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Pretty
"There is always a roiling subtext beneath the seemingly placid surfaces and tones of Chinquee's pieces, a dichotomy which speaks to deep truths about the human condition. Kim Chinquee is a true artist with a true vision, and Pretty is a brilliant book."—Robert Olen Butler "These brief snapshots of conversations manage to seem not like fragments of lost wholes but like vivid distillations of essential dramas, each a variation on the shared subject of thwarted intimacy."—Carl Dennis Kim Chinquee lives in Buffalo, New York, where she teaches creative writing. Oh Baby is her first book of flash fiction.
- GenresPoetry
85 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2010
33 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
June 14, 2011
I keep reading books that I haven't listed as "to-read," but I'm glad, again, that I didn't let that list dictate too much what I'm reading.
I should say, too, that a long time ago, back in the twentieth century, Kim Chinquee was a student of mine, but I can say with certainty that the writer she is now has very little to do with the classes she took from me. And even had I just discovered this book and not known a bit about the author, I'd still be saying the same thing: Pretty is far more than pretty; it's a gorgeous book, worth savoring and revisiting, as I'm sure it will do what all great books do: transform itself into an even more challenging and substantive read.
I need to reread the collection because I'd be interested to see how these small vignettes and flash fictions and prose poems and sudden fictions intersect and influence one another. I think that Chinquee has an exquisite sense of how to begin and end stories--I envy that talent. I know that with the subjects she treats, I'd want to labor fifteen, twenty pages; yet Chinquee suggests so very much with each sentence. Her settings are worlds, her characters people, her plots lifetimes. And yet she manages this with a vocabulary so spare. In my favorite of the stories, "Cells," a little girl says her daddy is in the war, and the first person narrator writes, "My husband was there too." I keep getting hung up on that "there," how it evokes both the character's attitude toward war and the ambiguity of how she feels about her husband.
Frankly, I read the stories in "Pretty," and I'm almost lifted up by them so much that I won't beg Kim to write a novel. Almost.
I should say, too, that a long time ago, back in the twentieth century, Kim Chinquee was a student of mine, but I can say with certainty that the writer she is now has very little to do with the classes she took from me. And even had I just discovered this book and not known a bit about the author, I'd still be saying the same thing: Pretty is far more than pretty; it's a gorgeous book, worth savoring and revisiting, as I'm sure it will do what all great books do: transform itself into an even more challenging and substantive read.
I need to reread the collection because I'd be interested to see how these small vignettes and flash fictions and prose poems and sudden fictions intersect and influence one another. I think that Chinquee has an exquisite sense of how to begin and end stories--I envy that talent. I know that with the subjects she treats, I'd want to labor fifteen, twenty pages; yet Chinquee suggests so very much with each sentence. Her settings are worlds, her characters people, her plots lifetimes. And yet she manages this with a vocabulary so spare. In my favorite of the stories, "Cells," a little girl says her daddy is in the war, and the first person narrator writes, "My husband was there too." I keep getting hung up on that "there," how it evokes both the character's attitude toward war and the ambiguity of how she feels about her husband.
Frankly, I read the stories in "Pretty," and I'm almost lifted up by them so much that I won't beg Kim to write a novel. Almost.
March 18, 2020
Kim Chinquee explains the military life so exquisitely, that I feel I am back on base.
Pretty flawlessly weaves so many aspects of a farm childhood, military life, single motherhood, attraction (fleeting and approriate) to her son's friend, relationships, trying to make a living, getting an education, moving around, and small seemingly inconsequential encounters, that you don't realize until much later that they changed your entire life.
Pretty. The protagonist is pretty. The flash fiction tell the millions of ways that "being" some thing or some character shapes your life. That a description that is assigned to you, can become an unseen MOS in the world.
Pretty
In Jason's room, they all held me down. Some boy said he'd break me. The first one would win a frigid six-pack. There was a flashback of a nightmare with my father.
My Ribbon
That night, my mom told me that this boy from my school had
gotten sick of himself. It ended with a handgun
The Bridge
She remembered him calling form the bridge in San Francisco,
hotels in Tokyo, and Moscow, and they'd meet sometimes so into
their affection, they rose out of the encounters with a bruise.
Pretty flawlessly weaves so many aspects of a farm childhood, military life, single motherhood, attraction (fleeting and approriate) to her son's friend, relationships, trying to make a living, getting an education, moving around, and small seemingly inconsequential encounters, that you don't realize until much later that they changed your entire life.
Pretty. The protagonist is pretty. The flash fiction tell the millions of ways that "being" some thing or some character shapes your life. That a description that is assigned to you, can become an unseen MOS in the world.
Pretty
In Jason's room, they all held me down. Some boy said he'd break me. The first one would win a frigid six-pack. There was a flashback of a nightmare with my father.
My Ribbon
That night, my mom told me that this boy from my school had
gotten sick of himself. It ended with a handgun
The Bridge
She remembered him calling form the bridge in San Francisco,
hotels in Tokyo, and Moscow, and they'd meet sometimes so into
their affection, they rose out of the encounters with a bruise.
September 17, 2010
Not quite sure how this ended up on a poetry list, for me it is flash fiction. But however it is presented, I couldn't say it better than Carl Dennis did on the back cover: "Though each snapshot is complete in itself, the book gathers mass and momentum and so achieves a singular power."
March 4, 2010
Amazing book. Kim Chinquee is a quiet genius.
March 15, 2010
More beauties from Kim. I think what I like the best is her sly sense of humor. And the accumulated voice that gathers over the pages.
October 27, 2017
These prose poems are often more prosey than poetic, more walk than dance, particularly in the ast two sections. The result are that each section is an interrelated pastiche of fragments--often functioning as memory of trauma. Interesting conceptually, but the proseyness of the writing often mirrors some of the more prosaic aspects of these narratives.
September 28, 2022
God.damn
January 25, 2014
I love these shorts; I've been a big fan of Kim Chinquee's short flashes for years. Perhaps what I like most about reading her collections is how these pieces inform one another, how all the pieces are facets of a beautiful narrative. When I finished this collection I wanted to go back and read it again, from the beginning. Pieces like "Girl" and "Twister" hit me like shots. She is a master.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews