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The Isle of Youth: Stories
Laura van den Berg's gorgeous new book, The Isle of Youth, explores the lives of women mired in secrecy and deception. From a newlywed caught in an inscrutable marriage, to private eyes working a baffling case in South Florida, to a teenager who assists her magician mother and steals from the audience, the characters in these bewitching stories are at once vulnerable and dangerous, bighearted and ruthless, and they will do what it takes to survive.
Each tale is spun with elegant urgency, and the reader grows attached to the marginalized young women in these stories—women grappling with the choices they've made and searching for the clues to unlock their inner worlds. This is the work of a fearless writer whose stories feel both magical and mystical, earning her the title of "sorceress" from her readers. Be prepared to fall under her spell.
An NPR Best Book of 2013
I looked for you, I called your name
Opa-Locka
Lessons
Acrobat
Antarctica
The greatest escape
The isle of youth
Each tale is spun with elegant urgency, and the reader grows attached to the marginalized young women in these stories—women grappling with the choices they've made and searching for the clues to unlock their inner worlds. This is the work of a fearless writer whose stories feel both magical and mystical, earning her the title of "sorceress" from her readers. Be prepared to fall under her spell.
An NPR Best Book of 2013
I looked for you, I called your name
Opa-Locka
Lessons
Acrobat
Antarctica
The greatest escape
The isle of youth
256 pages, Paperback
First published November 5, 2013
55 people are currently reading
4540 people want to read
About the author
Laura van den Berg
29 books782 followersLaura van den Berg was born and raised in Florida. She is the author of five works of fiction, including The Third Hotel, a finalist for the New York Public Library Young Lions Fiction Award, and I Hold a Wolf by the Ears, one of Time Magazine’s 10 Best Fiction Books of 2020. She is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Strauss Living Award from the American Academy of Arts & Letters, a literature fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Bard Fiction Prize, a PEN/O. Henry Award, and a MacDowell Colony Fellowship, and is a two-time finalist for the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award. Laura is currently a Senior Lecturer on Fiction at Harvard. Her next novel, State of Paradise, is forthcoming from FSG in July 2024. She lives in the Hudson Valley.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 246 reviews
November 30, 2013
Very fine writing with not an ounce of flab. All of the stories concern women betwtixt and between--married but not sure they should be, or itinerant and struggling to stay fed and housed. Their situations are often unusual or extreme--one protagonist's honeymoon flight crashes, another falls in with a bunch of Parisian acrobats, a third travels to Antarctica for clues about what happened to her dead brother. Each woman veers between violent activity and nearly self-obliterating passivity. In the best of this collection (to my mind, "Opa-Locka," "Lessons," and "The Isle of Youth"), the two tendencies alchemize into something frightening and full of grief.
May 21, 2013
Absolutely flawless.
August 27, 2014
Laura van den Berg's stories have been praised and recommended by Karen Russell, who herself is thanked by van den Berg in the book's acknowledgments section - and since I'm a fan of KR's writing, I decided to try her writing. I was drawn to this collection because of its intriguing title - what exactly could a story titled The Isle of Youth be about?
After finishing the collection, I can definitely see why these stories would appeal to Karen Russel and those who enjoy her work. All of Laura van den Berg's protagonists are women, who are lost and struggling weith quiet personal failures. Similarly to Russel's work, the story of each of them is often propped by unexpected and inventive twist: an original and exotic setting, an extraordinary situation.
This is where similarities end. Although stories by Karen Russel employ the same trick, they are successful at doing so: the metaphors are not forced,and the strange setting along with weird and sometimes supernatural occurrences seem natural for protagonists who become real and for whom we can grow to care for. I didn't find this to be the case with The Isle of Youth, where each story is composed of a contrast - ordinary women in extraordinary situations and environment - which feels gimmicky and scripted. For example, the opening story I looked for you, I called your name begins with a plane crash, and focues on a travelling couple's disintegrating marriage - it becomes obvious that this marriage was over long before the crash actually happened, but the story illustrates how it goes down in flames - literally, as the cumulative moment features a hotel fire. Another story, Acrobat, has the main protagonist being unceremoniously dumped by her husband on their trip to Paris; luckily she soon forms a friendship with a troupe of passing acrobats who take her under her wing.
