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Always Happy Hour: Erzählungen
Sie sind gierig nach romantischen Gefühlen, aber gefangen in Zeiten pornografischer Abgeklärtheit. Sie haben keine Ahnung, was sie mit ihrem Leben anstellen sollen, und sorgen sich um ihr Gewicht und wie sie in weißen Bikinis aussehen. Sie treffen ständig schlechte Entscheidungen und sind sich selbst ihr schlimmster Feind. Die orientierungslosen jungen Frauen in "Always Happy Hour" verbringen ihre besten Jahre in Shopping Malls, Drogerien, Karaoke-Bars und Fast-Food-Restaurants, wo sie zu viel Alkohol trinken und komplizierte Gespräche über Essen führen. So damit beschäftigt, irgendwelchen Männern zu gefallen, merken sie gar nicht, wie egal ihnen diese Männer eigentlich sind. Mary Miller beschreibt eine atemlose Gegenwart, die keine Zukunft kennt.
192 pages, Hardcover
First published January 10, 2017
98 people are currently reading
3625 people want to read
About the author
Mary Miller
14 books420 followersBiloxi, Always Happy Hour, The Last Days of California, Big World
Stories in Paris Review, McSweeney's Quarterly, American Short Fiction, New Stories from the South, Oxford American, Mid-American Review, Ninth Letter, Indiana Review, and Mississippi Review.
Nonfiction in the NYTBR, American Book Review, The Rumpus, and The Writer.
Stories in Paris Review, McSweeney's Quarterly, American Short Fiction, New Stories from the South, Oxford American, Mid-American Review, Ninth Letter, Indiana Review, and Mississippi Review.
Nonfiction in the NYTBR, American Book Review, The Rumpus, and The Writer.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 242 reviews
February 7, 2017
3.5 the stories in this collection explore the unsatisfying relationships and friendships in which the women are involved. They all want love, in more than one story the woman laments that though she listens and asks questions of her boyfriend, he seems to have little interest in her own feelings, thoughts. They come from different walks of life, some in college, even a few teachers but they all seem to make bad choices. Some stand in their own way, using drugs, alcohol to try to come to terms with their relationship. Many envision a different future but are instead stagnating in their current relationship.
One story I enjoyed featured a young woman and her boyfriend taking a cruise with his parents. She get seasick, feels horrible but still does what her boyfriends asks, sexually, just to keep him out of the casino and away from other women. Another story, First Class, shows a woman on vacation with her now wealthy friend, said friend having won the lottery. They don't get along and the woman wonders why her friend doesn't spend more money on her, at the same time wondering why she still goes on these uncomfortable vacations.
Like my friend Esil my favorite story was Big, Bad, Love and show a woman working at a shelter for abused children, choosing one child and hoping that in the future the child will realize that someone once loved her. I debated whether to go up or down in my rating, but there were a few stories that just seemed to drop off into nothing, and one I couldn't make heads or tails of. Still, a good collection, solid writing and a recurring theme, some of these women I just wanted to shake and tell them to make better decisions. So, on the whole I thought these were well worth reading, but at a time when short stories have made a resurgence in popularity I have read better.
ARC from publisher.
One story I enjoyed featured a young woman and her boyfriend taking a cruise with his parents. She get seasick, feels horrible but still does what her boyfriends asks, sexually, just to keep him out of the casino and away from other women. Another story, First Class, shows a woman on vacation with her now wealthy friend, said friend having won the lottery. They don't get along and the woman wonders why her friend doesn't spend more money on her, at the same time wondering why she still goes on these uncomfortable vacations.
Like my friend Esil my favorite story was Big, Bad, Love and show a woman working at a shelter for abused children, choosing one child and hoping that in the future the child will realize that someone once loved her. I debated whether to go up or down in my rating, but there were a few stories that just seemed to drop off into nothing, and one I couldn't make heads or tails of. Still, a good collection, solid writing and a recurring theme, some of these women I just wanted to shake and tell them to make better decisions. So, on the whole I thought these were well worth reading, but at a time when short stories have made a resurgence in popularity I have read better.
ARC from publisher.
December 4, 2016
Mary Miller never disappoints. These are strong stories. It's all kind of grim and depressing, the world of these stories. Lots of absurd, fairly gross men. Lots of women who eat terribly but are also preoccupied with fat people which is funny and sad at the same time. The best story is Big Bad Love.
December 19, 2016
3+ stars. I wish I had liked Always Happy Hour more than I did, but as the stories progressed I started to feel like I was reading about the same character transposed from one similar situation to another. Mary Miller is a really skilled writer. And she had me excited and eager with the first few stories. But then I started to feel like I was reading variations on a theme, and the theme started to grate on me. Almost all the stories in the collection are written from the perspective of young women in somewhat dependent relationships with men -- sometimes with female friends or sisters. The stories meticulously recount slices of time, exploring the nuances and bleakness of each relationship. The protagonists often exhibit a fair amount of self disdain and they put up with pretty unappealing boyfriends/husbands/friends. After a while, I lost sight of the skill, and just felt like it was time to part company with these unlikable people. The exception to this pattern was Big Bad Love, a story about a woman who works with children needing temporary shelter -- Miller's unsentimental but sensitive touch was brilliant in this story. As I say, Miller is very skilled but I would have been satisfied with fewer stories or more variety in the themes -- reading a whole collection mostly focused on similar bleak situations felt like too much for me. I will note that I love the cover. Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for an opportunity to read an advance copy.
