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All Around Atlantis
Small masterpieces...[a] dazzling collection....Like Alice Munro, virtually her only equal in the field, Deborah Eisenberg here seems incapable of writing a bad short story...She focuses on misfits, people who don't feel at home in the world. So skilled is she at developing these characters as engagingly "ordinary" that we find ourselves identifying with them without realizing how we got there....Eisenberg's writing at times approaches the beauty of a line of poetry. She manipulates her readers with a master's blend of humor and poignancy. Her stories are wondrous.... -- David Wiegand, San Francisco Chronicle
256 pages, Paperback
First published December 31, 1997
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About the author
Deborah Eisenberg
38 books292 followersBorn in Chicago, Eisenberg moved to New York City in the 1960's where she has lived ever since. She also teaches at the University of Virginia. Her writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The Yale Review, Vanity Fair, and Tin House. She has won the Rea Award for the Short Story, a Whiting Writer's Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and three O. Henry Awards.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 35 reviews
January 24, 2024
My third short-story collection by Deborah Eisenberg. This did not quite measure up to the first collection that I read of hers, but it was very good. In the story The Girl Who Left Her Sock on the Floor Francie McIntyre, 16, is at a private girls’ school on a scholarship. Francie thinks of herself as very independent, is rebellious and wants to be out from under her mother’s control, but then something happens and her world changes dramatically. In my favorite story in the collection, Rosie Gets a Soul, Rosie is a drug addict. She contacts an old friend Jamie for help. She gets clean and Jamie lets her stay with him. Rosie seems to be moving in a positive direction when she runs into a significant disappointment. How will she react? Will she go back to her old ways and lose all the progress she has made?
All of these stories focus on either a point in time when someone is struggling to overcome difficulties in life or has struggled early in life and is reflecting back on those experiences. Little is tied up in a nice, neat package. The characters feel real, the life experiences feel real, but these stories are not positive or uplifting. That does not bother me but might not be what other readers are looking for.
All of these stories focus on either a point in time when someone is struggling to overcome difficulties in life or has struggled early in life and is reflecting back on those experiences. Little is tied up in a nice, neat package. The characters feel real, the life experiences feel real, but these stories are not positive or uplifting. That does not bother me but might not be what other readers are looking for.
July 7, 2022
The world is so ... roomy. So full of oddments. But there’s that now-you-see-it, now-you-don’t quality about life that makes one so very nervous. Danger, as you pointed out just now, yourself. Danger simply everywhere. Everything destroyed, lost, forgotten ...
Deborah Eisenberg’s stories are not linked by any recurring characters, locations or events. Yet I struggle, now that I finished my first volume from her, to distinguish between them, to separate them into discrete, self-contained portraits. Probably because I experienced a powerful sense of repetition from one story to the next. The same type of narrator is in each of them, regardless of age, gender or education: intelligent, introverted, anxious, lost in the real world and unable to communicate effectively. At some point, Eisenberg calls this situation surreal reality, as if you see the world from the inside of a glass cage, you scream and nobody understands you and you are constantly afraid someone or something will come and smash your protective glass.
I saw the village, I saw the market, I saw the church, Rob insisted to himself, but all he could see now was a limitless dark, screened by the reflection of his own face, its expression of untested integrity, of convenient innocence.
Tourists, archeologists, musicians and sculptors, school children and immigrants, drug addicts and cheating spouses – they are all written as exiles from this mythical Atlantis – from the place where the world makes sense and where the future is not terrifying. Each character tries to tell his or her story, but the dialogues are truncated, the ideas are left hanging in the void, the revelations refuses to come, the final page leaves you as much in the dark as the opening one.
... translucent, gelatinous, torn things. Memories, discarded by the barbed wire under a tiny, oil-colored sun.
Yet Eisenberg is constantly dancing on the edge of meaning, teasing the reader with promises of catharsis then prudently taking refuge once more behind the glass cage. I wonder now if my efforts to make sense of this deliberately broken and confusing narrative have transported me physically into one of her stories, where I look at the world outside and struggle to find my way back to a safe place. This unnerving thought is probably exactly what the author wanted to convey.