The problem with these stories - and others, such as one set in Antarctica and one which has a family of magicians - is that if we strip away the dressing of the dreamy and unusual plot elements, we'll find that they don't say anything particularly new, and nothing that hasn't already been said by other authors many times before.Most of them end without a resolution, plot elements discarded or forgotten; their time is done before I was even allowed a chance to begin getting attached to the character, who simply had no time to develop as most of it was spent on setting up an elaborate scene while forgetting about the actors. Unfortunately, just like the protagonists fail to establish a connection, so did I.
After finishing the collection, I can definitely see why these stories would appeal to Karen Russel and those who enjoy her work. All of Laura van den Berg's protagonists are women, who are lost and struggling weith quiet personal failures. Similarly to Russel's work, the story of each of them is often propped by unexpected and inventive twist: an original and exotic setting, an extraordinary situation.
This is where similarities end. Although stories by Karen Russel employ the same trick, they are successful at doing so: the metaphors are not forced,and the strange setting along with weird and sometimes supernatural occurrences seem natural for protagonists who become real and for whom we can grow to care for. I didn't find this to be the case with The Isle of Youth, where each story is composed of a contrast - ordinary women in extraordinary situations and environment - which feels gimmicky and scripted. For example, the opening story I looked for you, I called your name begins with a plane crash, and focues on a travelling couple's disintegrating marriage - it becomes obvious that this marriage was over long before the crash actually happened, but the story illustrates how it goes down in flames - literally, as the cumulative moment features a hotel fire. Another story, Acrobat, has the main protagonist being unceremoniously dumped by her husband on their trip to Paris; luckily she soon forms a friendship with a troupe of passing acrobats who take her under her wing.
The problem with these stories - and others, such as one set in Antarctica and one which has a family of magicians - is that if we strip away the dressing of the dreamy and unusual plot elements, we'll find that they don't say anything particularly new, and nothing that hasn't already been said by other authors many times before.Most of them end without a resolution, plot elements discarded or forgotten; their time is done before I was even allowed a chance to begin getting attached to the character, who simply had no time to develop as most of it was spent on setting up an elaborate scene while forgetting about the actors. Unfortunately, just like the protagonists fail to establish a connection, so did I.
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January 29, 2021No rating. While I enjoyed elements of this (some of the plots had a lot of potential) the stories felt a little too similar to one another in tone and characters by the end. And - as other reviewers have noted - below the surface there isn’t a whole lot of depth to what’s going on. This reminded me of Emma Cline’s recent short stories collection, and not in a good way. Perhaps it’s time to accept that this author’s work isn’t for me.
November 12, 2013
I savored every turn of phrase and unusual twist of plot in this amazing collection of short stories. It has already garnered incredible reviews, but let me simply tell you what I enjoyed the most. There's a continuity from story to story. You sympathize with the protagonists, although most of them are young women who steal or lie or do something wicked. And, the book is really well written. The stories stay with you after you put the book down. I run a B&B on Cape Cod. My guests enjoy short stories because it is easy to read one and then drop off to sleep. That's why I keep collections of short stories in the bedrooms. I'm afraid The Isle of Youth will keep them up all night. But that's okay. It's a great book. I really enjoyed it. If you know anyone who enjoys short stories, this would make a great Christmas present.
December 8, 2013
These stories all feature a woman or women, trying to understand the world in which they find themselves. How did they end up with the lives they are leading, what did they miss, how did they make the mistake that led them here.
The writing is detached as if it is an observer telling these stories. Surprisingly that worked very well in this collection and lets the reader become an observer themselves. Another thing that impressed me was that these stories were complete in and of themselves, and a few had big moments for me when the meaning became clear. The only one that I liked but truthfully did not get, was The Acrobats and as is usual my favorite was the title story. An impressive grouping.