February 4, 2017
When I'm East Coast-bound again following one of my rare pilgrimages back to my Midwestern land of birth, a relative always "packs me a lunch," aka cleans out unwanted items from her Costco-fortified cupboards, for my 8-to-13-hour journey back (depending on Factors). This most recent trip, one of the "food" items she dispatched along with me was a kind of "cheese" snack chip/cracker whose name emphasized errant consonants in lieu of either vowels or the correct consonants and whose ingredients warranted abbreviation. Now, I don't normally eat things like this, but wasting food, even if it is "food," is a huge pet peeve of mine, grounded in a childhood where food was sometimes scarce and, when I had it, was often of the random-consonant-laden, extremely shelf-stable sort, and I seem to have survived just fine, so I really can't go getting all uppity about it now.
So, I ate the "cheese" snack, first with curiosity, and then with increasingly unhinged alacrity, because I'm pretty sure those abbreviation-prone ingredients also have highly addictive properties, especially to the untrained palate, and it was all a novel, nostalgic adventure - until it was all too much of the same and things caught up with me: my taste buds were obliterated, and I was left feeling kind of sick rather than sated. This is sort of -- sort of -- how I felt reading Always Happy Hour. I certainly admire the conceptual project of portraying marginalized women, and the author no doubt has talent. But these stories were, one after another, more of the same until I'd absolutely had my fill and could barely bring myself to finish the bag, I mean box, I mean book. If I'd sampled one or two of the stories in various journals, I'd probably think the author was pretty intriguing. But read in succession, these stories and their protagonists blended into a desensitizing uniform mass, a sad glut of emptiness that I consumed until I felt fatigue, dehydration, and hypertension.
Every story, and its narrator-protagonist, had exactly the same voice. Thinking back upon the read, the stories and characters seem absolutely indistinguishable. The protagonists by and large seem to be young, conventionally attractive, lower middle class white women. Some of these protagonists make passing and uncontextualized references to being in grad school (and seemingly want the reader to accept that grad school student poverty is the same as poverty-poverty: it is not), some seem more drifting, most revel in how they look good in florid bikinis, all seem willfully unwise in matters of love, all seemingly resort to the same "I'm so lost" trope of uncapping a beer and sitting on their kitchen counters or roofs and staring off into the middle distance. (You will not read another book where kitchen counter sitting is so fetishized an existential symbol.) Each main character was so alike that it honestly got to the point where I started wondering if it was deliberate, and if these were interconnected stories all starring the same lost young person, and I even started trying to assemble clues and timelines to see if this hypothesis was supportable, but it didn't stack up and it turned out I was just grasping at straws and trying to salvage something that really bothered me about the book and twist it into some kind of bold experiment.
Admittedly, the uniformity of the stories, and their protagonists, bothered me more than it might bother most. For about five years, I've worked at a social services agency providing various supports to women in the community who have been in some way disenfranchised or oppressed. I've heard countless, countless stories over the years from women in hardship, and while I might identify many common themes across these stories and apply many common adjectives to them, one adjective I'd never apply is "similar," much less "same." Every story, every woman, every situation, every voice is so complex, complicated, unique, nuanced, multifaceted. Even when I'm hearing one horrific thing after another, the differences across these stories and people is the one thing I can count on. So to see struggling or suffering women - or rather, woman - portrayed in the homogenized way Always Happy Hour offered seemed to me rather minimizing, perhaps demeaning, and maybe a bit appropriating, or at worst, merely voyeuristic.
Nonetheless, all that being said, I likewise dislike the idea of deterring readers from at least sampling these stories. My suggestion, therefore - and one I hope will help compensate for this ambivalent review - is that interested readers should buy, not borrow, this book and nibble a story at a time over a period of months in order to preserve the freshness of each. And of course, between stories, one should uncap a beer, hop up onto the kitchen counter, and stare into the middle distance kicking your legs until the memory of that story fades and you're ready to begin again.
So, I ate the "cheese" snack, first with curiosity, and then with increasingly unhinged alacrity, because I'm pretty sure those abbreviation-prone ingredients also have highly addictive properties, especially to the untrained palate, and it was all a novel, nostalgic adventure - until it was all too much of the same and things caught up with me: my taste buds were obliterated, and I was left feeling kind of sick rather than sated. This is sort of -- sort of -- how I felt reading Always Happy Hour. I certainly admire the conceptual project of portraying marginalized women, and the author no doubt has talent. But these stories were, one after another, more of the same until I'd absolutely had my fill and could barely bring myself to finish the bag, I mean box, I mean book. If I'd sampled one or two of the stories in various journals, I'd probably think the author was pretty intriguing. But read in succession, these stories and their protagonists blended into a desensitizing uniform mass, a sad glut of emptiness that I consumed until I felt fatigue, dehydration, and hypertension.
Every story, and its narrator-protagonist, had exactly the same voice. Thinking back upon the read, the stories and characters seem absolutely indistinguishable. The protagonists by and large seem to be young, conventionally attractive, lower middle class white women. Some of these protagonists make passing and uncontextualized references to being in grad school (and seemingly want the reader to accept that grad school student poverty is the same as poverty-poverty: it is not), some seem more drifting, most revel in how they look good in florid bikinis, all seem willfully unwise in matters of love, all seemingly resort to the same "I'm so lost" trope of uncapping a beer and sitting on their kitchen counters or roofs and staring off into the middle distance. (You will not read another book where kitchen counter sitting is so fetishized an existential symbol.) Each main character was so alike that it honestly got to the point where I started wondering if it was deliberate, and if these were interconnected stories all starring the same lost young person, and I even started trying to assemble clues and timelines to see if this hypothesis was supportable, but it didn't stack up and it turned out I was just grasping at straws and trying to salvage something that really bothered me about the book and twist it into some kind of bold experiment.
Admittedly, the uniformity of the stories, and their protagonists, bothered me more than it might bother most. For about five years, I've worked at a social services agency providing various supports to women in the community who have been in some way disenfranchised or oppressed. I've heard countless, countless stories over the years from women in hardship, and while I might identify many common themes across these stories and apply many common adjectives to them, one adjective I'd never apply is "similar," much less "same." Every story, every woman, every situation, every voice is so complex, complicated, unique, nuanced, multifaceted. Even when I'm hearing one horrific thing after another, the differences across these stories and people is the one thing I can count on. So to see struggling or suffering women - or rather, woman - portrayed in the homogenized way Always Happy Hour offered seemed to me rather minimizing, perhaps demeaning, and maybe a bit appropriating, or at worst, merely voyeuristic.
Nonetheless, all that being said, I likewise dislike the idea of deterring readers from at least sampling these stories. My suggestion, therefore - and one I hope will help compensate for this ambivalent review - is that interested readers should buy, not borrow, this book and nibble a story at a time over a period of months in order to preserve the freshness of each. And of course, between stories, one should uncap a beer, hop up onto the kitchen counter, and stare into the middle distance kicking your legs until the memory of that story fades and you're ready to begin again.
July 28, 2016
It's true that Mary is a dear friend of mine, but even if she were my sworn enemy I could not deny the brilliance of her work, the pure magic of her voice, the masterful prose she produces. Here is a collection where every story is a fucking home-run. To tell you the highlights would be to reproduce the table of contents in its entirety.
I know no other writer who captures the fundamental contradictions of the self like Mary. Take, for example, this passage from the opening story, "Instructions":
"She decided a long time ago she didn’t want to be a careful person, that she didn’t want to live her life constantly worrying about what other people thought of her. Of course she does worry, she does nothing but worry, and all her lack of care amounts to is that she offends people constantly and tests them with her inappropriateness and expects them to love her for it."
I hope to be reading Mary Miller for decades.
I know no other writer who captures the fundamental contradictions of the self like Mary. Take, for example, this passage from the opening story, "Instructions":
"She decided a long time ago she didn’t want to be a careful person, that she didn’t want to live her life constantly worrying about what other people thought of her. Of course she does worry, she does nothing but worry, and all her lack of care amounts to is that she offends people constantly and tests them with her inappropriateness and expects them to love her for it."
I hope to be reading Mary Miller for decades.
February 26, 2017
Loved this book. Normally, I don't go for short stories, but the writing was just so authentic and the stories felt so real. As a man who has lived with the same woman the last 26 years, I felt like a curtain was raised on the many different paths life can take a person. I know most books do that, this one just did it so convincingly.
February 5, 2017
“Always Happy Hour” is a book of short stories, each one starring a dysfunctional adult woman. In fact, to me, it seemed it was the same woman. Author Mary Miller used the same voice for each of her stories. At first, I thought it was the same woman in a different relationship. I reread the book jacket, and it is NOT about the same woman. Maybe because Miller used the same voice for all her characters, it was an easy read for me. I tend to struggle a bit with short stories at times, and this book was easy to read, although frustrating in that the main characters are ones you want to slap and say “get a hold of yourself!” Each story has a character that is flawed in a special way. Each seems to tell themselves that they are doing the best that they can. Only in one story, “Where All of The Beautiful People Go” does the main character contemplate: :I could do better, it’s completely within my ability…but we allow ourselves to neglect the most important things as we tell ourselves we’re doing our best.”
It’s an easy read, but I can’t say I’d recommend it highly. It’s interesting, yet there are better short story novels out there.
It’s an easy read, but I can’t say I’d recommend it highly. It’s interesting, yet there are better short story novels out there.
September 25, 2016
Positively wonderful!
I wanted every short story to continue; but then I thought, that might be dangerous. Maybe they all end at the point they should end, for the characters' sake. All the main characters are quirky young woman, who you want to jump in and save from themselves, or in some cases join them. Let's run away together, the heck with what's his name. Who needs his grief! Such fun. It's sort of like, invent your own ending. Really excellent writing. Highly recommend!
Thank you Netgalley.
I wanted every short story to continue; but then I thought, that might be dangerous. Maybe they all end at the point they should end, for the characters' sake. All the main characters are quirky young woman, who you want to jump in and save from themselves, or in some cases join them. Let's run away together, the heck with what's his name. Who needs his grief! Such fun. It's sort of like, invent your own ending. Really excellent writing. Highly recommend!
