audience several million units lower than Fox News. Just be thankful that there are writers like Lucia Perillo and that there's still someone to publish her.
Sample sentence: "The fair was nothing to write home about: curly fries, Ferris wheel, carny boys with broken teeth." Or: "The new guy had been an abrupt transaction." There's sparse but brilliant prose like that all the way through these stories. Or try:
"'You've always hated that place," I said.
'Well, I take comfort in surroundings for which I feel a touch of loathing,' she snapped. 'That's the British in me'."
Ha ha - this writer also definitely knows British people.
Sample sentence: "The fair was nothing to write home about: curly fries, Ferris wheel, carny boys with broken teeth." Or: "The new guy had been an abrupt transaction." There's sparse but brilliant prose like that all the way through these stories. Or try:
"'You've always hated that place," I said.
'Well, I take comfort in surroundings for which I feel a touch of loathing,' she snapped. 'That's the British in me'."
Ha ha - this writer also definitely knows British people.
August 11, 2013
Perillo's stories are full of hard-luck characters -- women mostly, some kids. They offer a rough yet dreamy reality, a place where people have given up and find solace in whatever they can sink into -- cough syrup, bad sex with broken strangers, or just the intricacies of the patterns in the wood floorboards. Perillo is an amazing wordsmith, particularly good with images and setting a mood. Her characters are sympathetic without being pitiable. They’re fucked up and trapped, maybe, but they’re making the best of it on their own terms. It’s all set in the Pacific Northwest but might as well be my hometown, reminds me of a lot of people I knew as a kid, could have become myself if I'd made different choices. It's unsettling yet comforting, somehow. I didn't realize she was a poet until after I finished the book, and am now reading through her back catalog and loving it. Been a while since I found a new-to-me poet I could really get into.
October 17, 2013
My gut rating was 3.5 so I rounded it up. I love short stories and Happiness Is a Chemical in the Brain gave raw and real glimpses of life. The stories of the recovering alcoholic housewife who was addicted to vacuum salesmen and the stories of the boy who caught a fish, linger with me. Louisa and her sister where the most developed but I somehow did not like how the three different stories about them fit together. A few of stories were forgettable completely. The endings sometimes were a little to wrapped up. i.e. "The first step meant finding Sam, and to do that he had to get down on his knees." I especially cringed at that line. I prefer the endings that are left unspoken, like "Men Giving Money, Women Yelling".
July 28, 2016
This little collection of stories set in and around the Puget Sound area of Washington state offers up several pictures of characters making bad decisions, or living with the consequences of bad decisions, or teetering on the brinks of bad decisions. I found myself rooting for the characters as they tried to make the best of their circumstances.
Sprinkled with humor and roll-your-eyes moments, these stories make it fun to peer into the depressing slice-of-life scenes on offer. The deft prose never drags the stories down as it peels back the curtains and lets us see, if only for a few moments, the shipwrecks people can make of their lives . . . sometimes out of the desperation to be doing SOMETHING, even if it is a bad something.
Sprinkled with humor and roll-your-eyes moments, these stories make it fun to peer into the depressing slice-of-life scenes on offer. The deft prose never drags the stories down as it peels back the curtains and lets us see, if only for a few moments, the shipwrecks people can make of their lives . . . sometimes out of the desperation to be doing SOMETHING, even if it is a bad something.
February 23, 2014
I listened to this via audiobook, and I just couldn't stay with it. I thought maybe I just wasn't devoting enough of my attention to it, but when I sat down and listened to it while knitting and therefore not really focused on anything BUT the stories, I still found my mind wandering away. They were well-written enough, but just not what I typically read. I think my favorite story was "Ashes," which did resonate a bit somehow. I also liked Dr. Vicks, but I think what I enjoyed most was the character Louisa who appears in several of the stories. She was the easiest for me to visualize, and I found her sister to be a believable narrator.
October 29, 2012
"For a book with the word ‘happiness’ in the title, this nippy little collection of shorts from Pulitzer Prize-nominated American poet Lucia Perillo sure knows how to make one feel utterly depressed.
Happiness is a Chemical in the Brain is a mixed bag of stories, all set around the Puget Sounds in the Pacific Northwest." (Excerpt from full review at For Books' Sake.)
Happiness is a Chemical in the Brain is a mixed bag of stories, all set around the Puget Sounds in the Pacific Northwest." (Excerpt from full review at For Books' Sake.)
December 14, 2012
3.5 stars. These had a jaded humor that I really liked. Anyone Else But Me, for example, is about an older woman who fakes that she's deaf so that she won't have to talk to anyone in the exercise class that her domineering daughter makes her take. Big-Dot Day had a perfect last line, and Cavalcade of the Old West was another standout about a teenage carnival experience. My favorites were the three about Louisa and her sister: Bad Boy Number Seventeen, Saint Jude in Persian, and Late in the Realm.
January 10, 2013
short stories which left no impression with me whatsoever. literally the only thing i remember about this book is some vague bit about an unhappy mother of a teenage son who has just moved to a house in the woods. she follows her son one day when he is supposedly going to school & discovers that he's been hitchhiking to a mcdonald's & then climbing out on to a railroad trestle with his best friend & dodging trains. i couldn't give a rough outline of any of the other stories in this book (or what the point of that one was) if my life depended on it.
April 28, 2012
I liked these, especially the linked stories about two adult sisters, one developmentally disabled. There is a great sense of time and place. Perillo writes esp well about how women deal with memories of their younger selves. The title story is very different from the rest in the collection, more impressionistic and fantastic,with a stunning ending drawing on Perillo's background in wildlife management.
May 13, 2013
I want to say I liked this book. And I did. But my end reaction was similar to Junot Diaz's Drown: Engaging while I was reading it, but I'd put it down and not feel compelled to pick it back up immediately. Hence the three star rating.
Perillo's writing is spare and elegant, the descriptions lovely and sometimes haunting. The collection makes a good case for picking up one of her full length novels.
Perillo's writing is spare and elegant, the descriptions lovely and sometimes haunting. The collection makes a good case for picking up one of her full length novels.
July 15, 2012
A recent work of fiction by the poet Lucia Perillo is a strong collection full of losers
just scraping by, rebel eccentrics having their way. It starts somewhat slowly, but gathers
momentum and curiousity as it unfolds. Great details and dialogue enhance the odd stories
that seem to want to respect the choices and the endurance of bad luck. Most take place in
the Pacific Northwest with its Puget Sound and great forests, which adds to the appeal. I hope
she writes many more stories.
just scraping by, rebel eccentrics having their way. It starts somewhat slowly, but gathers
momentum and curiousity as it unfolds. Great details and dialogue enhance the odd stories
that seem to want to respect the choices and the endurance of bad luck. Most take place in
the Pacific Northwest with its Puget Sound and great forests, which adds to the appeal. I hope
she writes many more stories.
January 10, 2013
While on the hold list for Perillo's latest poetry collection I ordered her short stories. I know this really is blasphemy, but i put aside Sherman Alexie's "Blasphemy" because when I read the first story "Cry, Cry, Cry" I realized it just wasn't going to work for me while facing the holidays. Not that Perillo's stories were any less raw or realistic in places, just smoother, sometimes deceptive enough to go down easily and then hit you later. Perillo is even more talented that I had realized.
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