What do you think?
Rate this book
Cities I've Never Lived In
In subtle, sensuous prose, the stories in Sara Majka's debut collection explore distance in all its forms: the emotional spaces that open up between family members, friends, and lovers; the gaps that emerge between who we were and who we are; the gulf between our private and public selves. At the center of the collection is a series of stories narrated by a young American woman in the wake of a divorce; wry and shy but never less than open to the world, she recalls the places and people she has been close to, the dreams she has pursued and those she has left unfulfilled. Interspersed with these intimate first-person stories are stand-alone pieces where the tight focus on the narrator's life gives way to closely observed accounts of the lives of others. A book about belonging, and how much of yourself to give up in the pursuit of that, Cities I've Never Lived In offers stories that reveal, with great sadness and great humor, the ways we are most of all citizens of the places where we cannot be.
Cities I've Never Lived In is the second book in Graywolf's collaboration with the literary magazine A Public Space.
Cities I've Never Lived In is the second book in Graywolf's collaboration with the literary magazine A Public Space.
160 pages, Paperback
First published February 16, 2016
75 people are currently reading
4290 people want to read
About the author
Sara Majka
3 books53 followersWhen she was young, Sara Majka's family moved along the New England coast, living in Martha's Vineyard, Nantucket, and small towns in Maine. She received graduate degrees from Umass-Amherst and Bennington College and was awarded a fellowship at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. Her first book, Cities I've Never Lived In, was published by Graywolf Press / A Public Space in 2016. She lives in Providence, Rhode Island where she teaches writing at RISD.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 139 reviews
December 4, 2019
Her gaze had gone soft looking at the painting. She didn't seem to want to look away, in the way that shy people can have while examining things at parties. Is that why shy people are so curious? A life spent looking at things until the things themselves become interesting, until you have to see the bookshelves at parties, the small paintings outside bathrooms, all these places feel forbidden, but in fact everyone is right around the corner, and when someone passes you smile and try to leave, or they try to leave. But what other choice do we have? Sometimes that is the only consolation, that there's never been another choice.This quote from the story "The Museum Assistant," which I have been unable to forget since finishing this collection three months ago, gets at the heart of what Cities I've Never Lived In is all about. Every story is about people who just aren't that good at connecting with other people, at getting outside themselves—but in their own ways, they keep trying anyway. Relationships end or never get off the ground to begin with, trips are a disappointment, people disappear and never come back. It's sad stuff, but somehow, every time I read a story from this collection, I put the book down feeling glad to be alive. Some feeling that our humanity is in the trying, in the attempt to connect, regardless of the eventual outcome.
Some of these stories have that mundane, day-to-day feel that's popular in fiction now, some have elements of magical realism, and some of them manage to combine both these qualities. Most of the stores take place in Maine—a setting I appreciated, and one that seems somehow right for the theme—but some take place in Brooklyn or other cities. All of them have a similar voice, which would be my one criticism—that sameness occasionally got a little monotonous. But I would still recommend this book. It expertly gets at what's really important in life, even if its ultimate message is that what's important is sometimes hard to hold.
I won this book in a First Reads giveaway here on Goodreads. Thank you to the publisher, Graywolf Press.
March 20, 2016
I find books in so many different ways—I hear about releases getting particular hype or buzz, I see someone else reading something that intrigues me so I need to check it out, or I receive a recommendation from someone whose opinion I trust. Interestingly enough, I first heard of Sara Majka's emotional, intriguing new collection,
Cities I've Never Lived In
from Amazon when I picked up Amy Gustine's fantastic
You Should Pity Us Instead
, which I read last month, and then I heard some praise from the talented Garth Greenwell, whose exquisite
What Belongs to You
absolutely blew me away.
So needless to say, I had a lot of expectations coming into Majka's collection, and it definitely didn't disappoint. The characters in her stories are all at some kind of crossroads, whether they are struggling with a relationship or with loneliness, trying to determine what the next step is in their lives, or finding a reason to soldier on in the face of a crisis. Some of the stories are a little bleaker than others, some don't end as definitely as others (but isn't that just like life itself), but all pack an emotional punch and really make you think.
What struck me most about Majka's stories, even more than how they made me feel, is how beautifully they're written. Here's just one example:
A number of stories are interconnected, featuring a woman recovering from a divorce and trying to deal with life on her own. She travels to different and unusual places, and recalls the unique situations she has found herself in and the people she has met. There are 14 stories in this collection, so there are a number of stand-alone stories as well.
Among my favorites in this collection were: "Saint Andrews Hotel," about a man who was committed to a mental hospital as a young boy and whose family vanishes when the island they were living on off the coast of Maine disappears, yet years later he is convinced people he once knew have reappeared; "Strangers," which tells of a man caring for his grandchildren after his son disappears, to allow his daughter-in-law to work in a different place during the week, and the way his life changes from this relationship; "Reveron's Dolls," the first in the series of interconnected stories, in which the narrator is coming to terms with life after her divorce; and "Maureen," about how a bartender overcomes tragedy.
Not every story worked for me; I found a few of them a little too vague and I wasn't really sure what they were trying to convey. But ultimately I was tremendously taken by Majka's storytelling ability and her use of language, which made this a collection worth reading.
See all of my reviews at http://itseithersadnessoreuphoria.blo....
So needless to say, I had a lot of expectations coming into Majka's collection, and it definitely didn't disappoint. The characters in her stories are all at some kind of crossroads, whether they are struggling with a relationship or with loneliness, trying to determine what the next step is in their lives, or finding a reason to soldier on in the face of a crisis. Some of the stories are a little bleaker than others, some don't end as definitely as others (but isn't that just like life itself), but all pack an emotional punch and really make you think.
What struck me most about Majka's stories, even more than how they made me feel, is how beautifully they're written. Here's just one example:
"How strange we are. How different we are from how we think we are. We fall out of love only to fall in love with a duplicate of what we've left, never understanding that we love what we love and that it doesn't change."
A number of stories are interconnected, featuring a woman recovering from a divorce and trying to deal with life on her own. She travels to different and unusual places, and recalls the unique situations she has found herself in and the people she has met. There are 14 stories in this collection, so there are a number of stand-alone stories as well.
Among my favorites in this collection were: "Saint Andrews Hotel," about a man who was committed to a mental hospital as a young boy and whose family vanishes when the island they were living on off the coast of Maine disappears, yet years later he is convinced people he once knew have reappeared; "Strangers," which tells of a man caring for his grandchildren after his son disappears, to allow his daughter-in-law to work in a different place during the week, and the way his life changes from this relationship; "Reveron's Dolls," the first in the series of interconnected stories, in which the narrator is coming to terms with life after her divorce; and "Maureen," about how a bartender overcomes tragedy.
Not every story worked for me; I found a few of them a little too vague and I wasn't really sure what they were trying to convey. But ultimately I was tremendously taken by Majka's storytelling ability and her use of language, which made this a collection worth reading.
See all of my reviews at http://itseithersadnessoreuphoria.blo....
December 10, 2017
Cuentos sin pies ni cabeza, narrados de forma presuntuosa para aparentar esconder algo profundo detrás de la superficie pero que, cuanto más se los lee, más salta a la vista que no hay nada de especial en ellos. Muchos tienen un estilo parecido a los cuentos de Joseph McElroy, pero no les llegan ni a los talones.
March 9, 2016
I liked some parts, some words, string of words. I felt myself getting lost, getting distracted, things placed in the middle of an empty room I couldn't figure out where they came from, backtracking missing details. Feels like, oh, is this autobiographical? I kind of really liked it not enough to continue on.
