You Do Understand

by Andrej Blatnik, Tamara M Soban (Translator)

This collection of sharp, spare, occasionally absurd, cruel, touching, and yet always generous short-short fictions addresses the fundamental difficulty we have in making the people we love understand what we want and need. Demonstrating that language and intimacy are as much barriers between human beings as ways of connecting them, Andrej Blatnik here provides us with a guided tour of the slips, misunderstandings, and blind alleys we each manage to fall foul of on a daily basis—no closer to understanding the motives of our families, friends, lovers, or coworkers than we are those of a complete stranger . . . or, indeed, our own.

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, International, Literature

116 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2009

About the author

Andrej Blatnik was born on May 22nd, 1963, in Ljubljana, Slovenia, where he studied Comparative Literature and Sociology of Culture and got his Masters in American Literature and PhD in Communication Studies. He started his artistic career playing bass guitar in a punk band, was a free-lance writer for five years, and now he works as an editor in Cankarjeva publishing house, teaches creative writing and is on the editorial board of the Literatura monthly since 1984. He is currently the president of the jury for the Vilenica prize.

Reviews

[Radioread · Rating 3 out of 5]

Kendini yapayalnız sanan buzdağı gökte süzülüyor. Yalnız değil aslında, sadece Dünya büyük ve ufku ister istemez seyreltmiş. Eskiden denizin sakladığı görünmeyen yüzü rahatça görülebilir şimdi (yukarıda veya aşağıda). Buzdağı bu sefil klişeden kurtuldu. Dünya gibi büyük olmadığından, çevresindeki havayı yeterince soğutamıyor ve parça parça eriyor. Havayı soğutamadığı için eriyerek bir tür kar yağışı başlatması güzel bir paradoksa benziyor. Gökteki özgür buzdağı, tüy döken dev bir kutup ayısına benziyor.

[Tatiana · Rating 2 out of 5]

The title initially caught my attention. You Do Understand. It can be said so many ways, in relief or desperation, as a question even, depending on where the inflection falls. Sadly, the collection of 50 super-short stories, ranging in length of two sentences to three pages, on the human condition, essentially, failed to meet the expectations set forth by the title. Some of the stories felt overworked, some were predictable and/or preachy, and others were just odd (see: "One"). The single short that stood out, that was genuine to my heart, was "Coming." The collection wasn't terrible, but I didn't connect with it as a whole, and maybe that had something to do with the brevity of the stories themselves. There was so little time to make that necessary investment, which is ironic since these fictions were all about human connection and fracture.

[Matthieu · Rating 3 out of 5]

The first half was very good (approaching excellence in some places). After that... nothing, really. The collection as a whole is somewhat formless (tangentially related microstories about the difficulties inherent in communicating emotions/thoughts/feelings), but still managed to leave a lasting impression by dint of its clipped-but-charged prose (at times reminiscent of Camus or Levé). The second half was just kind of pointless. Hamfisted and boring. There were still a few flashes of the earlier brilliance, but these flashes were few and far between. At their worst, they read like second-rate Barthelme stories without the lightness or humor. If this book had stopped after 40 pages, it would've gotten at least four stars. Perhaps if I'd read them straight through in a sitting (and not spaced out over a week), I may have liked them more. Microfiction is a tricky thing.

[maša · Rating 1 out of 5]

moram da prestanem sa eksperimentisanjem na razmenama knjiga

eurovisionathon 2024 - slovenia

[Tine Mauer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mick Jagger in Hiša časti ... best ones :)

[Vincent · Rating 5 out of 5]

Short, tight, utterly devastating. The genius of the author is his ability to engage the reader using so little. A book you will read in an afternoon, but one that calls for rereading.

[Johan D'Haenen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Vervreemding is de kern van deze novelle... geen vervreemding in Marxistische of Hegeliaanse zin, ook niet in Brechtiaanse zin... neen, gewoon vervreemding waarbij de mensen niet meer zichzelf voelen omdat ze het idee hebben geen invloed te kunnen uitoefenen op de ontwikkeling van de gebeurtenissen. De hamvraag is natuurlijk of wij niet allemaal leven in de illusie dat we niet vervreemd zouden zijn van ons eigen bestaan, onze liefdes, onze relaties... en daar wijzen al deze snapshots op, snapshots die steeds weer met elkaar in relatie lijken of blijken te staan.
Veel van deze microverhalen zijn echte pareltjes, andere zijn dan weer wat minder... sommige deden mij denken aan songs, zoals bijvoorbeeld "Once in a lifetime" van Talking Heads...
Het enige wat jammer is aan deze bundel, is dat hij zo kort is.

[Dani Kass · Rating 4 out of 5]

the beginning of this collection was magical. i was amazed by blatnik's way of so perfectly capturing the feeling of a moment, rather than focusing on typical plots. he does so much with so little, and it was pure poetry about connection and disconnection.

i definitely started getting bored as it went on, and the latter half didn't have anything that grabbed me as much as the beginning. i also just... really did not appreciate the transphobia in 'say that.' like i don't think he was being actively cruel, just a really harmful way of thinking.

[aschenputtelka · Rating 3 out of 5]

3,5⭐️ od mene jer je bilo baš dobrih i onih “filler” priča koje su ostale zaboravljene.
S druge strane, ono što me je posebno iznenadilo je što je svaka priča puna metafora, tera na razmišljanje o životu.
.
Kako bih se pozabavila tim razmišljanjem, čitalo se malo duže.
.
Preporučujte mi dobre zbirke✨

[Mina Widding · Rating 3 out of 5]

An easy read (sometimes uneasy), short fiction/flash fiction and rather like writing exercises or fiction tweets. Feels a bit fragmented, it would have been interesting to have stayed with any one character or situation and see where it would have taken the writing.

[Matthew Martens · Rating 2 out of 5]

Minor pith, with occasional frustrated promise.

[Benjamin Niespodziany · Rating 5 out of 5]

I finished this book on New Year's Day and I've been considering it ever since. Sparse and sharp and forever in need of a cigarette.

[Alex V. · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a great blur of a book, devoured in the time it took my daughter to find her books at the library. It is 60-odd stories on 80-odd pages, white space taking up both a big chunk of Blatnik's prose and the book itself. A quantifiably high majority of the microstories cover this arc: you play the movie of your life, whether it's one you wrote/directed/starred in or simply rented and watched; you press pause and ponder the rictus of the characters caught in mid speech, sigh at the eternal suspended animation of a sleeping one night stand as you slip on your shoes in the dark; then you press play again and the movie is totally different, or maybe you weren't following the plot is closely as you thought.

[Tom · Rating 5 out of 5]

Miniature stories--most only one or two pages long--that summarize the gist of a situation, relationship, character, or behavior in a way that a poem might. Although this and Blatnik's other previously translated work, Skinswaps, are only about a hundred page long, anything longer would become overwhelming, then boring. A lot happens in 50 stories, so You Do Understand has as much weight as a book three times its length. Recommended reading, especially for readers with heavy time constraints, who tend to avoid novels and even short stories become of time commitment, yet who want stories of consequence.

[Robin · Rating 4 out of 5]

This set of short stories centers on moments recognizing that connection is no longer possible. Each page is like a quiet sigh or an averted glance before somber decisions are made. The tales seldom feel mopey or bitter, perhaps due to the brevity of the stories; all fall between one paragraph and three pages in length. There are many "should have" moments, characters acknowledging that things could have gone differently, but it's too late. It's not so much about failures in communication so much as concluding communication may fail whether or not an effort to express oneself is made.

[Matt Kuhns · Rating 2 out of 5]

Is the usual paperback novel too large for you? An average USA Today story too long? Then you need this book.

It’s a very small book full of even-smaller stories, most of them not really even “stories” but rather vignettes, at most, and in some cases just stray thoughts no longer than your average Tweet. They’re often interesting vignettes and stray thoughts, though, and in one or two cases quite memorable even. For the small investment of time which the book requires, its return is certainly respectable.

[Allison · Rating 4 out of 5]

Will need to reread to appropriately review. However, I bought a copy, so I shall definitely be rereading it.

The quick and dirty review: there are few books of short stories that I enjoy enough to reread. This was one of them. The stories are outrageously short and yet manage to be complete in and of themselves. Definitely a style I'd like to imitate. Someday.

[Marita · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was looking for a short book to take to camp just in case I had time to read...
This little book turned out to be more thought provoking and deep than it looked. Some of them were very poem like, and ranged from humor to loneliness. Some of them were very Slovenian some universally human. Certainly different than my usual reads.

[Akeiisa · Rating 3 out of 5]

An odd assortment of microstories. It's fascinating how much you can get out some of these ultra-short stories - character, emotion, theme. For the most part, every word matters and informs. Overall, this collection of stories is a little uneven.

[Colin N. · Rating 3 out of 5]

Flash fiction that addresses broken relationships and missed attempts at human connection. Interesting in parts, if you like this sort of thing.

[Kam]

agree with previous reviewer; the questions and themes the book were supposed to answer didn't really get thoroughly asked, or dealt with.

[Amanda · Rating 3 out of 5]

Super short & unique collection about things you wish you could say but probably haven't

[Sara Gros · Rating 1 out of 5]

I didn't like the stories, with exceptions of a few. A expected stories to at least make me think, but they didn't. I was disappointed.

[melanie · Rating 4 out of 5]

something about this reminded me of Lydia Davis, but I liked this better.

[Milica Stojiljkovic · Rating 2 out of 5]

Ova knjiga sastoji se iz velikog broja kratkih priča. Dopala mi se tek poneka priča, ali sam generalno razočarana i očekivala sam više. Privukli su me naslov i korice.

[Crystal Collins · Rating 3 out of 5]

loved the short story's.

[l · Rating 1 out of 5]

not impressed with the style
not impressed with the substance

[Jan Moens · Rating 5 out of 5]

9/10