The writing is detached as if it is an observer telling these stories. Surprisingly that worked very well in this collection and lets the reader become an observer themselves. Another thing that impressed me was that these stories were complete in and of themselves, and a few had big moments for me when the meaning became clear. The only one that I liked but truthfully did not get, was The Acrobats and as is usual my favorite was the title story. An impressive grouping.
January 9, 2024
I just really appreciate van den Berg's writing.
June 23, 2015
I'm significantly less impressed with this than Dave Eggers, Karen Russell and Ann Patchett are. I mean, Eggers invoked the name of my lost twin Lorrie Moore on the jacket for chrissakes! Did you just spray your coffee/tea/mimosa all over your computer screen? It's libel! Blasphemous! Has the man even read "You're Ugly, Too"? Between this comment and the whole plagiarism accusation (even if he didn't plagiarize, he somewhat proudly admitted he did no research for The Circle, so yay ignorance?), I don't think I'll be picking up one of his books any time soon. He's clearly a man of questionable judgment.
And who the hell am I? Nobody. Except maybe van den Berg's target audience — the kind of person that should relate to this collection. That counts for something right? I like to think so, especially when it comes to short fiction. There's a smaller window of opportunity for an author's little fictions to connect to my massive reality. Being a woman who writes about "lost" women gives her a 10 point lead; after that, kill me with words or I'll die of boredom. And guess what Dave Eggers, I was closer to boredom.
The fact is, I didn't find anything in this collection earth shattering. It's predictably anti romantic and oddly gimmicky. What do I mean by gimmicky? PI sister team, gorilla mask-wearing thief cousins, Parisian acrobats, two-bit mother-daughter magicians, a twin switcheroo. There was a plane crash and a hotel fire in one story — I mean, come on. All of that is distracting. And it seems like a crutch. There are plenty of writers out there who manage to tell moving stories about ordinary people taking it day by day. I hate using the word "ordinary" as a descriptor, but every story in The Isle of Youth is propped up by extraordinary situations, and it's a bit much. Maybe if her angle was absurdity or satire it wouldn't feel so contrived — I don't know. The magician one, "The Greatest Escape," was painful though. It's like van den Berg woke up one day and thought, wouldn't it be FUN to write a story about MAGICIANS? And once I got that image of The Writer Sitting Down to Write, the stories didn't feel real to me anymore. Whatever themes she was trying to develop, and whatever points she was attempting to make, got buried in all this frantic plotting.
Even more disappointing was this collection's failure to be thoughtfully transgressive. Usually I love anti romantic stuff; it's always read more earnest to me than the overwhelming number of books that insist on being lovely and sentimental. But for the stories chronicling crumbling relationships, the tone was obstinate or careless, sometimes even unemotional. And that just doesn't seem honest to me. I think anti romance is an acknowledgement of the failure of love, of the plausibility of this failure as people grow and change, and I think an anti romantic mourns this for its truth. Anti romance is sad, not too cool for school. But that's the attitude I kept getting.
Couldn't help reading into all the daddy issues either. Two stories have absentee fathers at the crux of the plot. The mothers, of course, are neither mysterious nor remarkable. So yeah, this collection wasn't for me.
And who the hell am I? Nobody. Except maybe van den Berg's target audience — the kind of person that should relate to this collection. That counts for something right? I like to think so, especially when it comes to short fiction. There's a smaller window of opportunity for an author's little fictions to connect to my massive reality. Being a woman who writes about "lost" women gives her a 10 point lead; after that, kill me with words or I'll die of boredom. And guess what Dave Eggers, I was closer to boredom.