April 22, 2017
I admit to frustration in the beginning of my reading experience, feeling, although Majka's writing was undeniably great, that everything was just a bit thin. The stories didn't feel like stories, quite, and even though I'd done a complete 180 by the end of the collection, I think this still may be the case. Perhaps only "Boy With Finch" reads and moves in the manner we expect of a short story. Majka often enters in odd places, exits abruptly and without resolution. However, taken as a collection, in aggregate what the stories amount to is something marvelous. Majka is a master of mood, and I can't imagine anyone not being taken in, taken down, by her voice and her prose, and the book's seeming project: to show the unglamorous, profound, and complex loneliness at the center of so much of living.
Need an example of the flawless prose? Consider the absolutely perfect music, movement, and rhythm of a simple sentence like this: “When I had spent the winter in Provincetown—it was when my marriage was ending and a painting friend had offered her cottage cheaply—I used this friend’s license to clam every Sunday, going at first out of curiosity, and then because I loved it, and then after that, when the wind became bitter, the clams scarce, the ice on the jetty treacherous, simply because I didn’t know what else to do.”
The construction of that sentence—I could go on about it forever.
The final story, "Boston," is the prize of the collection, and not since first reading Laura van den Berg's story "Antarctica" have I had such a visceral, weepy reaction to a short story. Especially this passage, which says ever so much in such a small space: “What I missed most when I lost a man I loved was someone who held a record of my life from that time. It was the way we told each other things. Without them I went back to my quiet life, but with them there was a transcript of living. Transcript, of all words, as a way to describe love. But we all want, in some way, to be able to record our life, and for some reason lovers do that for each other. Of all things. Of all jobs for them to be given.”
*gulp*
Need an example of the flawless prose? Consider the absolutely perfect music, movement, and rhythm of a simple sentence like this: “When I had spent the winter in Provincetown—it was when my marriage was ending and a painting friend had offered her cottage cheaply—I used this friend’s license to clam every Sunday, going at first out of curiosity, and then because I loved it, and then after that, when the wind became bitter, the clams scarce, the ice on the jetty treacherous, simply because I didn’t know what else to do.”
The construction of that sentence—I could go on about it forever.
The final story, "Boston," is the prize of the collection, and not since first reading Laura van den Berg's story "Antarctica" have I had such a visceral, weepy reaction to a short story. Especially this passage, which says ever so much in such a small space: “What I missed most when I lost a man I loved was someone who held a record of my life from that time. It was the way we told each other things. Without them I went back to my quiet life, but with them there was a transcript of living. Transcript, of all words, as a way to describe love. But we all want, in some way, to be able to record our life, and for some reason lovers do that for each other. Of all things. Of all jobs for them to be given.”
*gulp*
November 8, 2017
DNF at 58%
I think I gave this a fair chance - reading 9 out of 14 stories, but safe to say this collection is not for me. The subject matter was boring and mundane, every story was written in the same voice and most of them were flat and instantly forgettable (I found myself struggling to remember what a story was about just minutes after finishing it). Many people love this though, so if you like short stories on lonely people drifting around maybe this will be for you.
I think I gave this a fair chance - reading 9 out of 14 stories, but safe to say this collection is not for me. The subject matter was boring and mundane, every story was written in the same voice and most of them were flat and instantly forgettable (I found myself struggling to remember what a story was about just minutes after finishing it). Many people love this though, so if you like short stories on lonely people drifting around maybe this will be for you.
July 30, 2016
As I said mid-book: Oh, I'm loving this more than expected. The stories are delicate, almost gossamer, like those five minutes after you wake up from a glorious nap and you're warm and the sun is at the right angle, and everything still has that edge of dreaminess.
And that doesn't change. Majka writes so vibrantly but with such restraint. Everything echoes and aches and you wonder what's real. There's the sense that these stories were pared down lovingly, extraneous detail scraped away until you're left with the kernel of loss and homecoming and those complicated nameless emotions we struggle to articulate. I'm still thinking about "Boy with Finch" and the paintings and the secret shop, the idea that how we leave a place and come back matters. The bruise of regret that haunts each page.
These stories linger like smoke in the night, coming back at odd times to make me think about how I interact with the world and what I choose to hide and show. What a glorious achievement.
And that doesn't change. Majka writes so vibrantly but with such restraint. Everything echoes and aches and you wonder what's real. There's the sense that these stories were pared down lovingly, extraneous detail scraped away until you're left with the kernel of loss and homecoming and those complicated nameless emotions we struggle to articulate. I'm still thinking about "Boy with Finch" and the paintings and the secret shop, the idea that how we leave a place and come back matters. The bruise of regret that haunts each page.
These stories linger like smoke in the night, coming back at odd times to make me think about how I interact with the world and what I choose to hide and show. What a glorious achievement.
July 13, 2016
My parents very kindly found this for me in the wondrous Strand bookstore in New York, and I was so very excited to begin! This is Majka's debut short story collection, and it is nothing short of brilliant. I was drawn in immediately. Nothing is predictable here, and elements surprise throughout. I adored the way in which each of the narrators and protagonists were so different; they each sprang to life incredibly quickly.
Cities I've Never Lived In is a collection about people; about displacement and disappointment. Its themes are large and well wrought - hurt, heartbreak, and loneliness prevail, but there is also a wonderful sense of hope at times too. The interconnectedness and the more mysterious touches were original, and Majka's writing masterful. I can't wait to get my hands on what she releases next.
Cities I've Never Lived In is a collection about people; about displacement and disappointment. Its themes are large and well wrought - hurt, heartbreak, and loneliness prevail, but there is also a wonderful sense of hope at times too. The interconnectedness and the more mysterious touches were original, and Majka's writing masterful. I can't wait to get my hands on what she releases next.
June 18, 2016
Sorry, but I just couldn't get into these stories. I found them dark and not very engaging. Sometimes stories really speak to you and sometimes they just fall flat with you. This was a case of the latter. It's simply a matter of personal preference and what themes and styles you enjoy reading. This one just didn't jibe with me.
April 28, 2016
This book made me realize that I don't have to finish reading a book just because I started it. I read about half the stories before I decided that it feels inauthentic, I don't believe the characters' motivations, this feels like a writing students pretentious effort to write something tortured and meaningful.
April 1, 2023
hmm…everything about this book was a blur, and I don’t know if that’s how the author intended it to be - however, this did give the book a dreamlike quality. overall, I found the stories to be a little repetitive, nothing particularly outstanding about any of them. there definitely are bits of good writing and subtle metaphors that I really appreciated, but the stories still were lacking in other aspects. 3/5
June 8, 2016
I'll read this collection again and again.
Majka writes some of the most beautiful sentences I've ever read. And they add up to stories, too.
Majka writes some of the most beautiful sentences I've ever read. And they add up to stories, too.
Read
February 14, 2025I found this one in a little free library. I’ve been wanting to read more short fiction. Every single line in this book was dripping with melancholy. I can’t quite figure out how that’s achieved, but these are stories I’d want to teach in a writing class. And the way all the stories connect made me want to start all over again to see the connections I had missed. Very similar writing to Elizabeth Strout. Sometimes hard to read because of the sadness.
I loved the opening line: Maybe ten or eleven years ago, when I was in the middle of a divorce from a man I still loved, I took the train into the city.
A book about love and loss and art and working class poverty. Very New England .
I loved the opening line: Maybe ten or eleven years ago, when I was in the middle of a divorce from a man I still loved, I took the train into the city.
A book about love and loss and art and working class poverty. Very New England .
February 21, 2023
I enjoyed these stories of empty-ish people trying and failing to connect with others. One or two are 'weird' - eg a man who has left the island he was born on encounters people from it 20 years later who haven't aged - but mainly they are realist and usually involve divorcees and drinking. Many bars. Some poverty, soup kitchens. I alternated reading pieces from this with the very different If I Survive You by Jonathan Escoffery, and I think this saved me from getting too overwhelmed with melancholy. Plus the stories are beautifully written. Every paragraph, every sentence.