Thank you Netgalley.
October 19, 2021
In a period after writing two big novels, I really wanted to think about short stories again, and I approached a former student, short story writer Olivia Clare Friedman (Disasters in the First World) to name a couple of contemporary collections she thought were truly fine. My only requirement was that they be stories about real people -- no supernatural stuff, no metafiction. She immediately recommended Always Happy Hour by Mary Miller and MAN was that a great tip. These are people no better than they have to be, young women lost on the moral compass, scrabbling for a foothold. Always the urge to connect, even when they feel unworthy or unlikely to get what they want. And often very very funny. This collection sticks with me and is probably one of the ten collections I will reread forever. Always fresh. It was also great on audio--I took it on a road trip with me and loved it all over again.
Read
August 19, 2022I was able to read an advance copy of Mary Miller's Always Happy Hour through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
In the last month or so I've read four collections of short stories by women. In all, including Miller's forthcoming collection, the same themes emerged--identity, relationships, sex, and independence. The thing that sets Miller's collection apart is the emotional and experiential range in the stories. Like the others I've read recently Miller writes excellent prose and draws vivid characters. But she also offers the reader stories with varying textures and tones. Some stories pack a gut punch, others are lighter. All are compulsively readable. Overall Always Happy Hour is a notable collection to watch for in 2017.
In the last month or so I've read four collections of short stories by women. In all, including Miller's forthcoming collection, the same themes emerged--identity, relationships, sex, and independence. The thing that sets Miller's collection apart is the emotional and experiential range in the stories. Like the others I've read recently Miller writes excellent prose and draws vivid characters. But she also offers the reader stories with varying textures and tones. Some stories pack a gut punch, others are lighter. All are compulsively readable. Overall Always Happy Hour is a notable collection to watch for in 2017.
August 31, 2016
“She thinks about the things that have hurt her and she thinks about beauty and how little of it she sees in even beautiful things. She wonders if people who’ve been hurt more see more beauty. She wonders how a few strung-together words can seem so meaningful when she doesn’t believe them at all.”
She could be me, or you, or any woman we know. I love the writing in each of these heavy and sometimes disturbing stories. They are gritty, stones in the soul! Miller says so much in the actions and situations each character finds herself living. Most people who read my reviews know I am not the biggest aficionado of short stories but over the past two years, that is changing. Mary Miller had me so absorbed that I was up late finishing them and the next morning trying to shake them off. Speaking of shaking off, this small excerpt is beautifully true. “When you grow up poor, even if you do everything thereafter to be not-poor, there’s no way to shake it completely.” Loaded with meaning, just delicious. I felt like Miller was in my own thoughts, cynical and otherwise. I can’t continue inserting all the sentences I highlighted, because then I would give the short stories away- but my God how she nails it! Not all women get the princess treatment, most aren’t born under lucky stars with indiscriminate beauty bestowed upon them. They take what they can get in life, sometimes scraps. Going through the motions, giving people what they want, even if it leaves a girl lacking.
I won’t break down each story, but they are from all walks of life. I particularly enjoyed the story At One Time This Was The Longest Covered Walkway In The World, because the woman dating the divorced father comes off at times disinterested in his little boy and then adoring him. Walking into a broken situation with exes, well… she sometimes seems selfish and other times what she feels makes perfect sense. It’s a sort of half love, isn’t it? Someone comes into ready made families and hasn’t had time to adjust to the splits that happen in the heart when children are born. There is no longer room for undivided attention for new lovers.
Big Bad Love kept chewing on my heart. This isn’t a sweet version of orphans or children with messed up parents looking like that puppy in the window, all sweet and sloppy with happy love for anyone who will take them. These kids have seen things. The interactions between Diamond and her caretaker made me laugh and ache. “Diamond is preoccupied with ugly. She wants to know if she’s ugly, if I’m ugly, if the baby full of scars and fungus is ugly. I tell her we are all beautiful. I tell her we are children of God.” It’s so easy to not think about the reality of other people. This story hurt the most, just imagining what life must be like for children that didn’t have the things they should, the love and care and the people who step in to help that have their hearts broken again and again in investing in all of them. The endless stream of suffering, the horror that there is always another broken child out there to replace the one you just set back out into the brutal world.
There is so much depth if you pay attention, one could just sink. Gorgeous, it’s wonderful to find characters that have bitter thoughts here and there, that gather the courage to live whatever hand they’ve been dealt, that go on and hope regardless of how the world has soured them. Loved it.
Publication Date: January 10, 2017
W.W. Norton & Company
Liveright
(https://bookstalkerblog.wordpress.com/) my blog
She could be me, or you, or any woman we know. I love the writing in each of these heavy and sometimes disturbing stories. They are gritty, stones in the soul! Miller says so much in the actions and situations each character finds herself living. Most people who read my reviews know I am not the biggest aficionado of short stories but over the past two years, that is changing. Mary Miller had me so absorbed that I was up late finishing them and the next morning trying to shake them off. Speaking of shaking off, this small excerpt is beautifully true. “When you grow up poor, even if you do everything thereafter to be not-poor, there’s no way to shake it completely.” Loaded with meaning, just delicious. I felt like Miller was in my own thoughts, cynical and otherwise. I can’t continue inserting all the sentences I highlighted, because then I would give the short stories away- but my God how she nails it! Not all women get the princess treatment, most aren’t born under lucky stars with indiscriminate beauty bestowed upon them. They take what they can get in life, sometimes scraps. Going through the motions, giving people what they want, even if it leaves a girl lacking.