Yeah, you’ve got to play your cards right with time, Rosie thinks. It’s not merely the thing that kills you; evidently it’s also the thing that keeps you alive. You can inoculate yourself against it, you can rid yourself of it, but then where are you? Not dead, true, but not alive, either; you’ve got rid of the thing inside you that pulls you along towards the end of the line, but don’t you want to go anywhere? Because if you want to go somewhere, the end of the line is the only available destination.
Every line I have bookmarked in the book seems a repetition of the things I have already said, of the people I have already met here in this fictional world that is exiled from its Atlantis.
... in this distant place his body and mind didn’t know how to protect themselves.
I think no matter where she’d found herself, she would have experienced her life as a faintly comic, wholly inexplicable spectacle that was being rolled out in front of her.
He seemed to be standing on a bridge, watching himself be carried along on the currents below.
>>><<<>>><<<
No, I didn’t enjoy the trip to the surreal landscapes of Deborah Eisenberg. I decided on a lukewarm three stars because she is extremely talented, in an academical, slightly condescending creative writing showcase. I wasn’t really surprised to read afterwards that she is a university lecturer in literature.
But I never cared for a single one of her creations, no matter how sensitive and articulate they try to be. If I want to spend time in the company of high anxiety I prefer the movies of Woody Allen, at least he has a sense of humour. The similarity of each story included here almost drove me to abandon the journey, unfortunately making me less willing to be impressed by the last and probably best story, the one that incidentally gives the title for the collection.
This is also the reason why I have no intention of writing a synopsis for each episode: they are truly irrelevant, since they all deal with a journey of self-discovery, ultimately futile.
For what it’s worth, here is the list of the stories in the book:
The Girl Who Left Her Sock on the Floor
Across the Lake
Someone To Talk To
Tlaloc’s Paradise
Rosie Gets a Soul
Mermaids
All Around Atlantis
February 24, 2021
I’ve written about Deb’s prose stylings in my review for Under the 82. I also put together a petition I want everyone to sign. So sign it. So Here I’ll just talk about subject stuff.
And what subjects! It’s 82ish in that you have stories in foreign countries, and you have ones that don’t. Praps Deb felt compelled to take on that challenge. She doesn’t have to, but she does. The World is happening whether felt or not, so she places some characters nearer its Event. This preoccupation with the necessary hits and doesn’t writers alike. You don’t have to. Aesthetics allows for the everything, just because you’re lucky/un to not be near an Event, that doesn’t mean your life counts for less.
But Deb says yea. She’ll take it on. What’s her take? They want to be similar, to be like the other stories, yet, a guard with a gun stands post on the upper floor. The constant pangs of want still flutter like a wounded bird, but the air is heavier. People (mmm, tourists but tourists are your keyhole) want to struggle with life the way the druggies and kids do, but they cannot, or, iffyness pervades. The heavy air, the presence of brutality, the seesaw decline of poverty, these get in the way of the normal fights of life’s struggle. They’re seen from the vantage point of a restaurant table, but the possibilities stretch like an Escher staircase. The normal people stories are better, but props to Deb for the very act of border crossing.
Man Deb’s writing. It’s on another level. It’s so fucking good the only other person I’d put Deb in a ring with is maybe Nabokov. And though it wouldn’t be a knockout, I think the points are in Deb’s favor.
There I said it.
May 22, 2020
‘Yes, I had nightmares—children do. After all, it takes some time to get used to being alive. And how else, except in the clarity of dreams, are you supposed to see the world all around you that’s hidden by the light of day?’
I love Eisenberg’s fiction for its aesthetic qualities above any emotional or intellectual qualities, though she succeeds gloriously on all fronts. She has admitted as much that great sentences are what she cares about most. She’s an unabashed aesthete, and I love her literariness. It’s as much a pleasure to witness the delight she takes in language as it is to experience it myself. Her prose is phosphorescent; the words glow with magical properties. She’s a pure artist in a form that is more purely artful, in general, than the novel. On a story level she’s fantastic as well, she’s a great writer of voice, inhabiting characters like a great actor and feeling them out, taking on their vitality and reckless, loserly charm. Her people are strangers to themselves, adrift in an incoherent world. The stories are wide-ranging so they’re hard to talk about collectively. But Eisenberg is sophisticated and compassionate, and these are character-driven, heartfelt pieces. Now I’ve read every story she’s written! I hope she has more in her...
I love Eisenberg’s fiction for its aesthetic qualities above any emotional or intellectual qualities, though she succeeds gloriously on all fronts. She has admitted as much that great sentences are what she cares about most. She’s an unabashed aesthete, and I love her literariness. It’s as much a pleasure to witness the delight she takes in language as it is to experience it myself. Her prose is phosphorescent; the words glow with magical properties. She’s a pure artist in a form that is more purely artful, in general, than the novel. On a story level she’s fantastic as well, she’s a great writer of voice, inhabiting characters like a great actor and feeling them out, taking on their vitality and reckless, loserly charm. Her people are strangers to themselves, adrift in an incoherent world. The stories are wide-ranging so they’re hard to talk about collectively. But Eisenberg is sophisticated and compassionate, and these are character-driven, heartfelt pieces. Now I’ve read every story she’s written! I hope she has more in her...
June 19, 2007
Like your elegantly perfumed mother running her fingers through your hair. Her fingernails at your scalp. Her murmuring on the telephone across the room. Her talking to you very clearly as an adult, across a table. Your mother smokes, or used to. Your mother is at peace with the fact that her sculptures are not high art. Your mother is more interesting than you are.
January 11, 2009
Mystery clings to a story that haunts us long after it is finished. The title story in Deborah Eisenberg’s short story collection “All Around Atlantis,” demonstrates this enigma; her characters embody it. She blends modern and ancient styles of storytelling—stream of consciousness, mystery, and tragedy—to create richly layered characters and penetrate their painful secrets without destroying their mystery.
Deborah Eisenberg begins the story after Anna notices her mother Lili’s former lover Peter, coming late to her funeral. The story takes the form of Anna’s first person internal monologue directed at Peter in which she presents shards of her past: the Holocaust expatriates who gather around the beautiful Lili and intellectual Sándor, Lili’s depressions during which she disappears into her bedroom, and the silence surrounding their pre-New York lives which Anna pieces together under the prodding of a friend intrigued by their ethnicity and hints of a more moneyed past.
Eisenberg uses Anna as a first person narrator and a stream of consciousness style to juxtapose her adult and childhood thoughts and experiences. She begins: “When do I think of you? Never, these days,” and keeps readers guessing about this relationship. The adult’s recollections of the child’s observations present readers with rich and complex insights that are funny, painful and generous. One of the marvels of Eisenberg’s choice of story-telling style is the way it allows for gaps and silences. Eisenberg describes the Holocaust’s aftermath in the same way Anna discovers it, bit by bit. “All Around Atlantis” conveys a tragedy too big for words.
Deborah Eisenberg begins the story after Anna notices her mother Lili’s former lover Peter, coming late to her funeral. The story takes the form of Anna’s first person internal monologue directed at Peter in which she presents shards of her past: the Holocaust expatriates who gather around the beautiful Lili and intellectual Sándor, Lili’s depressions during which she disappears into her bedroom, and the silence surrounding their pre-New York lives which Anna pieces together under the prodding of a friend intrigued by their ethnicity and hints of a more moneyed past.
Eisenberg uses Anna as a first person narrator and a stream of consciousness style to juxtapose her adult and childhood thoughts and experiences. She begins: “When do I think of you? Never, these days,” and keeps readers guessing about this relationship. The adult’s recollections of the child’s observations present readers with rich and complex insights that are funny, painful and generous. One of the marvels of Eisenberg’s choice of story-telling style is the way it allows for gaps and silences. Eisenberg describes the Holocaust’s aftermath in the same way Anna discovers it, bit by bit. “All Around Atlantis” conveys a tragedy too big for words.
January 8, 2008
I saw this book here earlier when I was at work and gave three stars without remembering much about it besides the title story, but then I came home and flipped through, and now I'm not sure about the three stars, or about much of anything.... So I thought that instead of figuring out how to register for the social work licensing exam, I'd sit here and think aloud (so to speak) about Deborah Eisenberg. I've only read this and Under the 82nd Airborne, which is out of print (and IMO should not be, mostly because of the title story and The Robbery, both permanently embedded in my brain the moment I've read them, much to my dismay on occasions since when they've intruded on my thoughts).
Anyway, I can see now looking over AAA that I remembered it wrong. For one thing, the story I'd thought was called AAA is actually called Mermaids, and I didn't particularly like it except that there was something very, very real feeling about it, as in, you KNOW that this is EXACTLY how NYC would seem to a little girl visiting under these circumstances. It feels really, really real, like something that would actually happen, so even though it might NOT actually happen that way, there is still something that FEELS so right about the story, that it's special anyway. It's confusing. I liked and retained details about most of these stories, even when I thought I didn't like them. There's only one throwaway I don't remember at all.
Even when things in her stories seem wrong, wrong, wrong, there is something unusually right about them. She commits all these unforgivable short story violations like Creating Boring Characters, or Having Something Terrible Happen, or Always Making Everyone a Drug Addict, but she gets away with it because the details feel real and memorable in some odd, intangible way. I almost want to say she should've done away with all the effortful gimmicks and drugs and just written her details, but then I guess she'd be Ann Beattie and would just have a pile of well-written stuff about dull yuppies doing nothing. Anyway, the first story in this collection is a great example of how E is the guy who epitomizes and enacts every single red flag and dealbreaker, but still winds up charming my pants off. This story had: 1. A bitchy character named Jessica; 2. annoying, unrealistic dialogue; 3. a Sudden Death in the Family; 4. sickening level of cliche re protagonist's life; 5. a MENTALLY ILL person. And yet, while I did not love this story, I made it through and onto the rest of the book... I've taken the bus into the city to the Port Authority a million times, and somehow the character's ride in this story, though I can't say how at all, became linked in my memory with my own experience of that. Which means it's good, right? That is kind of magical, being able to write a story that'll hook into your own mundane memories and experiences.
DE's signature party trick is clueless Americans in dusty, unnamed Latin American countries with Serious Political Problems, and I like those stories. It might help there that I've never been to Latin America. Of course, I've also never taken any illegal drugs, but I still feel somehow qualified to comment on her depictions of drug use. I suspect based on her stories about various types of drug addicts that DE has likely done a fair amount of cocaine, but has never herself been a junkie. Of course, I remember from fiction class in college that writing unconvincingly about something often means it's true, but I digress... The long story in here, "Rosie Gets a Soul," had what I felt was an extremely lame depiction of heroin addiction, all the more puzzling because despite my deep annoyance at writers' tiresome enchantment with drug addiction, I loved its description of decorative painting, and honestly liked the story a lot, even though it had a stupid title and an unrealistic junkie.
So there you go. I guess I like her? But I'm confused about it.
Anyway, I can see now looking over AAA that I remembered it wrong. For one thing, the story I'd thought was called AAA is actually called Mermaids, and I didn't particularly like it except that there was something very, very real feeling about it, as in, you KNOW that this is EXACTLY how NYC would seem to a little girl visiting under these circumstances. It feels really, really real, like something that would actually happen, so even though it might NOT actually happen that way, there is still something that FEELS so right about the story, that it's special anyway. It's confusing. I liked and retained details about most of these stories, even when I thought I didn't like them. There's only one throwaway I don't remember at all.
Even when things in her stories seem wrong, wrong, wrong, there is something unusually right about them. She commits all these unforgivable short story violations like Creating Boring Characters, or Having Something Terrible Happen, or Always Making Everyone a Drug Addict, but she gets away with it because the details feel real and memorable in some odd, intangible way. I almost want to say she should've done away with all the effortful gimmicks and drugs and just written her details, but then I guess she'd be Ann Beattie and would just have a pile of well-written stuff about dull yuppies doing nothing. Anyway, the first story in this collection is a great example of how E is the guy who epitomizes and enacts every single red flag and dealbreaker, but still winds up charming my pants off. This story had: 1. A bitchy character named Jessica; 2. annoying, unrealistic dialogue; 3. a Sudden Death in the Family; 4. sickening level of cliche re protagonist's life; 5. a MENTALLY ILL person. And yet, while I did not love this story, I made it through and onto the rest of the book... I've taken the bus into the city to the Port Authority a million times, and somehow the character's ride in this story, though I can't say how at all, became linked in my memory with my own experience of that. Which means it's good, right? That is kind of magical, being able to write a story that'll hook into your own mundane memories and experiences.
DE's signature party trick is clueless Americans in dusty, unnamed Latin American countries with Serious Political Problems, and I like those stories. It might help there that I've never been to Latin America. Of course, I've also never taken any illegal drugs, but I still feel somehow qualified to comment on her depictions of drug use. I suspect based on her stories about various types of drug addicts that DE has likely done a fair amount of cocaine, but has never herself been a junkie. Of course, I remember from fiction class in college that writing unconvincingly about something often means it's true, but I digress... The long story in here, "Rosie Gets a Soul," had what I felt was an extremely lame depiction of heroin addiction, all the more puzzling because despite my deep annoyance at writers' tiresome enchantment with drug addiction, I loved its description of decorative painting, and honestly liked the story a lot, even though it had a stupid title and an unrealistic junkie.
So there you go. I guess I like her? But I'm confused about it.
March 14, 2024
She chisels this prose with an Ice pick, only the canvas isn’t frozen water, it’s flesh and blood and goddamn feeling. It’s interesting to see her playing with that “theater-style” dialog in a couple of these pieces. It’s so hard to not only communicate intent when you forsake half the sentence, but keep me locked into the rhythm of the conversation. She does both. These ellipses on the page aren’t just there to look like good writing, they are good writing. It’s a trap I and every other author falls into. So she waited until her third collection of bangers to treat herself. And she manages to put the stage on the page and anchor it with that terrifying clarity with which she fences. These moments of uncertainty in speech are backfilled by the precision of inner monologue and character reflection, on her created and shared histories she is generous. As generous with one sentence as others struggle to be with 20. But that’s Deb. Each collection grows in unexpected ways for me. Stylistically she continues to evolve in such subtle and interesting manner I catch myself daydreaming about what her next book might read like. Be still my beating heart. Be still! And I know I’m behind the curve for her contemporary works, but I’m reading them linearly, so get off my freaking back.
October 19, 2025
On a sentence level, These. Stories. Are. Remarkable. My favorites were “Across the Lake,” “Rosie Gets A Soul,” and the title story. It worries me, though, how I didn’t really get half of the stories (while still being very impressed with the writing). I might comprehend them better on a re-reading, but other books await. And it could be, I’m just not smart enough to understand the subtle way that Eisenberg infuses meaning anyway.
Am I going to have to put this on my “I’m Too Stupid for this Book” shelf? Please vote.
Am I going to have to put this on my “I’m Too Stupid for this Book” shelf? Please vote.
February 20, 2019
This is the third collection of Eisenberg's stories that I have read in the last 4 months. Her strengths as a writer continue to be maintained in this collection. I read these stories in an unusual manner for me. I read the first two stories several weeks ago and then dawdled over the third story for almost 10 days despite that haphazard pattern I thoroughly enjoyed Someone to Talk too. I found that I could drop into the text after an absence and Eisenberg's skill as a sentence maker and character drew me back in.
The title story All Around Atlantis is the gem of the collection. Set in the present day (1990's) the narrator remembers how she once lived with a group on European survivors of the Holocaust in New York City during the 1950's. It is a generous but unsentimental look at a particular generation who were damaged and united by the tragedies they encountered.
I also really liked Mermaids a story about young teenage girls trying to navigate the secrets and complexities of adult behavior while on a winter vacation trip to New York City. The story reminded me of Cheever or Updike but with the variance of a woman writer's sensibility.
Rosie gets a soul seems to be titled unartfully. It is a far better account of a lost drug addicted woman putting her life back together and a wryly observant account of the class system in the United States.
I believe that there are 2 more collection of Eisenberg's stories for me to complete. I intend to do that before the year is put
The title story All Around Atlantis is the gem of the collection. Set in the present day (1990's) the narrator remembers how she once lived with a group on European survivors of the Holocaust in New York City during the 1950's. It is a generous but unsentimental look at a particular generation who were damaged and united by the tragedies they encountered.
I also really liked Mermaids a story about young teenage girls trying to navigate the secrets and complexities of adult behavior while on a winter vacation trip to New York City. The story reminded me of Cheever or Updike but with the variance of a woman writer's sensibility.
Rosie gets a soul seems to be titled unartfully. It is a far better account of a lost drug addicted woman putting her life back together and a wryly observant account of the class system in the United States.
I believe that there are 2 more collection of Eisenberg's stories for me to complete. I intend to do that before the year is put
July 12, 2010
This is a book of short stories. Not just any ordinary set of short stories, but stories of people caught out by life in different countries and cultures. What makes these stories interesting is that they all capture the thoughts of the central character who doesn't feel as if he or she belongs in that society.
Everyone has thoughts that we don't voice, fears we don't share, jubilation we can't show at times, and these stories expose all these hidden inner thoughts and show them off in their brilliant jeweled and sometimes gloomy dark colors.
As each character hurtles through their situation in confusion, trying to become 'ordinary', I had no choice but to hustle along with them, feeling like I was burrowing into a tunnel in their minds, seeing all their thoughts that gave me a more acute perspective of what they were seeing and feeling. I had no choice but to keep them company because I needed to know how it would all turn out for them at the end.
Everyone has thoughts that we don't voice, fears we don't share, jubilation we can't show at times, and these stories expose all these hidden inner thoughts and show them off in their brilliant jeweled and sometimes gloomy dark colors.
As each character hurtles through their situation in confusion, trying to become 'ordinary', I had no choice but to hustle along with them, feeling like I was burrowing into a tunnel in their minds, seeing all their thoughts that gave me a more acute perspective of what they were seeing and feeling. I had no choice but to keep them company because I needed to know how it would all turn out for them at the end.
August 29, 2025
2020
Struck a cataract of longing in me...best collection of the four of hers I’ve read so far.
2025
“when i cried with frustration, alone with you in my room, and hurled my book onto the floor, you waited, you retrieved the book, and you explained again. don’t be so frightened, you told me. don’t be so impatient. don’t fight so hard against it; if you want to know something you don’t already know, you have to let yourself change.”
Struck a cataract of longing in me...best collection of the four of hers I’ve read so far.
2025
“when i cried with frustration, alone with you in my room, and hurled my book onto the floor, you waited, you retrieved the book, and you explained again. don’t be so frightened, you told me. don’t be so impatient. don’t fight so hard against it; if you want to know something you don’t already know, you have to let yourself change.”
June 5, 2008
Didn't finish this collection or come anywhere close. Gave the book away as soon as possible. The stories were long-winded and self-involved in my opinion. Can't even remember much of what they were about, simply that I didn't want to read them anymore. Someone who prefers a different style might love this one, but I wanted things to happen and the stories to eventually end.
July 10, 2019
I love Under the 82nd Airborne, but after doing a partial but passionate reread of Eisenberg’s Collected Stories, it is clear to me that Eisenberg became one of our—like, the human race’s—major artists, in any medium, with All Around Atlantis. Each aspect of each story fires on all cylinders. And it is exquisite.
February 1, 2022
Very disappointing. Not too dense, but almost like an educated stoner was writing it. Could it have been me, the reader? No. All the other books I've read over the past half year have not made me feel this way. I get the impression from the sentence structure and vocabulary that Eisenberg is highly educated, but the stories just aren't captivating. I got the same impression reading (or trying to read) Infinite Jest... too intellectual for its own good. Like looking inside a very old computer. Looks fancy, but it's not. It's dusty and kind of vague. Sell Eisenberg for scrap metal.
