What do you think?
Rate this book
Once
Rebecca Rosenblum's Once is a fiercely original and assured debut, a collection of sixteen stories portraying the constricted and confused lives of the rootless twenty-somethings -- students, office techies, waitresses, warehouse labourers, street hustlers -- who inhabit them. These are stories grounded in the all-too-real comedy and tragedy of jobs and friendships and romances, books and buses and bodies.
210 pages, Paperback
First published September 1, 2001
1 person is currently reading
51 people want to read
About the author
Rebecca Rosenblum
11 books65 followersRebecca Rosenblum’s fiction has been short-listed for the Journey Prize, the National Magazine Award, the Amazon First Novel Award and the Trillium Award. Her collection, Once, won the Metcalf-Rooke Award and was one of Quill and Quire’s 15 Books That Mattered in 2008. her first novel So Much Love has been translated into French and Polish. Rebecca lives, works, and writes in Toronto.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
March 10, 2016
Uh, I wrote it!
August 31, 2011
I loved these stories. I waffled between giving the book a four star and a five star review. So, if out of ten, this would be a nine star review.
The more I read this book, the more eager I became to do this review. I sometimes look at a book of stories as something like a cookbook. You know that not all of the recipes will appeal to you, but if you can find a few really good ones, you'll consider the book a good investment. This book is a such a great investment. Each of Rosenblum's stories stands on its own as a well crafted piece - each one more than worth the price of the book, more than worth your time to read it. But I also loved how these stories were interconnected, sometimes obviously and sometimes subtly, so that as I read, the world in which the characters lived became just that more authentic, remarkable and complete.
You need to discover these stories for yourself. I expect that you will find much more and much else in which to delight than I can ever present here. But here is what delighted me:
First of all, the cover of my copy of the book is not the cover that is shown here. My cover is the cover image by Marta Chudolinska from the graphic novel "Back and Forth" a black and white drawing of people on a bus. Lonely people. When I read the first few stories in Once, I decided this was the perfect cover. Most of the characters in Rosenbum's stories are young (twenty-ish) but lonely people just trying to get somewhere. They don't have cars; they rely on the TTC. The TTC is clearly not very efficient or "user friendly". In fact, the TTC seems to be an unpleasant and aggravating impediment to actually helping anyone get where they are going any time soon. As an aside, I had people visiting me from Toronto this weekend and I asked them if the TTC was really as bad Rosenblum had described it (my own limited experience with it on vacation having been rather pleasant in a holiday adventure sort of way). My visitors responded "Yes! It is that bad and there's no use complaining." Oh. Great cover then!
But having now read Once, while still loving the bus cover (It is perfect.), it occurred to me that if it was me in charge of coming up with a cover, I might pick this image.*
The photograph is of Loki, a fledgling peregrine falcon hatched in downtown Winnipeg atop a city skyscraper. Peregrines are a threatened species, but they have adapted to urban landscapes, ledges of skyscrapers being much like cliffs in the countryside. And there's lots of available prey in the modern city - pigeons and seagulls, notably. Loki's probably about 40 days old here. He has shed his downy-white baby chick fluff (although you can still see a bit of it on top of his head). Looking skyward, he will soon lift off, get out into that great big world beyond his nest ledge, assert his independence from his parents. In short, he wants to fly. In reality, it's not a simply a case of his wanting, he has been hard-wired to do so. He *will* take off from the nest ledge but his success in the big world (which immediately involves avoiding collision with skyscrapers in his airway and the traffic below)will depend on a lot of things. He has been exercising his wings in the nest for weeks, his parents have fed him non-stop since he hatched. He has watched his parents and perhaps his brothers successfully take off and land. If he has been reluctant to leave, his devoted parents have lured him with food drops away from the nest. Will he be strong enough, smart enough, and lucky enough to rise and soar above those things beyond his control: the weather, the rain and wind and air currents; the brick and glass and concrete surrounding him and the hurtling traffic below?
Rosenblum's characters are this peregrine falcon. They are fledglings. They have launched. They've adapted to urban life. They are doing what young adults are supposed to do, are expected to do. They're working and looking for love. But, they really want to fly!
There are no actual peregrine falcons in the Once stories, but there are pigeons, cardinals, swans, cranes, a hawk, a goose, a puffin. Characters squawk, twitter, cackle and pluck. They eat chicken primavera, chicken supreme, chicken fingers, gummy worms, egg-shaped plums and "two lonely eyes of eggs".
Rosenblum's bird imagery is truly magical. I was enchanted in "Route 99" with:
"Inside there was a waitress perched in the kitchen pass-through with a big stack of napkins in her lap. She was carefully folding them into swans. A row of perfect birds swam next to her on the counter." How lovely!
I was totally charmed when the napkins became paper cranes in "Linh Lai" and the "customers squawk happily over the white birds".
In "Blood Ties" I was blown away by the perfection of the narrator's description of her sudden fury at her father thusly: "It was like tossing breadcrumbs to pigeons, just one crumb of agitation brought a fluttering flock of rage."
