Simon Rich is no ordinary author. With him, the only thing you can expect is the unexpected. In his collection of short stories titled Spoiled Brats, this is clear. Each story will twist the readers mind and force them to use their imagination in a way they never would have imagined. Although Spoiled Brats is similar is style to Rich’s 2013 book, The Last Girlfriend on Earth, it contains a largely different overall theme. Spoiled Brats uses extreme sarcasm and humor to bring about the idea of family and people within society, focusing on how we interact and how we treat others. This book definitely isn’t appropriate for everyone, nor will everyone enjoy it. Personally, I did not enjoy this book as much as I would have hoped. There are select pieces that I enjoyed, but overall, I would not place this book on my list of favorites.
Rich’s stories, as unusual as they as, typically make sense by the end. The reader is usually able to figure out the point of the story in the end. However, in my experience, this wasn’t always the case. There was no confusion created by cliffhangers, but rather confusion that came from the fact that the story was so “out of the box.” Don’t get me wrong, there were a few stories, such as Elf on the Shelf and Animals, that I found to be hilarious and make sense throughout the whole short story. However, I found that the majority of the stories had random endings, or endings that felt as though they weren’t finished.
Spoiled Brats is made up of a number of short stories. Due to the fact that a large number of the stories were less than twenty pages, Rich did not develop his characters as much as they would have been in a normal book. The reader is not given a background about the characters, therefore it is sometimes hard to understand the mind and motives of a character. Rich makes the unique decision to include a short story that is nearly 80 pages long. This is unusual because all of the other stories are less than two dozen pages. However, even in this lengthy story, Rich still does not develop his character or give us enough information that the reader feels like they truly know the character. Since each time the reader begins a new short story they have to learn about a whole new set of characters, I think that the pace of the book is significantly slowed down.
Although Spoiled Brats was not one of my favorite books, I still enjoyed some of the stories in it. I would recommend this book to anyone who wants to read a funny book, and also wants to use their imagination to piece together the story themselves. Since I did enjoy some of Rich’s stories, I would want to give his writing another chance in the future.
Simon Rich is no ordinary author. With him, the only thing you can expect is the unexpected. In his collection of short stories titled Spoiled Brats, this is clear. Each story will twist the readers mind and force them to use their imagination in a way they never would have imagined. Although Spoiled Brats is similar is style to Rich’s 2013 book, The Last Girlfriend on Earth, it contains a largely different overall theme. Spoiled Brats uses extreme sarcasm and humor to bring about the idea of family and people within society, focusing on how we interact and how we treat others. This book definitely isn’t appropriate for everyone, nor will everyone enjoy it. Personally, I did not enjoy this book as much as I would have hoped. There are select pieces that I enjoyed, but overall, I would not place this book on my list of favorites.
Rich’s stories, as unusual as they as, typically make sense by the end. The reader is usually able to figure out the point of the story in the end. However, in my experience, this wasn’t always the case. There was no confusion created by cliffhangers, but rather confusion that came from the fact that the story was so “out of the box.” Don’t get me wrong, there were a few stories, such as Elf on the Shelf and Animals, that I found to be hilarious and make sense throughout the whole short story. However, I found that the majority of the stories had random endings, or endings that felt as though they weren’t finished.
Spoiled Brats is made up of a number of short stories. Due to the fact that a large number of the stories were less than twenty pages, Rich did not develop his characters as much as they would have been in a normal book. The reader is not given a background about the characters, therefore it is sometimes hard to understand the mind and motives of a character. Rich makes the unique decision to include a short story that is nearly 80 pages long. This is unusual because all of the other stories are less than two dozen pages. However, even in this lengthy story, Rich still does not develop his character or give us enough information that the reader feels like they truly know the character. Since each time the reader begins a new short story they have to learn about a whole new set of characters, I think that the pace of the book is significantly slowed down.
Although Spoiled Brats was not one of my favorite books, I still enjoyed some of the stories in it. I would recommend this book to anyone who wants to read a funny book, and also wants to use their imagination to piece together the story themselves. Since I did enjoy some of Rich’s stories, I would want to give his writing another chance in the future.