I won’t break down each story, but they are from all walks of life. I particularly enjoyed the story At One Time This Was The Longest Covered Walkway In The World, because the woman dating the divorced father comes off at times disinterested in his little boy and then adoring him. Walking into a broken situation with exes, well… she sometimes seems selfish and other times what she feels makes perfect sense. It’s a sort of half love, isn’t it? Someone comes into ready made families and hasn’t had time to adjust to the splits that happen in the heart when children are born. There is no longer room for undivided attention for new lovers.
Big Bad Love kept chewing on my heart. This isn’t a sweet version of orphans or children with messed up parents looking like that puppy in the window, all sweet and sloppy with happy love for anyone who will take them. These kids have seen things. The interactions between Diamond and her caretaker made me laugh and ache. “Diamond is preoccupied with ugly. She wants to know if she’s ugly, if I’m ugly, if the baby full of scars and fungus is ugly. I tell her we are all beautiful. I tell her we are children of God.” It’s so easy to not think about the reality of other people. This story hurt the most, just imagining what life must be like for children that didn’t have the things they should, the love and care and the people who step in to help that have their hearts broken again and again in investing in all of them. The endless stream of suffering, the horror that there is always another broken child out there to replace the one you just set back out into the brutal world.
There is so much depth if you pay attention, one could just sink. Gorgeous, it’s wonderful to find characters that have bitter thoughts here and there, that gather the courage to live whatever hand they’ve been dealt, that go on and hope regardless of how the world has soured them. Loved it.
Publication Date: January 10, 2017
W.W. Norton & Company
Liveright
(https://bookstalkerblog.wordpress.com/) my blog
February 10, 2017
Hi Nerds! Wow, this book is amazing. I was going to highlight all the parts I loved and lines I wanted to internalized and live by, but then I realized that I don't own a highlighter and that if I did most of the book would be highlighted, doing little to help me track down and re-read the lines I loved. Wow, what a shitty run-on sentence that last one was. Mary Miller would never write that clunky of a sentence. Anyway, Miller's writing is beautifully accurate. She finds depth in life's simple moments like no one else does. Stop reading this stupid post and go read this awesome story collection!
February 13, 2017
I certainly enjoyed this collection, comprising the emotional, sexual, and semi-professional plights and habits of young women (re: conventionally attractive, white twenty-somethings, ranging from middle to lower class) living in the South. Gritty and melancholy, aiming to capture the essence of being at the contradictory intersections of mid-life. I do agree with some reviews that peg these stories as coming across more as variations of a theme rather than as distinctive, separate pieces, a bothersome analysis that seemingly defeats the purpose of writing a collection of short stories anyway when it nearly reads more as a novel. My mental picture of each woman remained basically unchanged as I skirted story after story. What's more, each woman remains complacently blunted to her conditions surrounding unfulfilling male companions, poor drinking and eating habits, and dead-end productivity. They all wallow in this sense of inactivity, this uncomfortable stasis, this grinding malaise towards modern life. Probably on purpose, these women are painted as simultaneously sympathetic and insufferable. But Miller writes this soft malcontent honestly, which is really all we can ask of her, considering that quite a number of women can relate to this fatigued state of being.
September 28, 2016
Each of these stories has its own pulse. For anyone who's ever looked for love in all the wrong places, this shoebox full of beating hearts is for you.
February 5, 2017
This was fine? The stories get repetitive - you can easily imagine they're all about the same person, always drunk, always making bad choices.
January 11, 2018
Quando i racconti sono buoni, sono molto buoni.
Alcuni, pochi per fortuna, esasperano invece le qualità della narrativa di Mary Miller: troppo distanti e non partecipati.
Istruzioni ★
La casa di Main Street ★★★
Il giusto ordine ★★★★★
Un tempo questo era il passaggio coperto più lungo del mondo ★★★★
Un amore grande, grosso e cattivo ★★★★★
Verso l'alto
Sporca ★
Lui mi chiama fornetto ★★★★
La bella gente ★★★
Le mele dell'amore ★★★
Hamilton Pool ★
Happy Hour ★★★
Orsetto ★★★
Prima classe ★★★★
Tabelle ★★★★★
Il 37 ★★★★
Cit.
Alcuni, pochi per fortuna, esasperano invece le qualità della narrativa di Mary Miller: troppo distanti e non partecipati.
Istruzioni ★
La casa di Main Street ★★★
Il giusto ordine ★★★★★
Un tempo questo era il passaggio coperto più lungo del mondo ★★★★
Un amore grande, grosso e cattivo ★★★★★
Verso l'alto
Sporca ★
Lui mi chiama fornetto ★★★★
La bella gente ★★★
Le mele dell'amore ★★★
Hamilton Pool ★
Happy Hour ★★★
Orsetto ★★★
Prima classe ★★★★
Tabelle ★★★★★
Il 37 ★★★★
Cit.
July 18, 2019
Un libro a volte devi incontrarlo nel momento giusto e mi sa che io e questa raccolta di racconti ci siamo incontrati in quello sbagliato.
Mentre leggevo ho sottolineato un sacco di passaggi.
Per esempio:
Tengo lo sguardo fisso sul pavimento, fingendo concentrazione, e penso a cosa scrivevo io i primi tempi. Scrivevo proprio quello che non avrei dovuto scrivere e mi ci sono voluti anni per capire che una cosa era la verità, un’altra lo squallore travestito da verità. Ma sono cosa difficili da spiegare.
Quindi da qualche parte, qualcosa deve avermi colpito della scrittura di Mary Miller.
Il contesto mi ha distratto. Le cose in comune.
Le protagoniste sono tutte donne.
Bevono troppo. Tutte.
Frequentano gli uomini sbagliati. Tutte.
Sono intelligenti, ma non fanno scelte intelligenti e mandano tutto all’’aria. Tutte.
Sono intrappolate. Tutte.
E non si capisce perché non vogliano andarsene dalle loro vite. Farne qualcosa. Sono pigre? Spaventate? Sfigate? Non trovano chi dia loro una spinta? A un certo punto, da lettore, più che una spinta ti viene voglia di dare loro un calcio.
O forse sono io che avrei bisogno di un calcio. In questo momento sono intrappolata pure io e non mi schiodo.
Non mi piace l’idea che alla fine la situazione delle protagoniste resti agonica.
Anche la scrittura (succede in molti racconti nordamericani), di quelle dove sembra che non accada molto. Solo che se non sei Carver, a volte davvero poi non accade molto. O almeno penso.
Se non ho letto male, ma posso anche essermi sbagliata, sono racconti scritti nell’arco di 8 anni e un po’ si sente. Io sono per la coesione. Non per la monotonia.
Mi è sembrato tutto un po’ troppo sullo stesso tono.
Poi ovviamente io non sono a posto e sono davvero convinta che in un altro momento la lettura mi avrebbe fatto un altro effetto.
O forse no.
(Una settimana dopo ho letto Samantha Schweblin e mi ha fatto un altro effetto comunque).
Non faccio nemmeno la lista dei racconti col voto perché sarebbe per tutti lo stesso. Tre stelle, come la raccolta in generale.
Citazione:
Faranno le cose nell’ordine giusto e saranno felici. Me li vedo benissimo. Non mandare tutto a puttane, vorrei dirgli. Non sbagliare, perché quando inizi è un incubo smettere e poi arriva un momento in cui non sai più fare altro.
Mentre leggevo ho sottolineato un sacco di passaggi.
Per esempio:
Tengo lo sguardo fisso sul pavimento, fingendo concentrazione, e penso a cosa scrivevo io i primi tempi. Scrivevo proprio quello che non avrei dovuto scrivere e mi ci sono voluti anni per capire che una cosa era la verità, un’altra lo squallore travestito da verità. Ma sono cosa difficili da spiegare.
Quindi da qualche parte, qualcosa deve avermi colpito della scrittura di Mary Miller.
Il contesto mi ha distratto. Le cose in comune.
Le protagoniste sono tutte donne.
Bevono troppo. Tutte.
Frequentano gli uomini sbagliati. Tutte.
Sono intelligenti, ma non fanno scelte intelligenti e mandano tutto all’’aria. Tutte.
Sono intrappolate. Tutte.
E non si capisce perché non vogliano andarsene dalle loro vite. Farne qualcosa. Sono pigre? Spaventate? Sfigate? Non trovano chi dia loro una spinta? A un certo punto, da lettore, più che una spinta ti viene voglia di dare loro un calcio.
O forse sono io che avrei bisogno di un calcio. In questo momento sono intrappolata pure io e non mi schiodo.
Non mi piace l’idea che alla fine la situazione delle protagoniste resti agonica.
Anche la scrittura (succede in molti racconti nordamericani), di quelle dove sembra che non accada molto. Solo che se non sei Carver, a volte davvero poi non accade molto. O almeno penso.
Se non ho letto male, ma posso anche essermi sbagliata, sono racconti scritti nell’arco di 8 anni e un po’ si sente. Io sono per la coesione. Non per la monotonia.
Mi è sembrato tutto un po’ troppo sullo stesso tono.
Poi ovviamente io non sono a posto e sono davvero convinta che in un altro momento la lettura mi avrebbe fatto un altro effetto.
O forse no.
(Una settimana dopo ho letto Samantha Schweblin e mi ha fatto un altro effetto comunque).
Non faccio nemmeno la lista dei racconti col voto perché sarebbe per tutti lo stesso. Tre stelle, come la raccolta in generale.
Citazione:
Faranno le cose nell’ordine giusto e saranno felici. Me li vedo benissimo. Non mandare tutto a puttane, vorrei dirgli. Non sbagliare, perché quando inizi è un incubo smettere e poi arriva un momento in cui non sai più fare altro.
February 5, 2017
I had just read Difficult Women a few days before I read this collection. I think I would have liked it better if I had spaced the two books (or the publishers had). This collection deals with difficult women also, except they're all located in the state of Mississippi, and I think they're all white. As I felt with Difficult Women, the stories blurred into one, because their stories, at their core, didn't seem too different. It could be said that their problems were universal, but it doesn't make for great reading.