I loved how the skateboarders would glide into most of the stories and my perception that the characters in the stories just wanted to fly was brought home by the Vietnamese waitress in "Linh Lai" who when watching a ninja movie, "feels her feet twitch again, and runs to the middle of the room, leaps up, kicks out, whirling around and around,four times before landing." But what Linh Lai really wants to do is ride the skate board. When she gets the chance, "She feels each bit of gravel under the wheels, the cool fall wind and exhaust on her skin....She bends her knees and feels her weight steady as she flies forward, a wonderful wordless feeling of on on on."
But just as with the peregrine falcon, the success of Rosenbaum's characters to fly depends on a lot of things. In "Massacre Day", I know it's not going to be a good day for Teyla, when she opens her eyes to a "pigeon shitted window". And I am so sad when she ends it, "panting drunk on the coffee table, the windows birdshit and black night and she couldn't shut the drapes because David took them. Everything in her life was because of something or someone that wasn't." Some people, like peregrines, simply crash.
There were times that Rosenblum's writing reminded me of others of my favourite books. "Wall of Sound" brought to mind the symphony of birdsong in Jim Lynch's Border Songs. The fishy "Steal Me" delighted my imagination in the same way that Nicolas Dickner's fluorescent chimera of plankton about a street light did in Nikolski. But if Rosenblum's writing sometimes reminded me of the writing of others, her voice is uniquely and beautifully her own. I look forward to hearing it again.
*Photograph of Peregrine falcon fledgling used with the kind permission of Dennis Swayze at photosbydennis.
The more I read this book, the more eager I became to do this review. I sometimes look at a book of stories as something like a cookbook. You know that not all of the recipes will appeal to you, but if you can find a few really good ones, you'll consider the book a good investment. This book is a such a great investment. Each of Rosenblum's stories stands on its own as a well crafted piece - each one more than worth the price of the book, more than worth your time to read it. But I also loved how these stories were interconnected, sometimes obviously and sometimes subtly, so that as I read, the world in which the characters lived became just that more authentic, remarkable and complete.
You need to discover these stories for yourself. I expect that you will find much more and much else in which to delight than I can ever present here. But here is what delighted me:
First of all, the cover of my copy of the book is not the cover that is shown here. My cover is the cover image by Marta Chudolinska from the graphic novel "Back and Forth" a black and white drawing of people on a bus. Lonely people. When I read the first few stories in Once, I decided this was the perfect cover. Most of the characters in Rosenbum's stories are young (twenty-ish) but lonely people just trying to get somewhere. They don't have cars; they rely on the TTC. The TTC is clearly not very efficient or "user friendly". In fact, the TTC seems to be an unpleasant and aggravating impediment to actually helping anyone get where they are going any time soon. As an aside, I had people visiting me from Toronto this weekend and I asked them if the TTC was really as bad Rosenblum had described it (my own limited experience with it on vacation having been rather pleasant in a holiday adventure sort of way). My visitors responded "Yes! It is that bad and there's no use complaining." Oh. Great cover then!
But having now read Once, while still loving the bus cover (It is perfect.), it occurred to me that if it was me in charge of coming up with a cover, I might pick this image.*
The photograph is of Loki, a fledgling peregrine falcon hatched in downtown Winnipeg atop a city skyscraper. Peregrines are a threatened species, but they have adapted to urban landscapes, ledges of skyscrapers being much like cliffs in the countryside. And there's lots of available prey in the modern city - pigeons and seagulls, notably. Loki's probably about 40 days old here. He has shed his downy-white baby chick fluff (although you can still see a bit of it on top of his head). Looking skyward, he will soon lift off, get out into that great big world beyond his nest ledge, assert his independence from his parents. In short, he wants to fly. In reality, it's not a simply a case of his wanting, he has been hard-wired to do so. He *will* take off from the nest ledge but his success in the big world (which immediately involves avoiding collision with skyscrapers in his airway and the traffic below)will depend on a lot of things. He has been exercising his wings in the nest for weeks, his parents have fed him non-stop since he hatched. He has watched his parents and perhaps his brothers successfully take off and land. If he has been reluctant to leave, his devoted parents have lured him with food drops away from the nest. Will he be strong enough, smart enough, and lucky enough to rise and soar above those things beyond his control: the weather, the rain and wind and air currents; the brick and glass and concrete surrounding him and the hurtling traffic below?
Rosenblum's characters are this peregrine falcon. They are fledglings. They have launched. They've adapted to urban life. They are doing what young adults are supposed to do, are expected to do. They're working and looking for love. But, they really want to fly!
There are no actual peregrine falcons in the Once stories, but there are pigeons, cardinals, swans, cranes, a hawk, a goose, a puffin. Characters squawk, twitter, cackle and pluck. They eat chicken primavera, chicken supreme, chicken fingers, gummy worms, egg-shaped plums and "two lonely eyes of eggs".