March 20, 2016
Elegant and unusual, these somewhat-linked short stories do not adhere to any "school" of storytelling; they create their own set of rules, visiting and re-visiting emotional states and situations with a quirky straightforwardness I found compelling in every iteration. The shaping of this world is skillfully done. I admire this book immensely.
dnf
April 4, 2018The writing style was so incredibly boring. Every sentence was constructed the same way, and there were no feelings, and everything was told and not shown.
The plot was boring and nothing came alive when reading the words. I expected this collection to be something out of the ordinary, and the title and cover totally fooled me into believing that it could be true. It's not.
The plot was boring and nothing came alive when reading the words. I expected this collection to be something out of the ordinary, and the title and cover totally fooled me into believing that it could be true. It's not.
July 17, 2016
Very odd collection. Enjoyed the writing but think I want more from stories. Probably lots of points I'm missing or connections that I should be making but feel like that would require more thought and commitment than I am inclined to give atm.
March 8, 2022
“After, i had used the chair to rest my feet, as if this explain my behavior… how long do we do this? i would ask, thinking that, if there was a set time, it might feel possible.”
“sometimes that is the only consolation, that there’s never been another choice”
sad! had a really hard time getting into this, but that could be just a struggling attention span lately…. some absolutely beautiful quotes though.
“sometimes that is the only consolation, that there’s never been another choice”
sad! had a really hard time getting into this, but that could be just a struggling attention span lately…. some absolutely beautiful quotes though.
March 14, 2017
Best collection I've read in a long time.
"Once he learned he was beautiful he would become less beautiful."
"It was amazing to me -- one couldn't look at a building in a puddle and not know that it existed, that all of life existed there, only a different life. Where did the second life go, if not further? If there were people inside the building when it was reflected, weren't they reflected as well? Eli bending over the table, screwing in a lens, the man passing him the screwdriver, all the lamps on, then off, the office chair still indented where Eli had sat. When someone moved, does something inside the puddle move? No, of course not, but yes, something inside moved."
..."the train moving through leaves as if through a perforated tunnel."
"The man in the city had eyes like marbles."
"When we opened the outside door, you could feel the air all hot and open; it's what freedom would always feel like to me."
"How strange we are. How different we are from how we think we are. We fall out of love only to fall in love with a duplicate of what we've left, never understanding that we love what we love and that it doesn't change."
"I'm happy was the next thought, followed by the unfamiliar recognition of joy, the discomfort in it, the panic. Will it leave me? How to make it not leave me? Thinking that if he pretended it wasn't there, it wouldn't leave."
"When Betty realized what he was doing, she stopped in the center of the room, under the place where a chandelier used to hang."
"The sunlight hit the people at the counter, making them look like they were in a tunnel. Everyone still had their coats on."
"As they drove, the highway emptied and the sky widened. Pines of both sides grew taller and thicker."
"When you travel it is the same -- first you now one street, then you learn another, then you go someplace else, until the city unfolds in your mind."
"This certainty was so perplexing that I doubted if the child was really me, in the way that we sometimes wonder, when in love, whether this might be a person we don't love at all."
"She had been lying in bed, watching the curtain, smelling the shoulder, when the phone rang."
"She looked like those women you find in rural areas who have kids, do the cooking, and work, who have no femininity in them, but also nothing hard, it was just that life had brought them to having no extra gestures."
"One night I drove to an old, unheated cinema to watch a musical."
"What they must have thought of him, though they probably didn't think about him, probably just thought of him as a permanent thing."
"She was always tired, seemed to him nothing was needed more than anything else."
"She hadn't accounted for the hardness in the people who were left, like her, without someone."
"But what good is there in keeping the things you don't want, simply because they are something?"
"Though the streets were deserted, there were always people in the metro car when it passed, so it felt like they, too, were leaving."
"He had a ring, and so I told myself, There, now you know, and I felt the calm settling of disappointment as it joined the tide of all the other disappointments, the soft, great ocean of disappointment that comes from living among millions of other who also want things, sometimes the things that you want."