Difficult Women definitely hit more highs, I can remember several stories from that collection despite thinking that some of them were similar. The only story from this collection I remember with any clarity was Big Bad Love: the main character works at a temporary shelter for neglected and abused children. She gets close to a problem child and holds on to her hoping that one day in the future, the girl will remember having been loved. (I should also mention that this is the story that is very different from the rest of the bunch).
Difficult Women definitely hit more highs, I can remember several stories from that collection despite thinking that some of them were similar. The only story from this collection I remember with any clarity was Big Bad Love: the main character works at a temporary shelter for neglected and abused children. She gets close to a problem child and holds on to her hoping that one day in the future, the girl will remember having been loved. (I should also mention that this is the story that is very different from the rest of the bunch).
February 9, 2017
Mary's work is funny and sad at the same time. By the end of each story i was so deep in the head of her main character, well, it's like the time a moth flew in my ear. I tried grabbing it with my fingers, but it kept crawling deeper. I tried using tweezers, but it kept crawling deeper and deeper until it was doing the boot scootin boogie on my ear drum. Each tiny step, each flutter of its shiny, felt-like wings felt like the moth was becoming me, or I was becoming it. I was possessed. Then i went to the emergency room where the doctor gathered the nurses around and they all laughed at my tragedy while sucking out pieces of the moth with a little vacuum. It was funny and sad. Mary's stories are moths, but something way more beautiful. Mary's stories are butterflies.
January 17, 2022
This collection was so good and had me thinking a lot about the agency of the young women in each story. Whether they lacked agency to make better choices because of damaged pasts or distorted thinking about the present, the question of what it is to choose and how choices propel a life toward more happiness or further disappointment seemed central to these stories. That’s oversimplifying these beautifully written narratives, but for me, those questions were at the heart of this collection. Miller also captures voice and setting so incredibly well, and the language at the line level is seamless.
July 17, 2020
Some writers are just so good at PEOPLE. Mary is a strong, vulnerable, funny, and empathetic writer who makes every story seem like a true tale. Her refreshing willingness to show people in their warts-and-all glory is matched only by her keen eye for details. It's such a comfort to know that Mary Miller is alive and writing and I will read anything she publishes.
August 29, 2020
Miller writes wickedly good prose. Her stories are populated with the dissatisfied, the adrift, the quick, and the slow. There are no easy answers. This last is Miller's greatest and most enviable gift.
August 22, 2016
Miller has written a collection of short stories that centres on the how women perceive themselves and how they are perceived in the modern world.
Her writing is sharp, honest and poignant. You are allowed to journey with each of the protagonists through a short moment of time in their lives. The women in these stories are looking for personal meaning, family, love, freedom, redemption, security, an array of emotions are laid bare and dissected.
What I really enjoyed was the small snippets of information or moments that just rounded out and gave depth to the stories. There is this beautiful moment when a couple are sitting in the car and the awkwardness is captured by a simple line that ‘The basketball that’s been rolling around in his trunk is finally still.’ Throughout all of the stories Miller is able to create these wonderful insights into character and create a wonderful sense of place. You do feel that you could walk around their houses that you are sharing in their lives.
What I did feel as a reader was great difficulty in moving away from the stories when they ended. I wanted to stay, I wanted to explore and I wanted to know more about the characters. I really wanted to immerse myself in these wonderful ordinary lives that are rich in detail and full of vibrancy.
Miller is extremely gifted in making what would appear to be ordinary non-descript lives just lift off the page. They are wonderfully complex, dense with emotions and heaps of baggage. The urbane suburb living is shown in all its gritty harsh reality and sprinkled with liberal doses of sex, drugs and booze.
I really enjoyed this collection of stories and I love Miller’s style. A really good read and highly recommend. When this book comes out grab a copy and sit down for a really engaging confronting and wonderful read. Miller is a writer with a big future.
Her writing is sharp, honest and poignant. You are allowed to journey with each of the protagonists through a short moment of time in their lives. The women in these stories are looking for personal meaning, family, love, freedom, redemption, security, an array of emotions are laid bare and dissected.
What I really enjoyed was the small snippets of information or moments that just rounded out and gave depth to the stories. There is this beautiful moment when a couple are sitting in the car and the awkwardness is captured by a simple line that ‘The basketball that’s been rolling around in his trunk is finally still.’ Throughout all of the stories Miller is able to create these wonderful insights into character and create a wonderful sense of place. You do feel that you could walk around their houses that you are sharing in their lives.
What I did feel as a reader was great difficulty in moving away from the stories when they ended. I wanted to stay, I wanted to explore and I wanted to know more about the characters. I really wanted to immerse myself in these wonderful ordinary lives that are rich in detail and full of vibrancy.
Miller is extremely gifted in making what would appear to be ordinary non-descript lives just lift off the page. They are wonderfully complex, dense with emotions and heaps of baggage. The urbane suburb living is shown in all its gritty harsh reality and sprinkled with liberal doses of sex, drugs and booze.
I really enjoyed this collection of stories and I love Miller’s style. A really good read and highly recommend. When this book comes out grab a copy and sit down for a really engaging confronting and wonderful read. Miller is a writer with a big future.