Rosenblum's bird imagery is truly magical. I was enchanted in "Route 99" with:
"Inside there was a waitress perched in the kitchen pass-through with a big stack of napkins in her lap. She was carefully folding them into swans. A row of perfect birds swam next to her on the counter." How lovely!
I was totally charmed when the napkins became paper cranes in "Linh Lai" and the "customers squawk happily over the white birds".
In "Blood Ties" I was blown away by the perfection of the narrator's description of her sudden fury at her father thusly: "It was like tossing breadcrumbs to pigeons, just one crumb of agitation brought a fluttering flock of rage."
I loved how the skateboarders would glide into most of the stories and my perception that the characters in the stories just wanted to fly was brought home by the Vietnamese waitress in "Linh Lai" who when watching a ninja movie, "feels her feet twitch again, and runs to the middle of the room, leaps up, kicks out, whirling around and around,four times before landing." But what Linh Lai really wants to do is ride the skate board. When she gets the chance, "She feels each bit of gravel under the wheels, the cool fall wind and exhaust on her skin....She bends her knees and feels her weight steady as she flies forward, a wonderful wordless feeling of on on on."
But just as with the peregrine falcon, the success of Rosenbaum's characters to fly depends on a lot of things. In "Massacre Day", I know it's not going to be a good day for Teyla, when she opens her eyes to a "pigeon shitted window". And I am so sad when she ends it, "panting drunk on the coffee table, the windows birdshit and black night and she couldn't shut the drapes because David took them. Everything in her life was because of something or someone that wasn't." Some people, like peregrines, simply crash.
There were times that Rosenblum's writing reminded me of others of my favourite books. "Wall of Sound" brought to mind the symphony of birdsong in Jim Lynch's Border Songs. The fishy "Steal Me" delighted my imagination in the same way that Nicolas Dickner's fluorescent chimera of plankton about a street light did in Nikolski. But if Rosenblum's writing sometimes reminded me of the writing of others, her voice is uniquely and beautifully her own. I look forward to hearing it again.
*Photograph of Peregrine falcon fledgling used with the kind permission of Dennis Swayze at photosbydennis.
February 26, 2022
I really just don't have any interest in finishing this book. The first couple stories were okay but it feels like it gets less and less interesting the more I read so, DNF.
March 11, 2016
RR's collection of stories is a loosely linked glimpse into the lives of young people, sometimes on the fringe of 'society' (whatever that is), or on the fringe of their own lives. Her style is impeccably crafted, sifting through the thoughts, impressions, and fleeting half-emotions of her protagonists with a focus that is enviable. One of the blurbs on the back compares these stories to those of Alice Munro and afterwards, I thought that it was an apt comparison except that Munro's stories always seem very small town-ish or rural, even when they're not, and RR's stories are very urban, very youthful, and very now. It's the balance between the contemporary urbanity of them and the Munro-like studied and gradual unraveling meditative aspect that gives RR her unique voice.
And... she has really killer ending lines:
"I guess I've believed in Roxy more than I thought. I guess I am a little heartbroken."
***
"I knew this could be, must be, the world as Marley saw it."
***
"From a distance, whoever wound up leaving would look pretty much the same."
And... she has really killer ending lines:
"I guess I've believed in Roxy more than I thought. I guess I am a little heartbroken."
***
"I knew this could be, must be, the world as Marley saw it."
***
"From a distance, whoever wound up leaving would look pretty much the same."
April 9, 2015
A surprising collection of short fiction, fresh and contemporary. Rosenblum's characters are mostly in their twenties, rootless and groping blindly through lives that don't seem to be leading them anywhere. Some have jobs, but mostly these are dead-end and menial. These are not people accustomed to luck or luxury. Life is tough, their clothes are thin, and they feel the cold when the wind blows. The rewards they find are in the small things: a quick taste of Vietnamese beef stew, the light falling through leaves, the reassuring warmth of an old sweater. We connect with them emotionally because we have all known what it's like to wake up in the morning and have no idea what the day will bring. A fine book by a promising young writer. A finalist for the Danuta Gleed Award.
March 9, 2012
I can't remember where I heard about this one... I enjoyed the first few stories quite a bit but then lost steam once I started reading other books as well. I find this sometimes with short story collections. It happens more rarely with novels, but it likely speaks more to my attention span than anything (story is done - time for a new book! Oh, there are more stories...).
August 25, 2009
Unalloyed genius.
September 26, 2011
Such a wonderful debut collection of stories. Rebecca Rosenblum is all at once self-assured and tentative, harsh and tender. A captivating look at human relationships.
March 10, 2009
blue, non-sequitur, and abrupt
July 26, 2011
Rebecca Rosenblum is a brilliant new talent who deserves a wide readership!
July 8, 2013
This months Reading Resolution Challenge selection.
December 15, 2014
Picks up speed.
Entertaining.
Entertaining.
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews