Read This and Tell Me What It Says

by A. Manette Ansay

In her first full-length story collection, author A. Manette Ansay explores the rural Midwest landscape and the people who inhabit it: ordinary folk with extraordinary inner lives, struggling to make sense of the isolated, sometimes painful, and often intensely religious worlds in which they live. Her are 15 haunting and exquisitely written tales that offer a rare and unforgettable glimpse into the complexities of being human and being alive.

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction

160 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 1995

About the author

A. Manette Ansay grew up in Wisconsin among 67 cousins and over 200 second cousins. She is the author of six novels, including Good Things I Wish You (July, 2009), Vinegar Hill, an Oprah Book Club Selection, and Midnight Champagne, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, as well as a short story collection, Read This and Tell Me What It Says, and a memoir, Limbo. Her awards include a National Endowment for the Arts Grant, a Pushcart Prize, the Nelson Algren Prize, and two Great Lakes Book Awards. She lives with her daughter in Florida, where she teaches in the MFA program at the University of Miami.

Reviews

[Tara · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm getting to this book late (pub. in '95), but I devoured it. Another remainder bin find. I think it's interesting that I tend to love the remainder books more than the bestsellers I pick up. In any case, I've never had the privilege of reading Ansay before. I LOVED her prose and ability to imagine and narrate a story. Just a couple of passages:

"I remember the year it was rain that we prayed for, the death rattle of the crops our evening lullaby."

"The sun began rising; one bloody knuckle peeked over the horizon and the flooded fields took up the color until the land around the house burned wild fire."

"It was down by the creek in back of the school where the flowers grew big as cow's eyes, and you maybe picked some of those flowers to smell their green smell, to fill your nose with that smell, while you waited."

You can see the themes of ruralness run through the stories, and religion takes up much of the characters' lives, for better or worse. I cried, laughed, but mostly, reveled in her words. Her final story, "July," will remain a favorite for years to come. I also enjoyed her mixing in some flash stories. A must read for story lovers. Sort of a lite Jayne Anne Phillips.

[Cathy · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found this collection of short stories a mixed bag. Mainly the characters are unsympathetic and caught in the vise of religious piety. I found it hard to relate to many of them. This is the third book of this author's that I have read, and I find her recurrent theme of people trapped in their religious (mostly Catholic) beliefs to be frustrating. I want to shake these people (& the author) out of their rigid way of thinking. Also, every time I start to think I will be able to identify with a character, they start sputtering a bunch of uneducated hillbilly nonsense. I'd love to read about some educated and smart people in Wisconsin. I'm sure there are plenty, but I'd like to see more of them represented here.

[Lucy · Rating 3 out of 5]

i dont even know where this book went.
but i read it at a cool coffee shop. coffee shop = 10/10. book = 3.5/10

[Kay Baird · Rating 4 out of 5]

The stories in this collection are fierce little things: they bite. Reading them, I got depressed. I considered stopping and sending the book back to the library. But Ansay's insight is so sharp, her characters so vibrant, I wanted to hear everything she had to say. So I interspersed them with reading less challenging. Then at the end of the last story, my heart broke open in fierce joy. There's no thread of plot or character through the group, but they do build up to that finish. And it's not completely in accord with my choices, but it still says a lot about the struggle.

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ansay gets a lot of comparisons to Flannery O'Connor, which seems a little too convenient because they are both women who specialize in short stories. But while their settings, characters, and subject matter differ greatly, I’d have to agree, at least for this collection of short stories, that Ansay is able to conjure O'Connor’s remarkable gift to relate the unspoken facets of human nature. I really enjoyed every one of these stories and their uniquely broken characters.

[Cleolinda · Rating 4 out of 5]

I first saw Manette Ansay at a writers' conference, and picked up two or three of her books there (I believe "River Angel" was her newest at the time). A wonderful collection of short stories, and the title is something I wish I'd come up with.

[Amy Galloway · Rating 3 out of 5]

Found this and knew the author from her debut novel. These stories are beautifully written but all have a sadness about them. The characters are often limited by circumstances, often religious. The stories do reveal the inner strength of the characters. I often felt overwhelmed and a little depressed after finishing a story; however that is not a criticism or discouragement to explore this collection. Ansay is a master of the craft.

[Donald Hardy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Frightening, haunting stories of tortured human depths. I’ve now read this collection twice. I don’t know of anyone who writes like this.

[Camille · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good collection of sad short stories; I reviewed it on my blog: https://wineandhistory.wordpress.com/...

[Linda Spyhalski · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love A. Manette Ansay. This is an older book that I had on my bookshelf. It is a book of fifteen short stories that are powerful and very meaningful! It could easily be read one story at a time and set aside for a later read!

[Jessica Marquis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reread this short, haunting volume of stories on my transatlantic flight. Ansay has a talent for peopling her decidedly Midwestern settings with characters that are real, flawed, and searching. Like the narrator of Tracey Chapman's "Fast Car"–"you and I can both get jobs, finally see what it means to be living"–these characters are struggling, holding on to hope. We are not at all certain they will get there, and this doubt evokes a subtle sadness. These stories are triumphs of mood. Characters are widowed, haunted by ghosts. They are cousins, jealous and competitive. They are children meeting the other woman. They are unemployed drifters putting ads in the personal section: seeking girlfriend.


2015:
Really nice collection, with the added bonus that I found it for a few bucks somewhere in a charming, messy, quirky bookstore in downtown Breckenridge.

[Mary · Rating 3 out of 5]

When I saw the photograph of the author on the book jacket, I was sure that I'd read a short story of hers somewhere that blew me away. But I couldn't get into the first story, and am stopping. (2007)

Twelve years later, I soldiered through and it's worth it. Her writing is great.

[hallie · Rating 2 out of 5]

While I can see that Ansay is a technically good writer, I was so turned off by the characters in her stories that this book was just not for me. She's like the midwestern Flannery O'Connor, same weirdness. But something this book was just too unsettling for me.

[Maura · Rating 3 out of 5]

pretty good short stories, but I had to stop because they were too much the same and all too depressing.

[Krista · Rating 3 out of 5]

Short stories, nothing remarkable.

[Nina · Rating 4 out of 5]

sharp little stories that are even better on second reading.

[Kate]

I read this too long ago to rate.