The fact is, I didn't find anything in this collection earth shattering. It's predictably anti romantic and oddly gimmicky. What do I mean by gimmicky? PI sister team, gorilla mask-wearing thief cousins, Parisian acrobats, two-bit mother-daughter magicians, a twin switcheroo. There was a plane crash and a hotel fire in one story — I mean, come on. All of that is distracting. And it seems like a crutch. There are plenty of writers out there who manage to tell moving stories about ordinary people taking it day by day. I hate using the word "ordinary" as a descriptor, but every story in The Isle of Youth is propped up by extraordinary situations, and it's a bit much. Maybe if her angle was absurdity or satire it wouldn't feel so contrived — I don't know. The magician one, "The Greatest Escape," was painful though. It's like van den Berg woke up one day and thought, wouldn't it be FUN to write a story about MAGICIANS? And once I got that image of The Writer Sitting Down to Write, the stories didn't feel real to me anymore. Whatever themes she was trying to develop, and whatever points she was attempting to make, got buried in all this frantic plotting.
Even more disappointing was this collection's failure to be thoughtfully transgressive. Usually I love anti romantic stuff; it's always read more earnest to me than the overwhelming number of books that insist on being lovely and sentimental. But for the stories chronicling crumbling relationships, the tone was obstinate or careless, sometimes even unemotional. And that just doesn't seem honest to me. I think anti romance is an acknowledgement of the failure of love, of the plausibility of this failure as people grow and change, and I think an anti romantic mourns this for its truth. Anti romance is sad, not too cool for school. But that's the attitude I kept getting.
Couldn't help reading into all the daddy issues either. Two stories have absentee fathers at the crux of the plot. The mothers, of course, are neither mysterious nor remarkable. So yeah, this collection wasn't for me.
June 22, 2013
These stories are timeless and they are relentless. They are brilliant, deeply-felt, big-hearted, and constructed with sympathy, grace, and purpose. The architecture of them, the mere structure, should be studied. The collection as a whole reminded me of one of my favorite Chan Marshall quotes, where she says, "Everybody's gotta get out of somewhere." This can be said of nearly all the characters in these stories-- they seek escape. They seek disappearance, reappearance, remodeling, renovation. They're on the hunt for a life that will satisfy them. In LvdB's hands, these stories gut you, remove chunks of your heart like an ice cream scooper. "Antarctica," my favorite story in the collection, was the first story in ages that, upon finishing the last line, caused me to put the book down, cover my eyes, and sob.
Pre-order this book now so that, come November, having already forgotten you've ordered it, you'll order another, and then you'll have two, and you can give it to a friend or a lover or an ex or a soon-to-be one of those, and then both of you will experience this treasure of a collection together.
Pre-order this book now so that, come November, having already forgotten you've ordered it, you'll order another, and then you'll have two, and you can give it to a friend or a lover or an ex or a soon-to-be one of those, and then both of you will experience this treasure of a collection together.
December 14, 2021
This is a great collection of short stories. Sometimes I was reminded of Lorrie Moore, sometimes, Denis Johnson, sometimes James Salter, but mostly I was reminded of The Third Hotel, the first book I read by Laura Van Den Berg. I might even like her short stories more than that great novel!
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August 4, 2014I really enjoyed Laura van den Berg's first collection of stories and was eager to read this. Each story in The Isle of Youth is narrated by a young woman navigating her way through the pain of a loss, and the stories are at once dramatic and deceptively quiet: a new bride suffers a disastrous honeymoon; a group of young cousins hold up banks and stores, hurtling towards disaster; a pair of sisters work as private eyes tracking a man who disappears. Throughout, those who have been lost--missing siblings, missing parents--haunt the narrators, making this collection a haunting one as well.
August 9, 2024
This collection has everything: an emergency plane landing, children raised by sovereign citizens, Parisian acrobats, twins pretending to be one another. It's also structured in such a way that certain plot devices mirror one another throughout the stories in thrilling ways, so the collection as a whole feels cohesive despite the wide range of settings and circumstances. It's intentional yet daring, and seems to balance almost perfectly between escapism and a reality check.
My personal favorites: "I Looked for You, I Called Your Name", "Lessons", and "Antarctica".
My personal favorites: "I Looked for You, I Called Your Name", "Lessons", and "Antarctica".
July 14, 2024
I really liked the complexity / angst / deception of the women in this, but the writing style didn’t resonate w me
December 4, 2013
On the surface, the stories in "The Isle of Youth" are unremarkable: there are no gimmicks, no odd settings or supernatural elements. But every story stands alone, to be examined, and marveled over. I thought about each one long after I finished the collection and I credit van den Berg's exquisite writing. All of her characters have such a distinct voice and I felt as though I was inhabiting their world for just a little while. I would compare her to Alice Munro, both in talent and the potential for readers getting lost in her stories.
August 27, 2018
I liked these. As I was reading, I thought maybe this would be one of those short story collections which reviewers brand as "unfinished," its endings lacking resolution. I read them though and remembered that some short stories I like because they mirror life so closely: sometimes you can put your finger on what is wrong or lacking, but be powerless and unable to change. Life remains the same, problematic and not completely satisfying.
I liked "Isle of Youth" and "The Greatest Escape" best.
I liked "Isle of Youth" and "The Greatest Escape" best.
April 3, 2014
An engaging collection of short stories all having to do with women who are kind of adrift in life. There is also a running theme of masks/false faces (literal and figurative). I thought the author did an excellent job creating very real characters in a relatively brief amount of words. I definitely felt engrossed in all of the stories, and enjoyed the way that none of them really ended in a neat or tidy way.
July 7, 2014
Really surprising and original voice. The stories are conventionally made, in the best way, and the perspective from which each tale is told is unique and new. Highly recommend for anyone who is writing traditional short stories.
March 27, 2022
So many unhappy women.
February 17, 2021
I'm tired of starting reviews with "I really wanted to like this book". But...
Most of the stories in this collection just kind of fall short. They're promising, they're going somewhere, and then they just trail off into nothing, or seem to have gotten their final paragraphs cut off. It's one thing to leave the ending to the reader's imagination, or create an intentional sense of unease with an ambiguous ending. Neither of these are, or seem to have been the intended, result.
I Looked for You, I Called Your Name 0 stars
The first story in the collection lays out the format for many of the rest: our nameless narrator and her nameless spouse are stuck in a crappy relationship and then a thing happens that should be major but it feels like our plucky narrator is too numb or drugged to respond like a real human.
Opa-Locka 1 star
This was one of the few selections I liked. Why is all spoilers. At least give this one a chance.
Lessons 0.25 stars
Depressing but well-written, until it gets too far past believable, but even then the writing is still enough to make you care about the brother and sister. But the plot is so thin it makes you wonder if you're supposed to wonder if they never really left the farm/compound at all? If you're supposed to mentally arrive there, it's a clumsy route.
Acrobat 0 stars
The story I had in mind when I said "it's one thing to leave the ending to the reader's imagination". I don't care; I haven't been given a reason to care what happens to this woman.
Antarctica 0 stars
Brother needed more mental health care than he ever received, sister-in-law may or not may have been incredibly unbalanced and/or a fugitive, narrator is a moron.
The Greatest Escape 0.75 star
This could possibly be a full-length novel, or at least longer than it is; this nameless narrator has more history to recount and more story to tell. Or maybe this is the one piece that's exactly what it should be.
The Isle of Youth 0 stars
The eponymous piece really should be the best, especially if it's the last. This is the most boring, predictable piece in the whole collection; at one point I wondered if Sylvia was actually with Mark, but by the end of it, I already didn't care.
Most of the stories in this collection just kind of fall short. They're promising, they're going somewhere, and then they just trail off into nothing, or seem to have gotten their final paragraphs cut off. It's one thing to leave the ending to the reader's imagination, or create an intentional sense of unease with an ambiguous ending. Neither of these are, or seem to have been the intended, result.
I Looked for You, I Called Your Name 0 stars
The first story in the collection lays out the format for many of the rest: our nameless narrator and her nameless spouse are stuck in a crappy relationship and then a thing happens that should be major but it feels like our plucky narrator is too numb or drugged to respond like a real human.
Opa-Locka 1 star
This was one of the few selections I liked. Why is all spoilers. At least give this one a chance.
Lessons 0.25 stars
Depressing but well-written, until it gets too far past believable, but even then the writing is still enough to make you care about the brother and sister. But the plot is so thin it makes you wonder if you're supposed to wonder if they never really left the farm/compound at all? If you're supposed to mentally arrive there, it's a clumsy route.
Acrobat 0 stars
The story I had in mind when I said "it's one thing to leave the ending to the reader's imagination". I don't care; I haven't been given a reason to care what happens to this woman.
Antarctica 0 stars
Brother needed more mental health care than he ever received, sister-in-law may or not may have been incredibly unbalanced and/or a fugitive, narrator is a moron.
The Greatest Escape 0.75 star
This could possibly be a full-length novel, or at least longer than it is; this nameless narrator has more history to recount and more story to tell. Or maybe this is the one piece that's exactly what it should be.
The Isle of Youth 0 stars
The eponymous piece really should be the best, especially if it's the last. This is the most boring, predictable piece in the whole collection; at one point I wondered if Sylvia was actually with Mark, but by the end of it, I already didn't care.
November 7, 2024
“The Isle of Youth” by Laura Van Den Berg
A woman becomes fascinated by acrobats in Paris. Another has a detective agency with her sister. Another visits Antarctica after losing her husband to a disaster. In Laura Van Den Berg’s short story collection, women find themselves unmoored in meaningful ways, not setting a new path for them but disrupting the old.
I picked up this collection from a used bookstore in Iowa having read Van Den Berg’s “I Hold a Wolf by the Ears” a couple years ago. I loved the haunting, foreboding style of that collection and I find it on display here as well, though it does feel less developed. I really enjoyed the way Van Den Berg played with disruption here, often through some kind of criminal or disastrous enterprise. It opened up a lot of space for interiority of these women, meditation on both their unique situations and their status as women in relation to men in their lives. For me, Opa-Locka, Antarctica, and The Isle of Youth are the best representations of this thematic pattern in the collection, although the other stories were still engaging and thought-provoking.
I’m not sure this collection will make it to my favorites by the end of the year, as I struggled to keep a couple of stories in my memory afterward. However, it is still a very solid collection that I would happily recommend and lend to friends interested in these kinds of narratives.
A woman becomes fascinated by acrobats in Paris. Another has a detective agency with her sister. Another visits Antarctica after losing her husband to a disaster. In Laura Van Den Berg’s short story collection, women find themselves unmoored in meaningful ways, not setting a new path for them but disrupting the old.
I picked up this collection from a used bookstore in Iowa having read Van Den Berg’s “I Hold a Wolf by the Ears” a couple years ago. I loved the haunting, foreboding style of that collection and I find it on display here as well, though it does feel less developed. I really enjoyed the way Van Den Berg played with disruption here, often through some kind of criminal or disastrous enterprise. It opened up a lot of space for interiority of these women, meditation on both their unique situations and their status as women in relation to men in their lives. For me, Opa-Locka, Antarctica, and The Isle of Youth are the best representations of this thematic pattern in the collection, although the other stories were still engaging and thought-provoking.
I’m not sure this collection will make it to my favorites by the end of the year, as I struggled to keep a couple of stories in my memory afterward. However, it is still a very solid collection that I would happily recommend and lend to friends interested in these kinds of narratives.
December 13, 2017
A powerful, slim collection of seven stories that feature female characters (most of them narrators) on the brink of something--self-discovery, self-destruction, change, etc. Lots happens in these stories, but all of it arises organically from Vandenberg's sharp characterizations. The endings of many of these stories also demonstrate the delicate balance a writer achieves by reaching closure without resolution.
September 1, 2017
This was tucked into my Amazon cart, and I don't even know who to thank for the recommendation. The central story, "Antarctica," is especially wonderful, but each of these stories--which deal deftly with characters watching in some measure of befuddlement as things crumble around them--reveals a fascinating mind in action, especially when the character seems physically adrift in or swept up by their world.
January 29, 2025
Fairly solid collection of stories, I enjoyed “Opa-Locka” and “The Isle of Youth” the most. “Acrobats” was probably my least favorite.
Sometimes I felt like there were too many short, snappy sentences and not enough longer ones to balance out the pacing.
Sometimes I felt like there were too many short, snappy sentences and not enough longer ones to balance out the pacing.
September 17, 2021
Moody vignettes into the lives of women embedded in existential struggles to survive.
August 25, 2025
Anthology of women POV stories. All eerie and unsettling with themes of loneliness, abandonment
September 16, 2024
The title story is especially good.
December 10, 2020
Are we all becoming short story readers? Some will say it's because social media and the like have disabled our ability to last the length of a novel. I disagree. It's because short stories give us the pleasure of an ending before we're too disenchanted to care.
These are wonderful stories for just that reason. I don't like them equally, but that's not to say they're not all fabulous. Van den Berg has voice down pat and I am charmed by it. Her characters see the world like I, on my more perceptive days, sometimes do. Just as you think life is all an ironic joke, you realize the joke is on you.
Do not skim these stories. I know, it's tempting. You have a Zoom meeting in a few minutes. But if you skim you will miss those sentences that unexpectedly change everything: that's part of Van den Berg's joke, too. Either you're in on it or not. I'm in.
These are wonderful stories for just that reason. I don't like them equally, but that's not to say they're not all fabulous. Van den Berg has voice down pat and I am charmed by it. Her characters see the world like I, on my more perceptive days, sometimes do. Just as you think life is all an ironic joke, you realize the joke is on you.
Do not skim these stories. I know, it's tempting. You have a Zoom meeting in a few minutes. But if you skim you will miss those sentences that unexpectedly change everything: that's part of Van den Berg's joke, too. Either you're in on it or not. I'm in.
June 20, 2018
I'm bailing after three stories. I've liked other stories of the author's I've come across, but these are not doing it for me.
March 25, 2014
The women in The Isle of Youth have experienced abandonment in its different guises, but each character and story remains distinct. They long to connect with their loved ones, but everyone seems to be leaving them and asking them to move on as well. We either get the sense that they are trying to escape their loneliness while struggling to move on, or they have resigned themselves to their fate, not wanting to do more. When an opportunity shows, they become impulsive and act upon it without much further thought. Some of their decisions border on the ludicrous at times. One can’t help but feel that these decisions will cause them more harm unless someone intervenes. These characters seem to be trapped in their lives and relationships. Personally, I didn’t consider them to be thoroughly likeable, although their stories allowed me to sympathize with them.
There is this sense of incompleteness in the stories, seemingly juxtaposed with the characters’ own emptiness and desire for something more. While the endings are uncertain, it doesn’t mean they are unconvincing. The vagueness of how each story ends serves not only to mimic the uncertainty each character faces as they move along with their lives, but also perfectly mirror their imperfections and indecisiveness. It just shows that we never know what’s coming.
People say Laura van den Berg is one of the great new writers we have today… I can’t agree more. Her writing is smart, energetic and sophisticated. Each of the stories in The Isle of Youth left me affected. In this book, I came face to face with my own vulnerabilities. The ambiguity of the women’s situation is a stark contrast to the author’s simple, straightforward, and unadorned writing. The clarity and simplicity of it all is one of the things I adored in this book. The stories seem familiar, but the depth and complexity of these great stories will no doubt stay with me. This is the first book of short stories I’ve read in my adult life, and the first book written by Laura van den Berg that I’ve read. I don’t think I could have picked a more perfect book of short stories to read. I am definitely looking forward to her next book. Highly recommended.
Complete review in my blog.
There is this sense of incompleteness in the stories, seemingly juxtaposed with the characters’ own emptiness and desire for something more. While the endings are uncertain, it doesn’t mean they are unconvincing. The vagueness of how each story ends serves not only to mimic the uncertainty each character faces as they move along with their lives, but also perfectly mirror their imperfections and indecisiveness. It just shows that we never know what’s coming.
People say Laura van den Berg is one of the great new writers we have today… I can’t agree more. Her writing is smart, energetic and sophisticated. Each of the stories in The Isle of Youth left me affected. In this book, I came face to face with my own vulnerabilities. The ambiguity of the women’s situation is a stark contrast to the author’s simple, straightforward, and unadorned writing. The clarity and simplicity of it all is one of the things I adored in this book. The stories seem familiar, but the depth and complexity of these great stories will no doubt stay with me. This is the first book of short stories I’ve read in my adult life, and the first book written by Laura van den Berg that I’ve read. I don’t think I could have picked a more perfect book of short stories to read. I am definitely looking forward to her next book. Highly recommended.
Complete review in my blog.
May 1, 2017
When Laura van den Berg is good, she's very very good, and when she is bad she is florid.
The first three of these stories are striking and memorable: "I Looked For You, I Called Your Name" is a riveting account of a honeymoon in hell between newly marrieds who seem to barely know each other; and "Opa-Locka", the award winning story of a pair of deeply wounded sister detectives as they spiral downward, was absolutely worth my re-read. But it was "Lessons" that did me in. It's like a Sally Mann photograph of criminal children, with captions by Denis Johnson. It's brilliant, and devastating.
But then there are the Miranda Julyesque pieces, So Quirky, So Showy (florid: excessively ornate). Take this opening sentence: "The day my husband left me, I followed a trio of acrobats around the city of Paris." No really, take it, I have no use for it, nor for the completely predictable story that follows. There's "The Greatest Escape", narrated by a teenager whose parents are, or were, second rate professional magicians; her father literally disappeared, forever, performing an illusion where he was to vanish and reappear inside of an aquarium. Somehow he swam off, I guess. There are moments of truth in this story - the pick-pocketing episode nails it - but the tawdry road life with not so magic mom comes off as a failed trick. The other two pieces included deal with struggling and intense sibling relationships, repeating the Opa-Locka theme, but without that story's depth or vivid paintbrush. Still - 3 killer stories out of 8 is a better batting average than a lot of what's out there. I know I'll return to "Lessons", and I look forward to it with grim, appreciative terror.
The first three of these stories are striking and memorable: "I Looked For You, I Called Your Name" is a riveting account of a honeymoon in hell between newly marrieds who seem to barely know each other; and "Opa-Locka", the award winning story of a pair of deeply wounded sister detectives as they spiral downward, was absolutely worth my re-read. But it was "Lessons" that did me in. It's like a Sally Mann photograph of criminal children, with captions by Denis Johnson. It's brilliant, and devastating.
But then there are the Miranda Julyesque pieces, So Quirky, So Showy (florid: excessively ornate). Take this opening sentence: "The day my husband left me, I followed a trio of acrobats around the city of Paris." No really, take it, I have no use for it, nor for the completely predictable story that follows. There's "The Greatest Escape", narrated by a teenager whose parents are, or were, second rate professional magicians; her father literally disappeared, forever, performing an illusion where he was to vanish and reappear inside of an aquarium. Somehow he swam off, I guess. There are moments of truth in this story - the pick-pocketing episode nails it - but the tawdry road life with not so magic mom comes off as a failed trick. The other two pieces included deal with struggling and intense sibling relationships, repeating the Opa-Locka theme, but without that story's depth or vivid paintbrush. Still - 3 killer stories out of 8 is a better batting average than a lot of what's out there. I know I'll return to "Lessons", and I look forward to it with grim, appreciative terror.
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