December 18, 2024
All Around Atlantis is right in the middle of Deborah Eisenberg’s bibliography - the third of five collections, excluding collected editions et cetera. So it’s a bit of a transitional work - you can see her stretching herself far beyond the general vibe of her previous two collections. Yes, it shows its stretch marks and yes it sometimes comes off as a bit mechanical and “done”. But I think that only adds to its charm… which it has a lot of. A very charming book. Not to say it doesn’t have its fair share of darkness… but it still charmed me
October 22, 2018
I wasn't enjoying the stories at all until I got to the very end. The story 'All Around Atlantis' was griping. It might be the other stories were a bit surreal while this last story, sadly was all too historically real.
October 20, 2018
I just couldn’t stay interested in these short stories. Part of the problem was that none of them was short enough.
July 4, 2021
Reminded me of Salinger’s short stories. I loved those when I read them many (15?) years ago.
September 4, 2023
Riveting stories that often tug at the heart strings. Mermaids did me in. But not a trite word is ever written by Ms. Eisenberg. Brilliant writer who can take you on an emotional journey.
September 23, 2011
It seems that The Collected Stories of Deborah Eisenberg have just been published, so I just read the final volume of her stories on my shelf, the out-of-print All Around Atlantis. I think it is one of her strongest collections. I usually don’t like the collected books of short stories, because they’re so big and unwieldy-I prefer these slim volumes that can be read in several sittings. It’s right up there with Under The 82nd Airborne. Eisenberg’s stories are usually distinguished by great dialogue and memorable characters. There are some interesting stories set in Central America, “Someone To Talk To,” “Across From A Lake,” and “Tlaloc’s Paradise” like most of those in Airborne. My favorite story was “Mermaids” about two young pre-adolescents trying to negotiate life among adults. I don’t think any of the stories were weak.
December 3, 2014
The title story in this collection captures the WWII emigre trying to adjust to a post-war world, in another country and culture. Reminded me of some conversations with just such an emigre in the early 1980s in New York City.
"Someone to Talk To" punched me hard. In only a few pages, I was reliving the end of my marriage. I had to put the book down for a couple of days to recover.
Stories set in Latin America capture some of the complexities of describing cross-cultural experience.
"Someone to Talk To" punched me hard. In only a few pages, I was reliving the end of my marriage. I had to put the book down for a couple of days to recover.
Stories set in Latin America capture some of the complexities of describing cross-cultural experience.
March 18, 2008
Jessica sent me on my trip with this one mostly because there was a story about a girl who freelances as a decorative painter and I do that too and so it was befitting for me to read... It definitely expresses the depressing sentiments involved with the business! Or is it the depressing sentiments involved with the people who commission such business. Either way, perceptive story.
April 1, 2017
Eisenberg is a brilliant writer. Her short stories are peppered with lines that literally stop you, wherever you are on the page, and force you to go over them again and again to mine their rich imagery and layered meaning. Some of the stories lack momentum. But the imagery is intense, and there is rich food for thought in each and every story: what is memory? justice? love?
April 4, 2011
Gorgeous, evocative use of language, but reminds me why I seldom read short story collections. So often they seem written by people who can't come up with an ending for their elaborate plots. These ones almost literally end mid-sentence. The enjoyment does not outweigh the frustration for me. She hooks me, then...
July 26, 2008
I love Eisenberg! I never totally understand what's going on in her stories, but the mood is huge. And I like trying to figure out what's going on in the dialog. It takes a slow, patient reading, though.
December 8, 2010
I read the first two stories and decided not to finish the book. The stories created a mood of mystery, displacement and danger. They were well written, but these feelings are not the ones I am seeking in my reading.
January 22, 2008
i didn't understand these stories at all. one star, but maybe more learned readers would like it? i have an English degree, but these tales were beyond me...
Want to read
August 18, 2008This was recommended to me yesterday as a masterful collection of short stories; I'm looking forward to reading it.
August 9, 2010
Very memorable short stories.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 35 reviews