May 18, 2021
I hate giving books bad reviews because i know what it takes to write one and get it published, but obviously I can't like everyone I read. Read a good review on this one, but it was not al all what I anticipated from the description. iI struck me as very "disaffected youth," always a young cynical woman who is unsatisfied and not very likeable and doesn't really seem to connect with anyone. Many of them are in graduated school and yet they come off is flat and bored, often calloused. The characters all seemed to be mostly the same anxiety ridden, fragile and damaged person who wears many bikinis or thin dresses and drinks a lot, is hooked up with boring or otherwise unavailable men and is terrified of getting old.
December 19, 2023
I love this collection. I had looked for the next MM after finishing The Last Days of California. Mary Miller’s stories take me back. They are real, honest, and understated. Mary Miller, you’re one of my favorite writers.
October 15, 2017
Mary Miller's wit sparkles in these stories like a stiff drink with a healthy dash of bitters. They are dry, acerbic, and full of bitter irony. Consider the title, taken from a line on one of the later stories in the collection: it is "always happy hour," yet no one seems happy in these stories. Or if they are, their happiness is fleeting, yet all of Miller's characters are searching for this elusive spirit. We read these stories, not for the plot — spoiler alert, not much happens — but for Miller's exquisite character studies, her detailed sense of place, and her subtle exploration of relationships. Miller's narrators and female main characters are women, divorced or unmarried, most of whom are with or looking for boyfriends who are either divorced or unmarried. They are aware their relationships are imperfect and may not last. They may be dissatisfied with their current partner or they may be so satisfied they are sure they'll do something to make their partner leave. We see the compromises they are willing to make for love, even as they struggle with commitment; we see them negotiate ex-wives and their boyfriends' children; we see them struggle with family and friends who seem to have it all, at least if you believe their status updates. It is in the unguarded line of dialogue or the narrator's reflections where Miller allows a realization, where we recognize ourselves in her flawed and human characters for whom a happy ending seems always just out of reach.
February 10, 2018
“I’m going to marry him,” my sister says, standing in my kitchen. I don’t want her in my kitchen. I wonder if she can feel me not wanting her in my kitchen.
As I listened to the audiobook version of “Always Happy Hour”, I tried to think of how I would describe it. And then I heard that paragraph I quoted above. This is highly representative. “Always Happy Hour” consists of short stories about women thinking their way through life. “I don’t want her in my kitchen” is typical. A good percentage of the women’s thoughts are negative. There are also positive thoughts recorded, but they always seem a bit off kilter. Like positive, but with a limit. Or positive only when with the ex-con boyfriend that the parents don’t like. These seem like real world people with mostly real world problems. The results of the kvetching and thinking are almost always humorous, making this a very readable book. Favorite story was about a women going on a trip to Miami with a friend rich from winning the lottery, dealing with this person that she doesn't really relate to anymore on a trip she doesn't want to be on. Or maybe she's just fooling herself. Interesting situations, interesting thoughts.
July 25, 2022
probably a 4.5
super solid set of stories. i was struck by how the blandness and apparent monotony of the writing brought out the sparseness of the plot in a very engaging way. many of the stories dealt with the ennui of life, but they were distinctive despite maintaining largely similar authorial voice. this collection was kept tight, which was a good choice, lest it turn laborious and unoriginal towards the end. the writing, deceptively plain, has a sharpness that makes everything feel a lot more real. also, what a banger cover.
super solid set of stories. i was struck by how the blandness and apparent monotony of the writing brought out the sparseness of the plot in a very engaging way. many of the stories dealt with the ennui of life, but they were distinctive despite maintaining largely similar authorial voice. this collection was kept tight, which was a good choice, lest it turn laborious and unoriginal towards the end. the writing, deceptively plain, has a sharpness that makes everything feel a lot more real. also, what a banger cover.
July 9, 2017
2.5 stelle
Peccato, dico peccato perché adoro Black Coffe come casa editrice, ma questa volta non ci siamo, per il semplice fatto che ogni racconto sembra sempre la stessa storia, c'è sempre una donna infelice che beve birra, fa sesso o pensa di farlo, ama un uomo che non la ama o crede di amare un uomo che non ama...insomma, per quanto adori le ambientazioni americane, c'è qualcosa di sbagliato in questa raccolta di racconti.
Peccato, dico peccato perché adoro Black Coffe come casa editrice, ma questa volta non ci siamo, per il semplice fatto che ogni racconto sembra sempre la stessa storia, c'è sempre una donna infelice che beve birra, fa sesso o pensa di farlo, ama un uomo che non la ama o crede di amare un uomo che non ama...insomma, per quanto adori le ambientazioni americane, c'è qualcosa di sbagliato in questa raccolta di racconti.
February 27, 2017
A surprisingly good collection of stories. There are some definite themes: bikinis, beer consumption, canoeing downriver, boyfriends' children. And also some shockingly good insight into relationships (why we stay, who we choose), feelings of anxiety, loneliness and isolation. There are moments of wry humor and touching vulnerability. My favorite story is "Big Bad Love", about a caretaker's relationship with a troubled child. I also really liked "Charts", about a newly divorced woman in her new house. Her style reminds me of early Mary Gaitskill, and I am very excited for all the potentially great stories to come.
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