"I walked the hallways at night and thought of why I traveled, of the feeling of suspension, of impending arrival."
"Once he learned he was beautiful he would become less beautiful."
"It was amazing to me -- one couldn't look at a building in a puddle and not know that it existed, that all of life existed there, only a different life. Where did the second life go, if not further? If there were people inside the building when it was reflected, weren't they reflected as well? Eli bending over the table, screwing in a lens, the man passing him the screwdriver, all the lamps on, then off, the office chair still indented where Eli had sat. When someone moved, does something inside the puddle move? No, of course not, but yes, something inside moved."
..."the train moving through leaves as if through a perforated tunnel."
"The man in the city had eyes like marbles."
"When we opened the outside door, you could feel the air all hot and open; it's what freedom would always feel like to me."
"How strange we are. How different we are from how we think we are. We fall out of love only to fall in love with a duplicate of what we've left, never understanding that we love what we love and that it doesn't change."
"I'm happy was the next thought, followed by the unfamiliar recognition of joy, the discomfort in it, the panic. Will it leave me? How to make it not leave me? Thinking that if he pretended it wasn't there, it wouldn't leave."
"When Betty realized what he was doing, she stopped in the center of the room, under the place where a chandelier used to hang."
"The sunlight hit the people at the counter, making them look like they were in a tunnel. Everyone still had their coats on."
"As they drove, the highway emptied and the sky widened. Pines of both sides grew taller and thicker."
"When you travel it is the same -- first you now one street, then you learn another, then you go someplace else, until the city unfolds in your mind."
"This certainty was so perplexing that I doubted if the child was really me, in the way that we sometimes wonder, when in love, whether this might be a person we don't love at all."
"She had been lying in bed, watching the curtain, smelling the shoulder, when the phone rang."
"She looked like those women you find in rural areas who have kids, do the cooking, and work, who have no femininity in them, but also nothing hard, it was just that life had brought them to having no extra gestures."
"One night I drove to an old, unheated cinema to watch a musical."
"What they must have thought of him, though they probably didn't think about him, probably just thought of him as a permanent thing."
"She was always tired, seemed to him nothing was needed more than anything else."
"She hadn't accounted for the hardness in the people who were left, like her, without someone."
"But what good is there in keeping the things you don't want, simply because they are something?"
"Though the streets were deserted, there were always people in the metro car when it passed, so it felt like they, too, were leaving."
"He had a ring, and so I told myself, There, now you know, and I felt the calm settling of disappointment as it joined the tide of all the other disappointments, the soft, great ocean of disappointment that comes from living among millions of other who also want things, sometimes the things that you want."
"I walked the hallways at night and thought of why I traveled, of the feeling of suspension, of impending arrival."
July 23, 2020
Interwoven tales of mediocre small-town life. About love and the emptiness from its absence; suburban loneliness; lies and fantasies that could've been truths and reality but we'd never know, neither would the characters. Heartbreaking in essence, primarily because of the naked storytelling and the undefined misery of the characters. Docked a star because of some repetitiveness of setting and plot.
A wonderful read.
A wonderful read.
September 8, 2021
Yes, I judge books by their covers. This cover art was so visually pleasing to me that I picked up the collection of 14 short stories as soon as I saw it. I think I should have waited to read it, though. The stories all have the same characters and they drop into and out of the narrator’s life in a nonlinear way. I need more sustained and firm storytelling right now. I would rate this 2.5 stars but round up because I really think I might like it better next year. The stories are sad and lonely. I would have liked the gaps in time to be filled in and the book to be a novel instead. That continuity would make all the difference to me.
January 26, 2019
Cuando leo a un autor joven que no me llega ni a la primera piel, siempre pienso qué habrán visto los que publican para darle la oportunidad. Por otro lado, también suelo preguntarme por qué a veces hay que ser deslavazado para que te publiquen y te valoren. Y con estas dos preguntas he montado una reseña que dice mucho sin decir nada. A por otro.
September 30, 2017
Beautiful prose, poetic and imaginative. Perfectly painting the line between the feeling of memoire and fiction.
June 7, 2022
3.5 stars
September 1, 2021
Lovely, soft, flowing stories with just the right amount of magic.
July 8, 2022
This is a collection of short stories that are all narrated by solitary people living melancholic lives. The writing is extraordinarily beautiful, but the stories in the first half of the book are all essentially static, with little to nothing happening and the paragraphs often seem randomly ordered or feature abrupt changes in time and place, as though the author just added random paragraphs together to form a story. Yes, each paragraph was beautifully structured and well-written, but it turns out I need a little more forward momentum from my fiction.
The second half of the collection were a few stories that were connected in that the narrator was the same. While there were many scenes and encounters that were unexplained, having the same narrator gave the stories a feeling of progress and I enjoyed them a lot more, even if the protagonist was aimless and had trouble connecting with other people. Despite my reservations about this collection, Majka is a promising writer and I will certainly pay attention to anything she writes.
The second half of the collection were a few stories that were connected in that the narrator was the same. While there were many scenes and encounters that were unexplained, having the same narrator gave the stories a feeling of progress and I enjoyed them a lot more, even if the protagonist was aimless and had trouble connecting with other people. Despite my reservations about this collection, Majka is a promising writer and I will certainly pay attention to anything she writes.
July 21, 2020
I pulled this book randomly off the shelf at the public library, and it ended up being a decent read. The problem I have with the book is that it smacks of memoir rather than fiction and that the style and tone of each story is identical. Not a lot happens in the stories--the book is basically a chronicling of the narrator’s (author’s?) daily life--and if you can’t relate to the main character, who narrates all 14 stories, then you won’t enjoy the book. The narrator struck me as somebody I wouldn’t want to hang out with for long, as she meanders through life without much purpose and with an unwavering melancholy. At times she appreciates simple pleasures--the way light plays off an object; the way the wind blows through her hair; a good cup of coffee; a pleasant walk through an unknown town; a conversation with a homeless man--but an overwhelming sadness and purposelessness permeates the pages, and I want more out of my fiction. The best story, “Cities I’ve Never Lived In,” chronicles the narrator traveling from city to city and hanging out at soup kitchens and conversing with homeless people.
October 21, 2024
It was refreshing to read a collection of short stories! Loved the setting in the northeast. If you like the writing on first page, you’ll enjoy the rest.
July 11, 2021
I went to the library for the first time in over a year (!), and I liked the title. The book contains a number of short stories, all from the same narrator, each story covering a different event from her life, often with overlapping characters. The writing is fairly pretty, but Majka’s style is a little confusing. The vagueness seemed intentional but affected the flow of the writing. Majka also failed to properly provide closure in some of the stories. Overall, a nice quick read and a good start to summer reading!
February 20, 2019
From my review at motherbookerblog.com:
"There's a line in one of the short stories in Sara Majka's collection that, I think, really sums up this whole book. "To her we must be God, I thought, though I wasn't sure what I meant." You get the sense that Sara Majka was writing things that she thought sounded beautiful without ever having a clue what she was saying. There is some absolutely beautiful writing within these short stories but, if I'm honest, I felt that a lot of the content was shallow and meaningless. I started off really liking these stories but, as they went on, it kind of started to feel more like white noise. It was just happening around me without me really taking much notice. If I'm honest, I spent the last few stories just desperately wanting it to be over but still hoping that she would surprise me with a final masterpiece.
At first glance, Cities I've Never Lived In seems as thought it's going to be a simple collection of stories about arty hipsters living in Wintry landscapes and trying to get to grips with humanity and love. There is a lot of this analysis throughout the stories but it does get more complicated as the stories go on. Majka starts to blend together reality and fantasy. The stories are linked by the story of a newly divorced woman who is trying to find herself without her husband. She travels the country to see how other people live and starts telling stories along the way. Telling the stories of her family, the people she has met, and the people she imagines. The collection is an exploration of humanity and that sense of belonging. It is the journey of a woman trying to find out where she belongs by exploring the places other people live.
All of the stories within this collection are sad. The narrator is dealing with a great loneliness and a massive longing for a family. She deals a lot in departures and we see many people disappearing from their homes. There is the father who abandons his daughter, the child who is kidnapped from day care, the mother who loses her daughter, and the man who can't find his home after leaving a mental hospital. This is about what happens when somebody leaves the place they belong and the consequences it has on everyone. They are all linked by an intense sadness which is how the narrator can come to empathise with them. Why she uses them as an excuse to flit from place to place in the hope that she will find out who she is and what she is looking for. Creating new realities wherever she goes in the hope that it will replace the reality she once knew with her husband.
I absolutely get what the stories in this book are trying to do. It draws on aspects of so many different genres and creates contrasting atmospheres throughout to show all facets of reality. It never shies away from showing the gritty reality of life and the human condition. However, I still can't escape the fact that I didn't really enjoy it. It seemed very arty (for lack of a better word) in its approach to these tasks. It all felt very superficial. It's a series of stories that believes they are more profound and deep than they are. It kind of feels like a bunch of pretty words put together before any real meaning could be attached to them so it had to be stuck on later. I didn't get a real sense of anybody in this book or any real purpose. There are some good stories here but, if I'm brutally honest, the majority of them are forgettable. So much so, that I have already lost track of what I've just read."
"There's a line in one of the short stories in Sara Majka's collection that, I think, really sums up this whole book. "To her we must be God, I thought, though I wasn't sure what I meant." You get the sense that Sara Majka was writing things that she thought sounded beautiful without ever having a clue what she was saying. There is some absolutely beautiful writing within these short stories but, if I'm honest, I felt that a lot of the content was shallow and meaningless. I started off really liking these stories but, as they went on, it kind of started to feel more like white noise. It was just happening around me without me really taking much notice. If I'm honest, I spent the last few stories just desperately wanting it to be over but still hoping that she would surprise me with a final masterpiece.
At first glance, Cities I've Never Lived In seems as thought it's going to be a simple collection of stories about arty hipsters living in Wintry landscapes and trying to get to grips with humanity and love. There is a lot of this analysis throughout the stories but it does get more complicated as the stories go on. Majka starts to blend together reality and fantasy. The stories are linked by the story of a newly divorced woman who is trying to find herself without her husband. She travels the country to see how other people live and starts telling stories along the way. Telling the stories of her family, the people she has met, and the people she imagines. The collection is an exploration of humanity and that sense of belonging. It is the journey of a woman trying to find out where she belongs by exploring the places other people live.
All of the stories within this collection are sad. The narrator is dealing with a great loneliness and a massive longing for a family. She deals a lot in departures and we see many people disappearing from their homes. There is the father who abandons his daughter, the child who is kidnapped from day care, the mother who loses her daughter, and the man who can't find his home after leaving a mental hospital. This is about what happens when somebody leaves the place they belong and the consequences it has on everyone. They are all linked by an intense sadness which is how the narrator can come to empathise with them. Why she uses them as an excuse to flit from place to place in the hope that she will find out who she is and what she is looking for. Creating new realities wherever she goes in the hope that it will replace the reality she once knew with her husband.
I absolutely get what the stories in this book are trying to do. It draws on aspects of so many different genres and creates contrasting atmospheres throughout to show all facets of reality. It never shies away from showing the gritty reality of life and the human condition. However, I still can't escape the fact that I didn't really enjoy it. It seemed very arty (for lack of a better word) in its approach to these tasks. It all felt very superficial. It's a series of stories that believes they are more profound and deep than they are. It kind of feels like a bunch of pretty words put together before any real meaning could be attached to them so it had to be stuck on later. I didn't get a real sense of anybody in this book or any real purpose. There are some good stories here but, if I'm brutally honest, the majority of them are forgettable. So much so, that I have already lost track of what I've just read."
Displaying 1 - 30 of 139 reviews